Интервью с Джуди Дэнч

Judi Dench plays the Duchess of York



How did you get involved in The Hollow Crown?
The Hollow Crown scripts were sent to me while I was busy with Esio Trot. I thought it was interesting but I put it to one side because I was busy. Then I went to Hay-on-Wye to do an interview with Richard Eyre and he asked me if I remembered any lines from the Shakespeare plays I’ve done. He wanted me to perform some scenes but I told him that there are a couple of moments when I need a line feeding first. During rehearsals Benedict Cumberbatch walked into the room and said he would do them. So, at the event, Richard surprised the audience and introduced him on stage with me to tumultuous applause.

During the Q&A afterwards, Benedict Cumberbatch suddenly asked if I would be in the production of Richard III that he was going to do. I was completely floored. I thought about it and said yes and that was it. It’s all thanks to Benedict.

It’s thrilling and lovely to play the Duchess of York, since York is where I come from. I remembered seeing the plays at Stratford with Peggy Ashcroft, Brewster Mason and Donald Sinden. I remembered the Henry VI plays terribly well but I’ve never done this one before.

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Tell us about the character you play in The Hollow Crown?
I play this old bag, Cecily, Duchess of York. Everybody she loves has been killed; her husband, her children. She knows who’s done it and is a kind of Miss Marple! (She knows who’s doing it and she lets him have it). If anyone says, “I’m in a terribly bad way,” she says, “You may be in a bad way, just wait until you hear what’s happened to me!” That’s the Duchess of York in Richard III.

I was passionately hoping that Richard III’s body would be buried in York Minster, but we’ve lost him to Leicester.

What do you think Shakespeare offers in terms of female parts?
He writes some wonderful female parts in Richard III. There’s Mad Margaret, Elizabeth Woodville, Cecily and Lady Anne. Richard not only kills Lady Anne’s husband but he also gets her to marry him. There are wonderful parts for women in it and they are very much a comment on the play.

Why do you think the BBC has chosen now to make this production?
There’s no doubt that a bad production of Shakespeare puts schoolchildren off forever. But if you do a really good production of Shakespeare - imaginative, lively and enthusiastic - you take it out of the theatre and put it in its own surroundings. It can be very exciting and it can fire somebody’s imagination. If a child watches that, and perhaps sees somebody they recognise from something else, they can suddenly get energised by a good production. That’s good and it can bring them back to the theatre.

Often Shakespeare’s taught in a turgid kind of way but there are great and exciting things to discover in it. I’ve seen a lot of quite young children being excited by Shakespeare. We did The Comedy Of Errors at Stratford and at the end we used to invite people to come up and dance onstage. Sometimes we had to ask them to go away! It’s wonderful to engage the imagination. If something is well presented, and exciting, they’ll want to go and see another version of it in the theatre.

Why do you think Benedict’s right for the part?
He’s a terrific actor and he did the most spectacular reading of it. He’d just come back from the Toronto Film Festival the night before, after doing all those crazy junket interviews, walked in and then read the whole of the Henry VI plays followed by Richard III, He was wonderful. He has that ability not to take himself too seriously, as well as being a terrific actor.

I was at Central and his mother was the year ahead of me. I think I met him when he was a little boy because I opened a theatre at Brambletye School, where he was before he went to Harrow.

This is Dominic Cooke’s first television production and it’s interesting that he’s doing all three films. Are you looking forward to working with him?
It’s going to be very challenging for him to accomplish. Maybe he was asked by Benedict in a Q&A session! It’s a huge amount for him to do and he hasn’t directed television before. I’ve never worked with him before, but the rehearsal so far and the way he works has been very stimulating indeed. He has a wonderful understanding of the great sweep of it all.

How does he work with the text?
Everybody does it in a different way. I would be upset if not enough attention was being paid to the text. That’s because I come from the school of Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn and John Barton, where the text was of paramount importance. But Dominic is like that too. He pays incredible attention to the metre and the verse.


How did you get involved in The Hollow Crown?
The Hollow Crown scripts were sent to me while I was busy with Esio Trot. I thought it was interesting but I put it to one side because I was busy. Then I went to Hay-on-Wye to do an interview with Richard Eyre and he asked me if I remembered any lines from the Shakespeare plays I’ve done. He wanted me to perform some scenes but I told him that there are a couple of moments when I need a line feeding first. During rehearsals Benedict Cumberbatch walked into the room and said he would do them. So, at the event, Richard surprised the audience and introduced him on stage with me to tumultuous applause.

During the Q&A afterwards, Benedict Cumberbatch suddenly asked if I would be in the production of Richard III that he was going to do. I was completely floored. I thought about it and said yes and that was it. It’s all thanks to Benedict.

It’s thrilling and lovely to play the Duchess of York, since York is where I come from. I remembered seeing the plays at Stratford with Peggy Ashcroft, Brewster Mason and Donald Sinden. I remembered the Henry VI plays terribly well but I’ve never done this one before.


Как вы попали в "Пустую корону"?

Сценарий "Пустой короны" мне прислали, когда я была занята на съёмках Esio Trot (фильм с Джуди Дэнс и Дастином Хоффманом (х), (х)). Я подумала, что это было бы интересно, но я отложила его в одну сторону, потому что я была занята. Когда я была в Хей-он-Вей и готовилась к интервью с Ричардом Айра, и он спросил меня, помню ли я какие-либо строки из Шекспира, которого играла. Он хотел сделать несколько сцен, но я сказала ему, что есть несколько моментов, когда мне нужна подача первой строчки. Во время репетиций Бенедикт Камбербэтч вошел в комнату и сказал, что он сделает это. Таким образом, на мероприятии, Ричард удивил публику и представил его на сцене со мной под бурные аплодисменты.

Во время Q & A, Бенедикт Камбербэтч вдруг спросил, буду ли я в сниматься в Ричарде III, которого он собирается играть. Я была полностью сражена. Я подумала об этом и сказала, что да. И это всё благодаря Бенедикту




Why do you think Benedict’s right for the part?
He’s a terrific actor and he did the most spectacular reading of it. He’d just come back from the Toronto Film Festival the night before, after doing all those crazy junket interviews, walked in and then read the whole of the Henry VI plays followed by Richard III, He was wonderful. He has that ability not to take himself too seriously, as well as being a terrific actor.

I was at Central and his mother was the year ahead of me. I think I met him when he was a little boy because I opened a theatre at Brambletye School, where he was before he went to Harrow.

This is Dominic Cooke’s first television production and it’s interesting that he’s doing all three films. Are you looking forward to working with him?
It’s going to be very challenging for him to accomplish. Maybe he was asked by Benedict in a Q&A session! It’s a huge amount for him to do and he hasn’t directed television before. I’ve never worked with him before, but the rehearsal so far and the way he works has been very stimulating indeed. He has a wonderful understanding of the great sweep of it all.



Почему, как вы думаете, Бенедикт правильный выбор (для Ричарда III)?
Он потрясающий актер, и он сделал самое эффеектное понимание этого. Он только что вернулся из кинофестиваля в Торонто накануне, после того, после всех этих сумасшедших интервью, вошел и прочитал всего "Генриха VI" и последующего за ним "Ричард III", он был замечателен. Он обладает такой способностью не принимать себя слишком серьезно, и также является потрясающим актером.

Я была в Central (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), где была и его мать за год до меня. Я думаю, что я познакомилась с ним, когда он был маленьким мальчиком, потому что я открывала театр в школе Brambletye, где он был, прежде чем он отправился в Хэрроу.