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Telegraph
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Steve Coogan interview: ‘There's no such thing as a no-go area in comedy'
'I had no burning desire to do a f—king penguin movie,'says Steve Coogan. 'Anyone who has seen my work would not say that's obviously the next step.' Yet here he is, having very much done a f—king penguin movie, The Penguin Lessons, and he is sitting in the drawing room of a hotel in Soho to tell us all about it. As a journalist on a conservative newspaper, one approaches Steve Coogan with a certain degree of trepidation. He is as famous for his Left-wing politics as for his performances. He has supported Extinction Rebellion and the Green Party, campaigned to halt arms sales to Israel and for greater press regulation. He has railed repeatedly and vociferously against the Right-wing press and the 'handful of billionaires who control our print media'. They are all subjects on which he tends to disagree with The Telegraph. Still, he also has a lot to promote at the moment, and needs must. A trim, tanned 59, in a casual green suit he has just purchased after wearing it for the photo shoot, Coogan is more relaxed and upbeat than he sometimes comes across. Compared to the blithe Alan Partridge, his enduring comic creation, there has often been an antsy, unsatisfied quality to Coogan. Perhaps this is a preview of his late era: sober, at peace with Partridge, earnest but not furious about politics, and with a constant supply of interesting work. He has just come off playing Dr Strangelove in the West End and Brian Walden opposite Harriet Walter's Margaret Thatcher in Brian and Maggie. In 2023 he played Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning. Another series of Partridge is imminent, more The Trip is in the works, more films and books and plays and telly. His production company, Baby Cow, has helped launch dozens of comic careers. 'I'm never not grateful that I'm making a living,' he says. 'I've never had a proper job really. I remember student jobs cleaning out vegetable crates for Sainsbury's with horror. I try to remind myself of that. The fact I've got a varied career is great to me.' The Penguin Lessons is an adaptation of Tom Michell's 2015 book, a true story about his time working as an English teacher in Argentina in the 1970s, when he struck up an unlikely relationship with a Magellanic penguin he named Juan Salvador. Coogan plays Michell, a little older than the 20-something of the book; Jonathan Pryce plays the headmaster of the exclusive boarding school where he teaches. It was a febrile political atmosphere that helped Jeff Pope, the screenwriter, bring Coogan around to the film. The pair have worked together many times, including on the Savile series and on Philomena, the 2013 film about a journalist helping an elderly woman (Judi Dench) who has been searching for her son for 50 years, which earned Coogan Oscar nominations (his only ones so far) for best picture and best adapted screenplay. 'Pope said, 'I'm doing a penguin film,' and I was like, 'What's it about?'' Coogan recalls. 'He said, 'Nice guy rescues penguin, it makes him a slightly better teacher.' I said, 'I'll give that a miss.' 'But then I went to Buenos Aires and became fascinated by it. It's this strange European city that's been beamed down into South America. I went to the Naval Academy where they kept the disappeared [dissidents who were summarily arrested and held without charge]. It was very bleak. I said to Jeff, 'We need to fold that in. And make him someone who doesn't like penguins and children particularly, just ambivalent.' 'I mean, Martin Sixsmith in Philomena is pretty much the same character,' he adds. 'Cynical bloke meets Judi Dench, becomes uncynical at the end, and enlightened but not stupid. Ditto [with The Penguin Lessons ], but switch Judi Dench for a penguin. 'I had to have something called 'penguin familiarisation',' says Coogan with an expression that suggests he was surprised, 40 years into his career, to experience something genuinely new. 'I've never had that in my diary before. I had to learn to stroke them, talk to them, lift them up in the correct way. I jumped in with both feet. Jonathan [Pryce] didn't want to touch the penguin. Another actress wanted to wear rubber gloves to touch it. It's like, get over yourself. It's just an animal.' The penguins helped create a calm atmosphere on set. 'Walking into this maelstrom of kids and animals was not the ordeal I thought it was going to be,' he says. 'You couldn't raise your voice or make loud noises when the penguin was there, which had the unintended consequence of making everyone calm. And the penguin doesn't always do what you want. Eight times out of 10 it will walk in the wrong direction. But you can't be annoyed; it's just being a penguin.' Waddling hurriedly on the heels of The Penguin Lessons will be a more familiar personage. How Are You? With Alan Partridge will air 'soon-ish' on the BBC, six half-hour mockumentaries with an unusual starting point for a comedy: mental health. 'I think if saying a topic out loud causes you some anxiety, that's a healthy sign,' he says. 'As long as it's not repulsive, of course. But if you feel that if you handle this badly it will blow up in your face, if you feel like you're trying to defuse an incendiary device, that's a good thing for comedy. As long as you defuse it properly. But I'm excited. I think it's funny.' How Are You? is the latest in Coogan's decade-long collaboration on Partridge with the sibling writing duo Rob and Neil Gibbons. Under their guidance the hapless broadcaster has continually pushed forward into new formats: books, podcasts, travel documentaries, a spoof magazine show. When Coogan's most famous character was created for On the Hour on BBC Radio in 1991, the joke was that he was a reactionary figure out of step with the broadcasting elite. While the world has moved on, Partridge has attempted to move with it, always on the lookout for worlds to infiltrate. Where one might have thought #MeToo was risky for him, he saw it as an opportunity, as it took out most of the competition. 'It's about, where can I get back in, where's the schism in the current social/cultural climate that I can validate myself or make myself relevant or resonant?' Coogan says. 'But he's smart enough to know how to bend with the wind. He's a Trojan horse. You can talk about stuff but you have this level of protection.' Partridge has attempted to exploit his depression before. Trying to impress a woman in an episode of I'm Alan Partridge, he confesses: 'I've had mental health problems […] I won't bore you with the details but I drove to Dundee in my bare feet.' Coogan has spoken about his 'love-hate' relationship with the character, which he sometimes felt he had been 'saddled' with. But after more than 30 years, Partridge's longevity has become an asset. His career has straddled the birth of the internet and social media and the fragmentation of audiences. He emerged from a monolithic TV culture, in which Saturday night game shows attracted audiences of many millions. 'I don't think he would come to the fore now,' Coogan says. 'Uniquely in comedy, because your audience is familiar with the character, people feel like Partridge is theirs and they understand him best. You can explore topics that would normally be off-piste or wide of the mark. It gives you this superpower that has only been arrived at through 30 years of exposure. We don't want to jump the shark. One argument is to stop; that way you protect the canon of stuff. But we like doing it. There's a myth that you can't be funny about certain things. I think you can be funny about absolutely everything. There's no such thing as a no-go area in comedy.' This helps explain Partridge's broad appeal. Not everyone sees him in the same way. 'At a live show there was a party of firefighters on a work outing,' he says. 'They said, 'We love Alan, he tells it like it is.' Sometimes he says things we agree with, but we won't tell you what they are. He started out reactionary and Middle England but then we evolved him into being socially progressive but economically conservative. Cameron-esque. Touchy-feely, but not when it comes to the bank balance.' What would Alan make of Nigel Farage? 'Fifteen years ago I'd have said he'd like him, but he's antsy about it now. Farage is like Bitcoin. You don't know if his currency will be really valuable or worth nothing.' The differences between Coogan and his alter ego are becoming harder to notice. 'One morning shooting this last series I got to my trailer and there was a checked shirt hanging up for Partridge that was identical to the shirt I was wearing. It was literally the same shirt, hanging up for Partridge to put on. I still had to take mine off and put that one on, psychologically, so I could feel like it wasn't me. I sent it to the writers and said, 'The singularity has happened.' 'I used to put crow's feet on him,' he adds, reaching for the sides of his eyes. 'We're very unspecific about his age; I might pass him. I don't mind.' See: relaxed. Rob Brydon and Coogan are also working on a fifth series of The Trip, the series in which they play fictionalised versions of themselves travelling around and eating in the world's best restaurants, although nothing has been formally confirmed. The news broke in an unusual fashion when Coogan used working on it as an excuse to escape a driving ban. He can't say much about it. 'I don't want to be rapped on the knuckles,' he says. 'But The Trip is not over. It will rear its head in some form. Something's going to happen.' One of the conceits in The Trip is 'Steve Coogan''s longing to be taken seriously as an actor, ideally in America, while being constantly borne back to Alan Partridge. He refers frequently to his work with famous American actors, his Oscar nominations, his Baftas. He bellows 'Aha!' into the wind. The script delights in the narcissism of the small differences between his and Brydon's characters, their relative statuses within entertainment, their competitive impressions. Partridge, too, is hyper-attuned to anything that might grant him a sense of superiority, if only in his own eccentric world view: the blazers, the driving gloves, the desperation to be granted another series or invited to Esther McVey's barbecue. Coogan has always been sensitive to class. He was born in October 1965 and grew up in north Manchester, one of six children of an IBM engineer and a housewife, Irish immigrants. 'Depending on your point of view I was upper working class or lower middle class,' he says. 'I can't be written off as a Hampstead liberal. My father had a respectable career. Our aspiration was not material, it was to try to be a better person. My dad bought an encyclopaedia before he bought a colour TV. I'm not easily pigeonholed. I'm not some privileged Lefty, neither am I a horny-handed son of the soil. I'm sort of in the middle somewhere: I think that's my superpower.' His politics are less ambivalent. He is feeling 'not great' about Keir Starmer's run as PM. 'I understand there is no single virtuous way to be Prime Minister,' he says. 'But when you look at the things he did as DPP and an advocate, you think, 'What happened?' He has to be a pragmatist. The one thing Margaret Thatcher did do was offer an ideology. It was specific and clear. That's not Keir Starmer. Populism is the fault of the centre-ground politics, the failure to deliver for those people. 'You can't be all things to all people. Sometimes you have to nail your colours to the mast and accept that some people won't like what you've done. I feel everything is a strategic political decision. Sincerity is at the bottom of a long list of priorities.' Press regulation is another long-standing cause of Coogan's. He was a witness during the 2011 Leveson Inquiry, after he was set up in what he called a 'sociopathic sting' by the News of the World. Earlier this year, Prince Harry became the latest high-profile figure to settle out of court with Rupert Murdoch's organisations. 'Murdoch has never had to have his day in court,' Coogan says. 'I accepted a settlement from News International and the Mirror Group for fairly substantial sums of money, which was very nice for me. 'When you have unlimited funds like Rupert Murdoch you can buy your way out of justice. With the Mirror Group they kept offering me more money. I kept saying I wanted to go to court. Eventually I got to the point where they said if you go to court and don't get what they've offered, you'll be liable for the entire costs. That's when I could have lost my house. 'Intrusion into anyone's life is wrong, even Prince Harry. Despite the soap opera that is the Royal family, it took guts for Prince Harry to take on the press.' Coogan is relaxed about the prospect of turning 60. 'It's weird, when I started out I was 22 and everyone said, 'God, you're so young,'' he says. 'Then one day they stopped saying it. If I go to east London and eat I know pretty much anywhere I go I'll be the oldest person in the room. But I live in Lewes [East Sussex]. One of the most gratifying things was that when they had the Covid vaccine I was one of the last ones to get it, because I was one of the youngest people in Lewes.' Since his brush with tabloid notoriety Coogan is more careful about his private life. His daughter, Clare, 28, is a chef and food stylist, in a relationship with the actor/comedian Jamie Demetriou, star of Stath Lets Flats. The Christmas table must be intimidating. He has been sober for years, after well-publicised problems with booze and drugs, but doesn't regret his wild days. 'I think the most interesting people are people who partied once, rather than people who've never partied,' he says. 'I don't regret it at all. There's levels of responsibility. I regret some things if you get into the nitty-gritty, but I don't particularly want to. The Dylan Thomas myth that you have to be self-destructive to be creative is nonsense. The complexity of that conflict in the human heart between being hedonistic and selfish and instant gratification, versus contemplative delayed gratification, that's the stuff of life. That conflict is the stuff of comedy: wanting to do the right thing but doing the wrong thing.' There are other benefits to ageing too. 'As you get older, you're less bothered by what people think of you,' he says. 'I don't do social media. I don't need to know if someone's slagging me off. I don't want to be a grumpy old man. You get more comfortable in your own skin. Your priorities change. And you do get happier.' He sounds surprised, but if a penguin can teach an important lesson, so can experience.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rachel Reeves will be lucky to survive
Supporters of Rachel Reeves may be a dwindling band even inside the Labour Party but those who remain loyal believe she is being traduced because she is a woman. They say that compared to her male predecessors in the Treasury she is the victim of subliminal, or even overt, misogyny. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is proud to be the first female occupant of the post but her allies detect in the criticism of her first eight months the sort of snide comments that would not be aimed at a man. The classic putdown is to call her 'Rachel from Accounts', a somewhat belittling description designed to emphasise that she was not the Bank of England economics guru that we might have imagined from her CV. Criticism goes with the job and if you are too thin-skinned to take it then you would be better off pursuing another career. After all, she is by no means the first Chancellor to get it in the neck even if there is a patronising element designed to discombobulate. As Ms Reeves prepares for her second major outing in the Commons, with a spring financial statement that will unravel many of the assumptions that underpinned her ill-starred Budget last October, how does she compare with other Chancellors of recent times? Gordon Brown always liked to joke that there were two types of Chancellor – those who fail and those who get out in time. Arguably, Ms Reeves is already doomed because her first Budget was so misjudged that it will tarnish everything else she does even if she survives the rest of the parliament. That will be up to her boss, the First Lord of the Treasury and Downing St neighbour. They seem to get on pretty well at the moment but these are early days and the history of this relationship is not propitious. The recent television drama, Brian and Maggie, was lauded as a reminder of the days when politicians submitted themselves to lengthy interrogations designed to establish why they have pursued particular policies and not just to catch them out over an infelicitous remark made years ago. The programme, written by James Graham, depicted the clash between Margaret Thatcher and Brian Walden, the Labour MP-turned-TV-inquisitor, in Oct 1989. It culminated in Walden calling out the Prime Minister for accepting the resignation of her Chancellor Nigel Lawson rather than sack her No 10 economic adviser Alan Walters. Walden was incredulous. 'He was unassailable, you say; you were in agreement, you say; everything was going well, you say; and he said to you: 'Margaret, you have got to get rid of Alan Walters!' Why didn't you, and keep your Chancellor?' Thatcher came to rue her failure to do so since it began a series of events that would lead to her being forced from office the following year. For her to fall out with the man she once called 'my brilliant Chancellor' after his 1988 tax cuts was extraordinary. The rift was not a trifling matter but one rooted in a fundamental disagreement over monetary policy, with Walters acting as a proxy for the Prime Minister's disapproval of her Chancellor's approach. In his resignation speech to the Commons, Lawson said: 'The successful conduct of economic policy is possible only if there is – and is seen to be – full agreement between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.' When Mrs Thatcher left in November 1990 and John Major, who had succeeded Lawson, became prime minister he appointed Norman Lamont to No 11. Again, the two were close but the debacle of Black Wednesday, when the pound was forced out of the ERM (which Thatcher did not want to join) and a recession (which the Lawson credit-financed boom did much to cause) led to a schism. Lamont offered to quit after Black Wednesday but was kept on until just after the Tories lost a by-election at Newbury, and then sacked. He was subsequently credited with the economic recovery bequeathed to the Blair government. Major was accused of using his Chancellor as a lightning rod to divert the criticism from himself since he had been in favour of joining the ERM. In his resignation statement Lamont said the government 'gives the impression of being in office but not in power', an accusation that would haunt Major until the calamitous defeat in 1997. That brought in possibly the most toxic relationship between Nos 10 and 11 with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown vying for ultimate power, with the latter often winning out. On Budget Day the joke was that the most surprised look was that on the PM's face – he hadn't a clue what was coming. The fact they lasted 10 years together is testament to the strength of Brown's support in the party. Blair should have sacked him but couldn't. The Cameron/Osborne axis between 2010 and 2016 was one of the few post-war pairings that didn't end in tears, probably because until 2015 in their Lib Dem coalition partners they had a mutual enemy. After that, Theresa May and Philip Hammond fell out. Boris lost his first Chancellor Sajid Javid who resigned in a row over advisers, while his second Rishi Sunak was party to the plot to get rid of him. This is, then, not the easiest of political alliances though on average, British finance ministers appointed at the start of the government tend to stay in office for about four years. Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves appear to have been in lock-step since the election but his travails are largely down to her Budget and its anti-growth measures masquerading as a boost to the economy. They both dipped their hands in the same blood, agreeing to the straitjacket of manifesto promises and beholden to the strictures of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Moreover, they both subscribe to one of the greatest mistakes of modern governments – excessive optimism about their ability to stimulate non-inflationary growth. So he cannot blame her. Or at least not yet. The Chancellor will say she has had to endure the humiliation of revisiting her plans because 'the world has changed' as though the imperative to get a grip on public spending has been apparent only since Donald Trump entered the White House. It is an excuse that cannot hold. When we start to hear briefings against the Chancellor from a latter-day Alan Walters we will know her time is up. For now it suits Sir Keir to let the Chancellor take the flak. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
25-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Rachel Reeves will be lucky to survive
Supporters of Rachel Reeves may be a dwindling band even inside the Labour Party but those who remain loyal believe she is being traduced because she is a woman. They say that compared to her male predecessors in the Treasury she is the victim of subliminal, or even overt, misogyny. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is proud to be the first female occupant of the post but her allies detect in the criticism of her first eight months the sort of snide comments that would not be aimed at a man. The classic putdown is to call her 'Rachel from Accounts', a somewhat belittling description designed to emphasise that she was not the Bank of England economics guru that we might have imagined from her CV. Criticism goes with the job and if you are too thin-skinned to take it then you would be better off pursuing another career. After all, she is by no means the first Chancellor to get it in the neck even if there is a patronising element designed to discombobulate. As Ms Reeves prepares for her second major outing in the Commons, with a spring financial statement that will unravel many of the assumptions that underpinned her ill-starred Budget last October, how does she compare with other Chancellors of recent times? Gordon Brown always liked to joke that there were two types of Chancellor – those who fail and those who get out in time. Arguably, Ms Reeves is already doomed because her first Budget was so misjudged that it will tarnish everything else she does even if she survives the rest of the parliament. That will be up to her boss, the First Lord of the Treasury and Downing St neighbour. They seem to get on pretty well at the moment but these are early days and the history of this relationship is not propitious. The recent television drama, Brian and Maggie, was lauded as a reminder of the days when politicians submitted themselves to lengthy interrogations designed to establish why they have pursued particular policies and not just to catch them out over an infelicitous remark made years ago. The programme, written by James Graham, depicted the clash between Margaret Thatcher and Brian Walden, the Labour MP-turned-TV-inquisitor, in Oct 1989. It culminated in Walden calling out the Prime Minister for accepting the resignation of her Chancellor Nigel Lawson rather than sack her No 10 economic adviser Alan Walters. Walden was incredulous. 'He was unassailable, you say; you were in agreement, you say; everything was going well, you say; and he said to you: 'Margaret, you have got to get rid of Alan Walters!' Why didn't you, and keep your Chancellor?' Thatcher came to rue her failure to do so since it began a series of events that would lead to her being forced from office the following year. For her to fall out with the man she once called 'my brilliant Chancellor' after his 1988 tax cuts was extraordinary. The rift was not a trifling matter but one rooted in a fundamental disagreement over monetary policy, with Walters acting as a proxy for the Prime Minister's disapproval of her Chancellor's approach. In his resignation speech to the Commons, Lawson said: 'The successful conduct of economic policy is possible only if there is – and is seen to be – full agreement between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.' When Mrs Thatcher left in November 1990 and John Major, who had succeeded Lawson, became prime minister he appointed Norman Lamont to No 11. Again, the two were close but the debacle of Black Wednesday, when the pound was forced out of the ERM (which Thatcher did not want to join) and a recession (which the Lawson credit-financed boom did much to cause) led to a schism. Lamont offered to quit after Black Wednesday but was kept on until just after the Tories lost a by-election at Newbury, and then sacked. He was subsequently credited with the economic recovery bequeathed to the Blair government. Major was accused of using his Chancellor as a lightning rod to divert the criticism from himself since he had been in favour of joining the ERM. In his resignation statement Lamont said the government 'gives the impression of being in office but not in power', an accusation that would haunt Major until the calamitous defeat in 1997. That brought in possibly the most toxic relationship between Nos 10 and 11 with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown vying for ultimate power, with the latter often winning out. On Budget Day the joke was that the most surprised look was that on the PM's face – he hadn't a clue what was coming. The fact they lasted 10 years together is testament to the strength of Brown's support in the party. Blair should have sacked him but couldn't. The Cameron/Osborne axis between 2010 and 2016 was one of the few post-war pairings that didn't end in tears, probably because until 2015 in their Lib Dem coalition partners they had a mutual enemy. After that, Theresa May and Philip Hammond fell out. Boris lost his first Chancellor Sajid Javid who resigned in a row over advisers, while his second Rishi Sunak was party to the plot to get rid of him. This is, then, not the easiest of political alliances though on average, British finance ministers appointed at the start of the government tend to stay in office for about four years. Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves appear to have been in lock-step since the election but his travails are largely down to her Budget and its anti-growth measures masquerading as a boost to the economy. They both dipped their hands in the same blood, agreeing to the straitjacket of manifesto promises and beholden to the strictures of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Moreover, they both subscribe to one of the greatest mistakes of modern governments – excessive optimism about their ability to stimulate non-inflationary growth. So he cannot blame her. Or at least not yet. The Chancellor will say she has had to endure the humiliation of revisiting her plans because 'the world has changed' as though the imperative to get a grip on public spending has been apparent only since Donald Trump entered the White House. It is an excuse that cannot hold. When we start to hear briefings against the Chancellor from a latter-day Alan Walters we will know her time is up. For now it suits Sir Keir to let the Chancellor take the flak.
The Guardian
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Too evil! Too smutty! Too Thatcher! When TV stars demand their scenes are cut
As professional show-offs with A-list ambitions, you might assume that any TV star wants to maximise their screen time – the meatier the role and the more minutes in the limelight, the better. Yet that isn't always the case. Sometimes, actors want their scenes to be cut, either from the script or from the edit. And they can have all sorts of reasons, from personal politics to second thoughts about stripping off. The recent Channel 4 docudrama Brian and Maggie, written by Sherwood's James Graham, saw Dame Harriet Walter deliver a nuanced, non-cartoonish portrayal of the, let's say, 'divisive' figure of Margaret Thatcher. The lady wasn't for turning. She was for being left on the cutting room floor, though. In depicting the unconventional bond between the Conservative prime minister and Labour MP turned TV journalist Brian Walden, whose infamous 1989 grilling of the PM would trigger her downfall, programme-makers put their personal politics aside. The Guardian's Lucy Mangan wrote that we are 'in a bad way when Thatcher begins to look like the way and the light'. For once, the Telegraph agreed: 'Channel 4 has made a sympathetic drama about Thatcher by mistake.' 'In the edit, we cut something because I thought it was a bit too kind,' Coogan told Emily Maitlis in the Radio Times. 'Of course I had huge antipathy towards Thatcher. I was very anti-Thatcher. I was worried about being too compassionate because at the end, she was definitely a victim of sexism.' At a press screening, Coogan clarified that the scene in question was the awkward post-interview drinks: 'It was a line where Brian said: 'She's worth 100 of them.' I thought it was too syrupy for him to say that after stabbing the knife in. Raising a glass to her was sufficient. Best to be more subtle.' Coogan has form for demanding tweaks to his TV biopics. In The Reckoning, the queasy 2023 factual drama about Jimmy Savile, he asked to change a necrophilia scene in a Leeds hospital morgue because he was 'uncomfortable' performing it. 'It was as disturbing as it looks,' said Coogan. 'A certain shot was planned that I didn't want to do. It was just a detail that I was uncomfortable with. I had a conversation with the director [Sandra Goldbacher] and we came to an agreement on the most appropriate way to depict it.' Whether it's down to professionalism, power dynamics or an ego-fuelled desire to maximise their screen time, actors asking for their own scenes to be cut is a rare occurrence on TV. The cases we know about, at least. With depressing predictability, instances often involve female actors fending off demands to bare all. Evangeline Lilly, who played Kate in Lost, admitted that she disliked most of the character's later storylines. She felt kick-ass Kate had been reduced to 'chasing men around the island' and felt 'cornered' into partially nude scenes during the third and fourth seasons. In the end, Lilly told execs she would no longer do nudity. Not one but four Euphoria actors – Sydney Sweeney, Chloe Cherry, Martha Kelly and Minka Kelly – asked controversy-baiting creator Sam Levinson to cut 'unnecessary' nude scenes from the script. Allison Williams was the only one of the four female leads in HBO's Girls who didn't appear naked, explaining that she 'didn't want my future children to see that'. Male actors tend to push back over sexually predatory plotlines, rather than flesh-flashing. Penn Badgley, star of Netflix potboiler You, was 'disgusted' after filming a sequence where the antihero Joe masturbates outside his lust object's apartment. Badgley said he didn't want to do the scene and has admitted that playing obsessive serial killer Joe takes a mental toll on him. Joseph Fiennes refused to film a scene in The Handmaid's Tale where villainous Commander Fred Waterford rapes his wife Serena (Yvonne Strahovski). 'As abhorrent and evil as Fred is, I have to defend parts of him because he's still human,' said Fiennes, who stood firm with 'long emails, defending and pushing'. He won the argument. The assault was never filmed. Actors also resist certain scenes for character consistency or fear of fan backlash. The breakout moment from Netflix's teen-goth phenomenon Wednesday was nearly very different. Moody Ms Addams' prom dance, which went viral on TikTok, was originally meant to escalate into a flash mob. Actor Jenna Ortega thought a stage musical-style number was jarring and demanded it was changed. 'Everyone was supposed to pick up on it and start dancing with her,' said Ortega. 'I vetoed it because why would Wednesday be OK with that? She'd knock someone out.' Ortega also expressed disappointment that the series put Wednesday in the centre of a love triangle with fellow Nevermore students, arguing it made 'no sense' for the character. In the American version of The Office, John Krasinski wouldn't allow Jim to cheat on wife Pam. The eighth season was supposed to see him kiss the new temp Cathy (Lindsey Broad) on a work trip. Krasinski believed this would alienate viewers, so declined to film it: 'That's the only time I remember putting my foot down. I remember saying, 'I'm not going to shoot it. If you push the audience too far and show Jim cheating, they'll never come back'.'' Similarly, Matt LeBlanc initially refused to do the Friends storyline where Joey dated Rachel. NBC showrunner Kevin S Bright said: 'Matt was very firmly against it, saying Joey would never steal his buddy Ross' girlfriend.' Bright admitted it 'took a lot of conversations' for LeBlanc to be persuaded. A Friends plot twist that didn't get past the cast was Rachel flat-sharing with Central Perk mainstay Gunther, who harboured a puppyish peroxide crush on her. A planned season six subplot had Jennifer Aniston's character moving out of Monica's apartment and shacking up with the lovestruck barista. Actor James Michael Tyler said: 'I remember seeing the first draft of the script and thinking, 'Oh man, they're never going to make this work.' It didn't read right, even to me. I looked over at Jen and she wasn't convinced either.' Producers soon realised it was a bad idea and spiked it. The Sopranos' Drea de Matteo, AKA mob moll Adriana, lobbied the show's producers to remove a scene before she got whacked in the woods. It was a scene in which she didn't even appear. 'In the script, Christopher went to Tony Soprano and told him I was an FBI rat,' recalls De Matteo. 'So when Tony calls me and says Silvio will pick me up, the audience know I'm driving towards my death. That bothered me. The walk to her death wasn't going to be suspenseful. It would make it kind of gratuitous. I fought for that phone call to be cut. A few other actors were onboard and helped argue my case. They took it out, thank God. They ended up using it as a flashback the following season.' More recently, the singer turned actor Alexandra Burke asked for a particularly distressing scene to be cut from the Paramount+ dystopian drama Curfew. Burke said the content was too dark: 'It was the most challenging role I've ever tackled but there were some things I didn't think I could do,' she admitted. 'I spoke to the producer and they agreed to take it out. I was like, 'Thank you, because I'm not sure I could act that. And you've already shot scenes with me, hun, so the contract's done!'' Finally, for a cuter variation on the theme, Nicola Coughlan's negotiations with Netflix and Shondaland included them producing a family-friendly edit of Bridgerton episodes – for the express purpose of showing her mother. Each instalment of the Regency romp, in which Coughlan plays Penelope Featherington, is supplied to her in an alternate cut with less sex and nudity. 'It's literally written into my contract,' says Coughlan. 'People think I'm joking but we grew up Irish Catholic. That's just not how we vibe.' You can take the girl out of Derry …
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Award-winning Dear England play to embark on 16-venue tour
Dear England, the award-winning play about Gareth Southgate's time as the England football manager, will embark on a nationwide tour across England later this year. Written by stage and screen writer James Graham, Dear England had a sell-out run at the National Theatre before it transferred to the West End in 2023, securing best new play at the Oliver Awards last year. It will now take to the road for a 16-venue tour, kicking off in Plymouth on September 15, with stops in major cities including Newcastle, Liverpool and Birmingham, until the tour comes to a close on March 14 2026. Playwright Graham told the PA news agency he had 'frequent sleepless nights' about whether a production about football would translate to stage, but feels it has connected with people as the story is 'so moving' and Southgate is 'such a compelling character'. He said: 'I didn't grow up in a world where theatre was in my life as a kid. Once I found it in school, I just couldn't believe the magic and the wonder of it. 'And so I've always gone through my career with that populist mindset, just going 'What will connect with people who are non-traditional theatre goers and traditional theatre goers at the same time?' 'And obviously doing a play about the national football team felt like it had the potential to reach theatre audiences and non-theatre audiences as well, just because of the subject matter. 'So that was in its DNA, but we didn't know if it was going to work.' He continued: 'Obviously I had frequent sleepless nights about whether or not putting football, putting penalties on stage was either going to be theatrical gold and real spectacle, or really cringe and really terrible. 'Thankfully, because I feel like the story is so moving, and Gareth Southgate is such a compelling character, that it seems to have really connected with people.' Graham, whose TV writing credits include Sherwood, Brexit: The Uncivil War and Channel 4's Brian and Maggie, is 'really delighted' it will tour across the country as he feels it is a 'national play'. He said: 'The England football team belongs to everybody nationwide, and to take it out the capital felt really, really important to me.' Graham said returning to Nottingham's Theatre Royal to stage his own play decades after he first started seeing shows there is 'great'. 'Everybody equally deserves access to culture and arts across the country and it is a bit lopsided. It just is at the moment', he added. 'And the cultural climate we're in at the moment, touring is very, very expensive. It's not always feasible. Production costs have gone really, really high. Moving things around have gone really high. 'So for the National Theatre to commit to taking a show which has over 18 actors in it, and as a big set and it's a big play, I feel like that… commitment to the National Theatre being truly national is the right decision. And I'm very grateful that they picked my play to do it.' Dear England will open at the Theatre Royal Plymouth and will then tour to Nottingham's Theatre Royal in September, before moving to The Marlowe in Canterbury and Sheffield Lyceum in October. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Olivier Awards (@olivierawards) Through November it will be at the Leeds Grand Theatre, Theatre Royal Newcastle and Chichester Festival Theatre and in January 2026, the show will tour to Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, Milton Keynes Theatre, and the New Theatre Oxford. Across February it will travel to the Norwich Theatre Royal, New Victoria Theatre in Woking, The Alhambra Theatre in Bradford and the New Wimbledon Theatre in London, before finishing its run at the Liverpool Empire and Birmingham Hippodrome in March. Ahead of the tour, the play will return to the National Theatre from March to May, followed by a four-week run at the Lowry in Salford from May to June, with SAS Rogue Heroes star Gwilym Lee portraying Southgate. Dear England is a fictionalised account of the struggles and successes of England's football teams, based on extensive research and interviews. The play had its world premiere on June 20 2023 in the Olivier theatre, and following a sold-out run it transferred to the Prince Edward Theatre in London's West End. It received nine Olivier Award nominations last year and won best new play and best actor in a supporting role for Will Close for his turn as Harry Kane. Last year it was announced the play would be adapted into a four-part BBC TV drama, with Joseph Fiennes reprising his starring role as Southgate. Southgate ended an eight-year stint as the national team boss in the wake of the Euro 2024 final defeat to Spain and the play has been updated to reflect his final chapter as England manager. Casting for the tour, which is a co-production between National Theatre Productions and JAS Theatricals, is still be announced.
