‘The joy came oozing out of him’ Golda Rosheuvel We somehow hit a great chemistry – the chemistry of two people who want to play together and the pleasure of working through that language and having that banter and the extremes of emotion that you trigger in one another, and night after night doing it differently. That’s quite a message to someone on stage – that what you’re doing is something a lot of people are aching to do, rather than just looking towards film stardom. He wanted desperately to get back to Shakespeare and the stage, having been a mega film star. Years later, we did Antony and Cleopatra together. I thought, oh, gosh, grand actors can be a lark too.Ĭhemistry … Harriet Walter and Stewart in Antony and Cleopatra in 2006. He said under his breath: “Hi, I’m Jane Nightwork!” He was embodying this old tart who is referred to in an earlier speech. I was milling about and ran into Patrick, who was dressed as a woman, which he had just done as a lark. There was a big scene at the end, a parade in the streets, with the whole cast on stage in medieval rags. Instead of clinging on to the way you do it each night, you can throw it up in the air and risk it not working. I didn’t realise that you could play with Shakespeare to that extent. I listened every night to him doing “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”. We were in Henry IV parts 1 and 2 together. I joined the RSC in 1981 and was playing fairly small roles. ‘I ran into him dressed as a woman’ Harriet Walter “No, no, Patrick, underneath your costume!” We laughed, as we ordinarily did. When he came out of his dressing room, he was wearing the lace stockings outside of his costume. We had a long horse scene to do together once, and I recommended him wearing women’s silk stockings to avoid chafing and he nodded his head as a thank you. He’s a love and he is an intellectual in an athlete’s body. Photograph: Snap/REX/Shutterstock ‘I said: “Wear silk stockings to avoid chafing”’ William Shatner William Shatner and Stewart in Star Trek. He read Questions from a Worker Who Reads one day, and while sitting at someone’s knee listening to poetry seems to be something of another age, it simply feels right when the knee at which you sit is Patrick Stewart’s. Not only is he kind and funny, but he read a Brecht poem without a whiff of pomposity. Working with Patrick is one of the great joys in life. ‘He read Brecht without pomposity’ Alison Pill Not just the glamour and the hard work but his politics and his open-hearted commitment to his charity work.Įighty is, of course, a milestone but he has had so many remarkable achievements in his careering journey from Huddersfield, to Stratford, the West End, Hollywood, to Broadway and beyond, I’m sure there will be no silly talk about retirement. How he got that job is a prime example of how luck can be a lady and it will be a riveting chapter in the memoir he must write. He’s long forgiven me my advice not to risk a solid career on the British stage by falling for an uncertain future in Star Trek.
Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardianįar, too, from his earlier success as a classical actor with the Royal Shakespeare and National Theatre companies. Ian McKellen with Stewart in Waiting for Godot. They are wonderful but the writing here, in my opinion, is anything but.Warned him off Star Trek. 4/10 and only out of respect for the 90's actors. What's left is weak, condescending and uninspiring. As to the story itself, frankly I for one find it antithetical to the concept the Star Trek universe is based upon with Picard turning against the Federation. Thus far its the tired old stick of diversity, pseudo feminism and multi-cultural-ism being waved about. Patrick Stewart is a fine actor but what I personally view as questionable scripting is, in my opinion, sending this series down a similar path to Discovery. So what to make of the new series? Having watched two episodes, I'm done. A failure I believe because it embraces a warlike capitalist ethos, poorly concealed beneath a reedy, lecturing, politically correct hypocrisy, that is at odds with the Trek universes philosophy, of cooperation and sharing.
Small wonder utilising the actors from this series, such as Patrick Stewart, is a smart or perhaps desperate move in itself? That said, it shows up what an abject failure the new series, Discovery, has been to date. A future ruled by reason, kindness, inclusiveness and learning, to progress humanity, in spite of many challenges. They inspired hope, using the possibilities presented in a science based future that "might be". Star Trek: Next Generation like most of the spin off's that followed, in that period, were pure gold. There's a certain irony, not to mention circularity, when the only way to "hopefully" produce a decent Star Trek series, is by revisiting actors from an older, successful series, from the 1990's.
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