![]() ![]() The second Blackadder is defiantly sexy with his malice, his black leather and his snarl. Because the first Blackadder is repulsive to look at, repulsive even to imagine. When I saw the transformation from Atkinson’s Edmund to Elton’s, I realised how gifted he is. Ben Elton was brought in to turn Blackadder from a grotesque to a sophisticate, and it was all filmed indoors on wobbling sets and half of Flashheart’s moustache fell off. The first series was considered a failure. I want to be known for the work, not who I am or what I think.” “I don’t really want to be known as an individual. Atkinson likes playing grotesques: it speaks to something in him. “A fairly cold character,” he says, “funny in his outlook but” – and he pauses, and quietens his voice for the punchline – “not someone you’d really want to have lunch with.” He saw Edmund as a “braying twit”, which he is in series one, all rolling tongue and mad eyes. Maybe I’m saying that I need to be paid in order to perform.”Īfter Not the Nine O’Clock News came Blackadder, the BBC period sitcom that ran for four series throughout the ’80s. I’m not” – his eyes widen – “a performing flea. ![]() “I don’t perform in King’s Cross station. I perform on stage or in front of a camera.” I love the grandness of this statement: he has earned it. This makes him uncomfortable, because it is “expecting you to perform out of the performance, out of the context in which performance is expected. People sometimes ask him to perform when he meets them on the street. His body – his expression – can do almost anything. He’s a hard man to press because he seems so gentle pliant almost, but I suspect that is one of his gifts. He explains: “Even when I look at something like Man vs Bee, which I think is basically sound – I think it’s got some good moments – at the same time, in my sort of glass-half-empty approach, I look at it and I think, yeah but what about all those other moments that aren’t as funny? I’ve thought that about every Mr Bean and Johnny English movie that I’ve ever made.” But I’m happy when I look back on the work. “But at the same time, I tend not to be happy when I’m doing the work. “It did,” he says, “I’m frequently a very happy person I should say.” He coughs, as if to underline it. We’ll go from there.’ “Whereas now,” – and he speaks very seriously – “you say, ‘Should I play the pharmacist – at this point in my career?’” He giggles. “‘Do you want to play the pharmacist or the customer?’ ‘I don’t care, shall I play the pharmacist?’ ‘Yes, you play the customer. Whereas that abandon you feel when you’re young, when you really don’t care – you don’t care what part you play. “But when you’re 10 years older,” he goes on, “it all becomes far more serious and you’re far more worried about success or failure. It’s always more fun when you’re 19.” Everything is, I say. “It was just a hobby that turned into a job really,” he says. He understates the success: Atkinson understates everything off screen. “There’s some poor twat stuck behind that bit of cardboard there trying to get on while his life slips away while this Russell Harty clone down here tells his life story! It’s pathetic!” Then he takes off his coat, becomes Rowan Atkinson the interviewee, sits down with Parkinson and whispers his first answer. He stood up in costume and ranted as Parkinson introduced Rowan Atkinson. On his first appearance on the talk show Parkinson in 1981 he played his “ranting man” from Not the Nine O’Clock News from the studio audience. Then he and Curtis moved on to Not the Nine O’Clock News and he was famous at 24. Then he wrote letters to agents, and was taken on by Richard Armitage, who soothed his parents due to his resemblance to a bank manager, and who represented Atkinson until he died. They had such great success with one sketch show, they took it to Edinburgh. “He can’t.” He obviously likes Trevor: “I think he’s one of the more pleasant people I’ve played.” I ask him – of all the people you have played, who are you closest to? Walter Goodfellow, he says, the vicar in the 2005 black comedy Keeping Mum: a gentle, bookish introvert so fixated on writing the perfect sermon he doesn’t notice his wife is sleeping with Patrick Swayze. “‘Just leave the blooming bee alone,’ would be a sound piece of advice to convey to him but he doesn’t,” he says. Which means he gets obsessed with problems that actually there’s no need to get obsessed with.” I have developed an urge to save Trevor, and Atkinson explains why this is impossible, even undesirable. Trevor is, he says, “a very sweet and good-natured man has his obsessive side. I have the impression of a man who holds himself tightly under control. When he is relaxed, he will mug for the tape, though slightly. His speech is analytical, almost donnish occasionally he stammers. Atkinson speaks in long, careful sentences that strive for balance. ![]()
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