Rowan Atkinson takes on VR in new Johnny English sequel

Rowan Atkinson really takes his time with the Johnny English spy action comedy franchise.

After huge gaps between the first film in 2003 and its 2011 sequel Johnny English Reborn, the 63-year-old English actor reprises his role of the beloved accidental secret agent for a third go-round in Johnny English Strikes Again, which opens here tomorrow.

When a cyber attack reveals the identity of all active undercover agents in Britain, the country's only hope is called out of retirement to find the mastermind hacker.

A man with few skills and analogue methods, English must overcome the challenges of modern technology.

Atkinson talks about his experience making the movie.

ON THE MOVIE'S VR SEQUENCE

In many ways, the virtual reality (VR) sequence is at the root of our analogue versus digital story. Because it is this very analogue guy just sort of trying this digital thing, and mistreating it really.

What I like about it is that he goes from the very beginning of the sequence to the very end and on through the story in complete ignorance of what he might have done.

It is just very nice when you get a basic mechanical device, which is a floor that is supposed to move in sympathy with you, such that you actually stay in this same place in this small floor.

But you think you are running or walking or moving left and right or up and down. The idea is that this floor, instead of moving, is mistakenly locked so that when Johnny puts his VR headset on and sets off, he walks out of the room.

But he thinks he is in his own space, which he isn't and he is causing considerable hurt and chaos to a number of members of the population that he meets outside of the room in which he is supposed to be staying.

So that is the essential joke. Indeed, I think often when you watch people with VR headsets on, of course they are in their own world, they are not in the world in which they are physically sat or stood, and exploiting that for humour felt to me to be an absolute no-brainer.

ON ENGLISH'S CAR

We try to keep it consistent with the story, but of course it is a gift to me when you are trying to consider what analogue car Johnny might drive in our movie, which we have not really done before actually.

We have always been contemporary or modern with the previous movies, with whatever car he chose to drive.

But there was an excuse here to go back and there is no doubt that in 1981, I bought a storm red Aston Martin V8 in exactly the colour scheme of the V8 in Johnny English Strikes Again.

So when I sort of got the opportunity just to go back and buy a similar car, I bought the car which is in the movie.

It is my car - and I thought this is great. It is such a wonderful tomato red in the sunshine of the Cote D'Azur.

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MR BEAN AND JOHNNY ENGLISH

I think if Mr Bean is kind of between nine and 11 years old, there is quite a bit of a 14- or 15-year-old in Johnny English. I think there is a child in him.

He just loves his job. He loves being a spy, he thinks it is the best thing. Why or how he ever got to be a spy you must question but having been given the job, he relishes it.

He loves the idea of swaggering into smart cocktail bars and chatting up attractive women, of driving fast cars in exotic locations.

Bean is definitely very childlike and even far more selfish and aggressive, whereas Johnny is a nicer guy.

ON BEN MILLER AS ENGLISH'S SIDEKICK BOUGH

I have always adored working with Ben and we always had a great time professionally and personally on the first film.

There are very few people who I feel more at ease with as a comedy partnership. Tony Robinson, who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series, he was definitely one. We connected and I have got a very similar relationship with Ben.

I think we just play off each other extremely well and Ben is fantastic in my opinion. And this is a genuine expression of liking him for what he does and the way he does it.

ON EMMA THOMPSON, WHO JOINS THE CAST AS THE UK PRIME MINISTER

Emma was a bit of a coup for us to get because she is a masterful actor.

But she also comes from a very similar comedy tradition to myself, just on the other side of the country in Cambridge, while I was at Oxford.

Well, she is younger than I am but a few years after me, she came along and sketch comedy was very much her thing at the very beginning.

So I knew that she would find this a very easy thing to do, and she did.

I think she has done us proud because yet again you need someone who is strong and serious and believable as a Prime Minister.

It can't be a comedy Prime Minister and yet of course we do want our Prime Minister to have a twinkle in her eye and a sense of the absurdity of this man and a sense of the difficulty and the absurdity of the situation in which she is being put by circumstances.

Emma plays it quite excellently, and it is a difficult thing to maintain authority but make it a sort of comic authority.