May 2002

Thanks to Sunny

[thanks Mary A.]

Colin: Thank you.

E: Because I think you bring such a wonderful tender forgiving character to Algie’s kind of crazy mischievous character. I’m guessing you were familiar with the play, with the story.

C: Yes.

E: And what were your first impressions when you read the character of Jack Worthing?

C: Well, uh, my first impressions of Jack Worthing date back to when I was a child, really, and um, I always thought he was an insufferable bore.

E: Really.

C: Yes, I mean I thought I saw it in a regional theater before I’d read it and I thought Algie was hilarious and found him buzzy and in fact was played by a man who couldn’t do it (?)

E: sort of a robot?

C: Incredibly sort of wooden. I mean just frothed and huffed and puffed indignantly at everything, and uh, I can see that that is really in some ways what’s required. There’s something odd about Jack, but in the first few minutes when you meet him you get something of his Earnest persona.

E: You do, yeah.

C: He talks about pleasure, uh pleasure, dear boy, and you can see him as a party animal, then by the end of the first act, he’s become frightfully earnest, and he seems to have a massive sense of humor failure.So you’ve got these two sides, but I think this time what I found fun about it is he’s not just a person who froths at the mouth, he’s a person who, um, actually has…it’s all dependent on the rapport he has with Algie and I think that’s the heart of it, and I’ve never felt less like playing a solo character. It barely existed really without Algie as the counterpart.

E: What was your favorite scene to film? I loved it when you and Rupert were wooing the ladies.

C: The serenade?

E: The serenade. Was that fun for you?

C: Surprisingly, it was. Yes. I thought it was going to be horrible and certainly horrible for everybody else.

E: Why?

C: Well, because I sing like a cat.

E: No!

C: And, uh, we just…for one thing when I read the script, I…there was no tune yet. I didn’t know what it was going to be, so, I just imagined something hideous, um, you know um, aria or something that you know, you hear on these switched on classics you know, or some sort of Irish tenor, and instead it had such a kind of lack of seriousness to it.

E: It was great. It really translated and it was so much fun. Your fiance’s mother Judi Dench has a great dislike for you because of your questionable past. Has that ever happened to you in real life, where the mother goes hmmm and sits you down for a q and a about who you are?

C: My mother-in-law certainly had a lot of doubts when she found out that her daughter was marrying a man who was ten years older, an actor, English (she’s Italian) and all those things counted very very heavily against me. So you know, I was basically you know, I had a lot to prove.

E: I love when Judi Dench says, she has a great line advising couples against a long engagement because you might find out too much about each other’s character before marriage. What do you think about that?

C: She’s absolutely right. One of Oscar Wilde’s pleasing paradoxes, but I think it’s very very good advice to the young.

(Clip of TIOBE)

End of interview.
 

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.