Legendary ‘Poirot’ Actor David Suchet Reveals How His ‘Travels With Agatha Christie’ Series Showed Him A New Side To The Famous Author

EXCLUSIVE: Having played Hercule Poirot on TV for more than a quarter of a century, David Suchet has become something of an expert on Agatha Christie, the world-famous author who created the iconic Belgian detective and penned scores of bestselling novels. Sleuths among the Deadline readership may know already he’s headed to the Croisette this year to promote his doc series Travels with Agatha with Sir David Suchet.

Retracing a journey Christie embarked upon at the start of her literary career, he discovered a new side to the prolific writer — a bubbly, effervescent character who socialized well into the wee hours of the night and, at the beach, was even known to catch a wave.

“I’ve got to know my author as a more three-dimensional human being and that’s an unexpected gift,” Suchet says of his modern-day voyage, which took in Australia, Canada, Hawaii, New Zealand and South Africa. “I was learning about the character of a young lady who loved surfing, who loved socializing, who actually, when her early stories were published, would willingly give press interviews. She was vivacious. On board the ship, she openly writes in her diary that she was kept up into the early hours with one of the officers on board. The Agatha Christie that I was discovering during my journey was happy. She was a little bit flirty. I wish I’d met her.”

The travelog series sees the actor follow a course charted by the Poirot and Miss Marple writer in 1922. She was accompanying her then husband Archibald “Archie” Christie on The British Empire Exhibition Mission, with the trip designed to rustle up interest in a subsequent celebration of the British Empire.

The insight into the life of a young Christie is all the more fascinating given her publicity-shy and enigmatic persona in her later years, including a famous 11-day disappearance in 1926 that was the stuff of newspaper headlines. “In her later life she was reclusive,” Suchet explains. “She didn’t enjoy publicity. She was a very private person.”

Suchet says the trip gave him a greater read on the character he played for so long. “Agatha Christie was violently seasick every time she traveled,” he says. “In retrospect, that was a very good reason that she made Poirot violently seasick as well. A lot of her experiences were put into her books and her characters.”

Soho Studios and Two Rivers Media are making the show, with Channel 4 in the U.K., BritBox in North America and the Nordics, and SBS in Australia already on board. MIPCOM will see the show have its international launch and Suchet will be in town. It is a key title for Sphere Abacus, the newly minted producer-distributor created this summer when Sphere Media acquired Abacus Media Rights.

For many, Suchet made the role of Poirot his own. Having exhausted the supply of novels, he retired from the role in 2013. He recalls tearing up when the writer’s daughter, Rosalind, told him that her mother would have approved of his performance.

Has walking in Christie’s footsteps re-awakened an urge to play Poirot once more?

“In 2013 I had made up my mind that I would not do any Poirots that were not Agatha Christie, and I had done all her stories, but I did say quite openly that I would love to do one on the big screen,” Suchet says. But which one? “The movie I would have liked to have made is probably not the one that anybody would have wanted to be made because it’s not her most famous book, but my favorite is ‘The ABC Murders’, which is a wonderful story.”