麻豆约拍

"The script does all the heavy lifting. Richard tells the audience about how wrong he feels in his body, about being dejected and overlooked, and about being unable to be part of a royal courtly life with the Plantagenets.

In medieval England if you were not born perfect you were often drowned at birth. In Shakespeare’s story, Richard is fostered at a distance from the Kennedy-like family of perfect specimens. There’s very little care for him. His deep-seated anger and hurt leads to his ambition and everything we know of him."

"In Richard III he gives a speech about how he’s going to go and kill the king, Henry, and how this ties into his feelings about himself as a disabled man. I think that humanises him.

There’s such humour in other moments where Richard relishes his plans. He’s an antihero because he lures us in. Audiences don't necessarily side with him but they revel in his villainy! I also don’t want to say, ‘Oh, he’s just a victim of this cruel world. Oh, what other choice did he have?’ Of course he had choices. He very clearly makes the wrong ones and suffers the ultimate downfall for that."

"I’ve never worked with her before and it was amazing that she got to play my mum. She’s very close in age and in friendship to my mum. They've known each other for a long time, since drama school. I rather embarrassingly publicly asked Judi to give us the nod at the Hay Festival last year and she was very game and agreed, which bagged us a Dame!

She is just an absolute delight. You've heard it all before, but she’s funny as hell, just an utter inspiration to be around. I crave the days when she’s on the call sheet and wish there were more. To watch her work is privilege enough, but to work with her in scenes is heavenly."

"There’s an immediacy and an availability to having Shakespeare on television. It’s in your living room, rather than having to make a journey to the town centre to see it. Hopefully seeing recognisable faces will draw in a new audience.

These films are so vital and current. They are about everything we’re facing, all the debates about immigration, about who we ally ourselves with, whether we should be part of Europe, about how deep the divides go within a society.

To marry the talent in other areas such as film with the bedrock of all drama in this country, and dare I say it, a lot of the world, in the shape of Shakespeare will bring a lot of new eyes to this material."

"I was literally dressed as Shakespeare’s version of Richard III when I received the email from Leicester University saying that I was a not-altogether-ridiculously-distant descendent of Richard III. I’m a third cousin, 16 times removed, which is still distant but puts me ahead of an awful lot of other people.

I took this part as Richard III because it has some of the most extraordinary, visceral, gut-punching language and action that you get in any of Shakespeare’s dramas. Richard III is a tragedy but you only really appreciate that tragedy if you have seen Richard through all the plays and have met the adolescent who becomes the despot who becomes the regretful, nightmare-haunted wreck before he dies in battle."