How A Paratrooper-Turned-Extra Became Hollywood's Go-To Military Advisor

It’s a pretty remarkable stroke of luck that Paul Biddiss was between jobs when he saw an advertisement for ex-military extras in George Clooney’s 2014 film The Monuments Men. After 24 years in the British Army's parachute regiment, he was spending his time working in surveillance and “close protection”—bodyguarding—but these were freelance gigs taken on a fairly ad-hoc basis, and it sometimes left him with gaps in between. He had bills to pay. “I didn’t even really know what an extra was at the time,” he says. “But I thought ‘Yeah, that’ll be a laugh.’”

Lucky, too, that he happened to be involved in a scene that wasn’t quite nailing it, military-accuracy-wise. Two soldiers were set to drive up to a Land Rover in which John Goodman was cradling a dying comrade. Biddiss, an extra on the scene who “didn’t really know about the etiquette. Or, to be honest, care about it,” cleared his throat and pointed out that actually, during an offensive, soldiers would never drive right up to a burning vehicle, because it might be an ambush. They’d stop short and walk up. Instead of relieving this mouthy extra of his duties, director George Clooney “looked at the guy next to him and went ‘OK—let’s do that.’” At the end of the day, Biddiss was asked to speak to an assistant director—a sure sign that he was about to be fired for speaking up, according to the other extras. Instead, he was asked for his number. And so began his new career.

Biddiss in his army days

It wasn’t full time at first; Biddiss scheduled advising roles on the likes of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Kingsman, The Death of Stalin and The Crown around his other security work. But the film and TV gigs became increasingly frequent and reliable, and eventually, with some considerable encouragement from his wife, he sold the surveillance vehicle he was still turning up to meetings with Hollywood producers in (a beat-up old silver Vauxhall Astra van laden with various bits of spyware on the inside) and became a full-time military advisor to the film and TV industry.

Glance through his IMDB and you’ll see a movie resumé a lot of actors would probably quite seriously injure their grandmothers for. As well as films like the above that rely more directly on his own military experience, he’s also worked on the likes of House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, and the upcoming Gladiator II. What sort of expertise can a former soldier of the 21st-century British Army offer on the conduct of, say, a vaguely medieval horde of troops in Middle Earth or Westeros? Taking the AppleTV+ sci-fi series Foundation as an example, Biddiss describes his ability to concoct the specific movement patterns of different armies with a collection of words you could easily attribute to a Carhartt-wearing DJ talking you through his latest remix. “I look at what kit there is, and I think ‘OK, I’ll put in a bit of Roman drill, mix it with some American drill, mix it with some German drill to move around, and then I’ve basically invented a completely new kind of drill.” (“Drill” in this case refers to how the soldiers march). Biddiss says military advisory work is “40 percent experience, 60 percent research.”

Perhaps the furthest removed from his own background of all the jobs I spotted on his IMDB is Eastenders. When I ask what use the London-based soap opera could’ve possibly had for his skills, the military man’s answer is typically direct: “I made a bomb for them.” Right. “They had to lock it away somewhere because it looked so much like a real bomb they were worried someone might see it and call the bomb squad or something. Well, technically it is a real bomb, I suppose. It just doesn’t have an explosive compound in it.” Good to know.

His most recent project is a little more obviously aligned with his abilities. Day of the Jackal is an espionage thriller series that follows Eddie Redmayne’s elusive hitman-for-hire (the aforementioned Jackal) as he evades an MI6 effort to capture him, led by Lashana Lynch’s know-it-all weapons expert. Redmayne and Lynch’s prep for the more technical aspects of the role began in a classroom, with Biddiss leading lessons on how they might move around a corner, use a reflection to check what’s going on around them or handle a gun.

Then they had to put it into practice. Biddiss designed an exercise for Redmayne where he’d have to follow a target and gather intelligence on her movements, without being spotted or tracked down by a third counter-surveillance operative. Biddiss didn’t tell Redmayne that his own wife would be playing the mark. ("Females are much more threat-aware," he explains.) An army wife with an army wife’s sense of humor, at one point she went into a drugstore and, knowing that Redmayne would have to follow her and report back on her actions in there in full, purchased some Anusol. Biddiss remembers Redmayne emerging from the pharmacy and telling him, with all of the seriousness the situation demanded, that the target appeared to have bought some haemorrhoid cream. Biddiss gave the best straight-faced nod he could muster. “That could be a clue,” he said. Biddiss’s wife eventually ended the operation by tapping Redmayne on the back and offering him some pile cream, and the star returned the favour when her birthday came around by texting her from location in Croatia, wishing her many happy returns and informing her that he’d bought her some of the finest pile cream the Croats could offer.

But it wasn’t all japes and hemorrhoids. What really makes Day of the Jackal is the detail—how thoroughly every element of what Redmayne’s character does has been considered. He’s Bond for nerds, after all. In the first episode, we see Redmayne’s Jackal set up for a world-record-surpassing sniper shot with a precision that perfectly sets the tone for what we can expect from him over the rest of the series. He leaves absolutely nothing to chance. He sets up a little gauge, to give him a rough sense of the strength of the wind. He takes a test shot to see how far from the intersection of his scope’s crosshairs the bullet will land, because of the wind and the curvature of the earth. And unlike most snipers you see in the movies, his bullet takes a good six seconds to get there. Then he “zeroes” his weapon, a-la a set of baking scales, and shoots again. All of that detail is Biddiss.

This being the world of TV and film, his advice can’t always be implemented in its entirety. It would actually have been 12 seconds that the bullet would’ve spent travelling to its target, not six, Biddiss says. But he appreciates that sometimes, there are creative reasons for not obeying everything he suggests to a tee. “You have to remember that it’s not documentary,” he says. “It’s drama. There’s some artistic license.” And though there will always be people on social media complaining about the inaccuracy of certain elements of a show or movie (hobbyist battle re-enactors are the worst apparently), Biddiss takes comfort in reminding himself that he’s done what he can within the limits of his role. “I train the guys. I don’t write the script,” he says. “I advise. That’s my job.”

This story originally appeared in British GQ.