Bill Nighy once said of playing his MI5 spy character, "I'd play Johnny Worricker for the rest of my life! I'd be perfectly happy as long as they keep me in a good suit."
On why he thinks people responded so well to Page Eight, actor Rupert Graves (who appears in sequels Turks & Caicos (2014) and Salting the Battlefield (2014)), said: "British cinema hadn't made an espionage film in the style of a European thriller in a long time. When I say European I mean it's smart, its got a lot of class and it's elegantly told. It drags you so beautifully along into the story and I think people appreciate not being treated as simpletons. It has a regal, classic elegance to it."
On its British premiere on television on BBC2 on August 28, 2011, it managed an impressive 3.56 million viewers (15.7 percent audience share) between 9pm and 10:45pm.
Writer and director David Hare told some associates that if this movie works, he might bring back Bill Nighy's character Johnny Worricker as part of a trilogy of television movies. This eventually happened with two 2014 sequels, Turks & Caicos (2014) and Salting the Battlefield (2014).
Of the film's response and reception, actor Bill Nighy said: ''It's about issues that resonated with people. It reflected on current affairs in an original way and the story was told at a pace that people liked. It didn't assume that you had attention deficit problems''. He added: ''I was very pleased that 'Page Eight' was shown at quite a few international film festivals. It was very satisfying for me to see David [Hare] being celebrated as a director as well as a writer. The fact that the film was chosen to close the Toronto Film Festival and to open the Warsaw Film Festival was brilliant.''