Music, Style & Culture

Q&A: Richard II

We attend a BAFTA talk with the talent behind the BBC's adaptation of Shakespeare's classic play.

A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to catch a preview of the BBC’s adaptation of Richard II at Bafta headquarters. Along with seeing the stunning film we were treated to highly informative Q&A featuring producer Pippa Harris, director Rupert Goold and actors Ben Whishaw (Richard II) and Rory Kinnear (Bolingbroke).

BBC Two will be celebrating Shakespeare throughout 2012 as part of the BBC’s contribution to the London 2012 Festival and the Cultural Olympiad. Richard II is the first film of the cycle known as the Henriad tetralogy and will be followed by Sir Richard Eyre’s Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Thea Sharrock’s Henry V.

Please note that there are spoilers contained within if you are unfamiliar with the play Richard II as well as a big spoiler for this film version which we will alert you to. Because we’re kind like that.

On the genesis of the project.
Pippa: Sam [Mendes] and I thought that the BBC might like to make an entire cannon of Shakespeare and we pitched that, which seemed to go down quite well until we pointed out that would be 37 films and they did the maths and worked out that wasn't going to happen. It would take up the entire drama budget for all their channels. So then we went back with a small modest proposal to do these 4 plays in this Olympic year which seemed particularly fitting.

On why they chose to make the Henriad tetralogy.
Pippa: They just seemed particularly fitting, there are so many themes in these 4 plays which seem fitting to be showcasing in this particular year, themes of monarchy, England, politics etc. We thought it was more interesting to be honest than maybe doing 4 tragedies or something that perhaps you would think would be a little more obvious.

On the temptation to make one of the better known plays, such as Hamlet, to bring in a large audience.
Pippa: I think we probably did at one point talk about possibly doing some of the tragedies to try and kick off what we hope will be a longer term project, but as I say because it was the Olympic year and it felt particularly fitting to do something that is about English British history and look at monarchy in the Diamond Jubilee year it seemed to make sense to do these 4.

On Rupert Goold's involvement.
Rupert: Oddly I had been thinking about doing Richard II on stage at the point that they rang me and [I was] slightly struggling to think about how to do it on stage and it really appealed to me. Arguably, for me anyway, theatre is fundamentally a medium about argument whereas film is a medium about character and it struck me that Richard II, behind all the pageantry was perhaps the most character driven of his plays. In many ways in terms of story not a huge amount happens in Richard II compared to say Henry V or Macbeth, but what is happening is the character evolution.

On keeping the plays in the original period.
Rupert: In the stage production I'd wanted to base it on Michael Jackson, the parallels between Michael Jackson and Richard were quite interesting. I mean the monkey [in the film] is a tribute [laughs]. There's so much in Richard II about Kingship and crowns and we wanted to do it in this period.

On turning a play from the 16th century into a film for the 21st century.
Rupert: I think that my experience from when I worked on Macbeth is what helped me. Part of what you're doing is trying to make a language that is clear and as available to a screen audience as possible which is you apply a little cutting and editing, but above all it's really about finding a performance style that can work on screen which is a very different kind of performance style that we have on stage. The thing that I would say is really exciting about doing Richard, doing it with this cast, doing it in this moment is that we've got in this country actors like David [Suchet], Patrick [Stewart] and Lindsey Duncan who have spent ages doing classical theatre on stage but also have a huge screen experience. And then we also have these young guys who have got the same and I think that's a really rare moment, that you can combine genuine verse technique but with a screen understanding.

On the difference in acting Shakespeare on screen than on stage.
Ben: I suppose there is [a difference]. What's interesting when you watch it is you realise there's a kind of subtext, that something isn't being said and I think that you can explore that in an interesting way on film. It's harder perhaps on stage to [show] what's underneath the words, that can be present more on film.

On Ben's particular Richard.
Rupert: There are lots of takes one can make about the character to do with his self-identity, sexuality, ego. What Ben was really generous about was saying that we would have lots of things to edit with. The thing that is extraordinary about Shakespeare is he celebrates contradiction in character. If you try and unify a character in Shakespeare you may have the weed of a part but you won't capture all the performance, Richard is so multi-faceted and so we had lots of different versions. What I think is really special about the project was there's not a single scene shot in a studio, it's all on location. And there's something about the late mediaeval cathedrals and the landscape. It's very difficult to find landscapes that can pass for the late 14th century, so we right in the corner of Wales but it gave it a kind of texture.

On the homoerotic undertones.
Ben: We talked about it but it's not really a play about a gay King, it's a part of it. It's more that he represents something different to Bolingbroke and the other guys, he sort of has other qualities, other characteristics. [He has] other ways of being in the world, an appreciation of other things like beauty and poetry and sensuality and God and spirituality and stuff like that. Whereas perhaps Bolingbroke is the voice of other attitudes.

On what Bolingbroke represents.
Rory: What I find interesting about the journey that Bolingbroke goes through and that Richard goes through is that if you meet Richard at this point in the play and Bolingbroke some way behind power wise, they sort of go through this arc whereby Richard seems almost released from the responsibilities of power at the end of the play. Whereas Bolingbroke has had them heaped upon his shoulders. And also I think that Richard has been King for a reasonable amount of time so that he's been able to be indulged in the way that King's are so that his own particular interests are indulged. I think Bolingbroke, were he to have had a surer footing at the beginning of the play might have ended up the same way himself.

On Bolingbroke being troubled about deposing the King.
Rory: He entirely buys into the divine right of Kings. He's always questioning whether or not it is the right thing for him to be King. He does seem to be somewhat press ganged into going for the crown whereas his own intention was just to regain his lands and title.

Rupert: It's was very hard not to think about Brown and Blair, you have a naturally charismatic, evangelical figure and a sort of different kind of energy in the other and arguably their power, I think what is very interesting in the piece is that [a] nemesis makes the individual stronger. So if you're Federer you need a Nadal and I think that is true of Bolingbroke and Richard in a way, they come to an understanding about the necessity they have for each other.

On Ben being a young Richard and if there are parallels with the younger generation of the current royal family.
Rupert: [to Ben] I think you're almost exactly the age he was when he was killed aren't you?

Ben: Yes he was in his early 30's.

Rory: As was Bolingbroke.

Rupert: I think it's because it's, dare I say it, sometimes a vanity role in the theatre and actors get to a point in their career where they've done Hamlet. I think we're incredibly lucky to have actors that have done stacks of classical work already and yet are young enough to play the roles.

On the tetralogy being called The Hollow Crown and the wider resonance it has:
Pippa: Rory grows up to be Jeremy Irons - Jeremy plays Henry IV in Henry IV parts 1 and 2. What you were just saying about the guilt he feels about Richard's death plays out across those two plays. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." He never really shakes off the fear that he's come by the crown through a slightly duplicitous route and that therefore he's there but for the grace of God, he's holding onto it but someone might at any point come and try and take it from him. So he's very aware his own son, Henry V, needs to guard very carefully what he does as a young man and grow into the role. So we all felt that the Hollow Crown summed up these issues of Kingship and the perils of monarchy as well as the kudos of monarchy. For Shakespeare scholars out there it is quite a famous series that John Barton did at the RSC so we were all a bit nervous. We went to John Barton and asked if we could use the title and he thought we were barmy to ask him and said of course we should use and it was a brilliant title.

On the arc of the rest of the tetralogy.
Pippa: [Henry IV in parts 1 & 2 with Jeremy Irons as Henry and then] Tom Hiddleston as Hal his son who then becomes Henry V in the fourth film in the tetralogy. Julie Walters as Mistress Quickly and Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff so as Rupert was saying it's again being less with having actors who can command the Shakespearean language effortlessly but who have a huge screen presence. One of the things for us was we wanted the language to be totally not an issue, we wanted people to just be able to follow it effortlessly and to do that you need people who can speak it effortlessly so that was a pre-requisite really behind all of the casting.

On directors Sir Richard Eyre [Henry IV parts 1 and 2] and Thea Sharrock [Henry V].
Pippa: We wanted each film to stand alone but also to work almost like a mini-series so that you could follow through and of course that meant not so much for Rupert because he gets to kick it off but for Thea and Richard they had to cross-cast so they had to decide together that Julie Walters was going to play Mistress Quickly and Tom Hiddleston would play Hal and Henry V. We also felt it was very important that each director had their own vision and their own team and their own choice of designer, DOP etc so that the films would feel distinctive.

On if there is a consistency of music and costume amongst the four films.
Pippa: As Rupert said they are all roughly mediaeval. I think people who like to look out for faults will pick out certain sleeves that are inaccurate and so on. The jist of it is the same across all of them, but each director chose a different composer, a different DOP and designer.

On what Shakespeare film inspired them.
Rupert: One of my favourites would be the Peter Brook King Lear with Paul Scofield and I don't want to tempt fate, but I love the Branagh Henry V, it made a big impact on me when I saw it as a teenager. I suppose we were trying to draw influences from non-Shakespeare films to try and make the film more cinematic. I was very influenced by The Thin Red Line, the Terrance Malick film which is ostensibly a war film but is in fact more of a philosophical enquiry and a mystic exploration. This is ostensibly a political thriller but it kind of has a poetic sensibility, that's why we've got lots of dreamy shots of nature.

On what was cut from the text.
Rupert: We cut a huge amount, I doubt there's much more than 30% of the play on screen. I wanted it to have cinematic pace. One of the great things about Shakespeare on stage is that people speak quicker than we normally think and in fact the whole pacing and energy of an evening of Shakespeare on stage comes from slightly faster than normal delivery. One of the things on screen that tends to work most luminously is seeing people think slower than we naturally do and speak and so that's a difficult contradiction in how to do the verse and how to edit it and how to have some sense of which scenes, like the political scenes between Rory and David Suchet in the woods which have more of a drive than say the beach scene which is more reflective. But we cut a lot, there's a lot of very heraldic, chivalric language particularly before the joust. I think he's a great screenwriter Shakespeare, he writes wonderful dialogue and what's really extraordinary about his language is actually that you can trim it internally loads.

Spoiler Warning!


Don't say we didn't warn you.


On why they killed Richard with a crossbow at the films climax.
Rupert: We looked at a huge batch of pictures of Saint Sebastian through that period and particularly in the late 14th century and Saint Sebastian becomes a sort of place where eroticism and mortality are explored in a new way for painters and that seemed an interesting figure for Richard to relate to and he is turned into his own icon at the end. It was difficult to do in terms of the post production and getting arrows to work and it's fantastic make up as well.

End of spoiler.

On whether it was fun to film.
Rory: It was wonderful going to Pembrokeshire which I'd never been to before, the coastline around there is particularly stunning and I think we got good weather around 50% of the time. I was furious to see that the day I walked out into the sea, into a boat had been cut as my feet just touched the water [laughs]. So the 75% hypothermia that I suffered was not entirely in a way [needed].

On if anyone had seen the Donmar production of Richard II starring Eddie Redmayne as Richard.
Rupert: We'd finished filming it before they'd started rehearsing. I was in the edit at the time and it was the last thing I wanted to go and see [laughs]. Although oddly we actually shared the same composer. I'm sure it was wonderful.

Ben: I saw it. I thought it was really good. It was very different. It was great. You can do it a thousand different ways.