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theartsdesk Q&A: actor Gemma WhelanSaturday, 11 April 2020
She's not quite a household name yet, but Leeds-born Gemma Whelan is heading speedily in that direction. Having started out as a standup comedian, winning the Funny Women Variety Award in 2010, Whelan began notching up film and TV roles, en route to making a significant breakthrough by being cast as Yara Greyjoy in HBO's Game of Thrones. Read more... |
Screenwriter Adam Price on 'Ride Upon the Storm' - 'If we discuss faith, we will possibly not kill each other'Saturday, 26 January 2019
Apparently in Denmark they pronounce screenwriter Adam Price’s surname as “Preece”, but its English-looking spelling stems from the fact that his ancestors moved from London to Denmark in the 18th century. Read more... |
John Mahoney: 'I wanted to be like everybody else'Tuesday, 06 February 2018
In 11 seasons of Frasier, John Mahoney played Marty Crane, a cussed blue-collar ex-cop who couldn’t quite understand how his loins came to produce two prissily cultured psychiatrists. His ally in straight-talking was his physiotherapist Daphne, whose fish-out-of-water flat-cap vowels were apparently the result of a gap in the scriptwriters’ field of knowledge. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Steven Knight and Cillian Murphy of Peaky BlindersSaturday, 11 November 2017
Like a lot of people, I came late to Peaky Blinders, bingeing on the first two brutal, but undeniably brilliant, series like the proverbial box-set sensation it quickly became. Read more... |
Douglas Henshall: 'You can get stuck when you’ve been in the business for 30 years' - interviewMonday, 06 November 2017
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” In 1976 American anger about the state of the nation was channelled into Network, in which cinema satirised its kid sibling television as vapid and opportunistic. Paddy Chayefsky’s script, directed by Sidney Lumet, starred Peter Finch as Howard Beale, a news anchor who has a nervous breakdown on screen in which he starts preaching and becomes the news. Read more... |
David Oakes: 'I haven’t done anything as bad as my characters'Monday, 16 October 2017
“He has something of Dillane about him.” Thus Patrick Marber on David Oakes. “I rate him very highly indeed. One of the very best of his generation.” Audiences at the Theatre Royal Haymarket will be able to judge for themselves this autumn. Oakes, 34, stars opposite Natalie Dormer in Marber’s production of Venus in Fur, a sizzling two-hander by David Ives. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Peter Kosminsky, Part 2Friday, 18 August 2017
It was only at the dawn of the Blair age that Peter Kosminsky truly emerged as a basilisk-eyed observer of the nation’s moral health. By the time New Labour came to power in 1997, Kosminsky had been working for several years on a film which was eventually broadcast in 1999. Warriors, an award-winning account of the traumatic fallout of peacekeeping in Bosnia, served as a prequel to a trilogy of films in which he tracked the ethical degradation of the Blair decade. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Peter Kosminsky, Part 1Wednesday, 16 August 2017
The name will never trip off the public tongue. Millions watch his work - most recently his superb realisation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. But there is no hall of fame for television directors. It’s only on the big screen that they get to be big shots. The difference with Peter Kosminsky (b 1956) is, although it’s the title he takes in the credits, he's not really just a director. Read more... |
Olivia Williams interview: 'Are you on drugs?' 'No I've just spent the day acting'Monday, 24 July 2017
Olivia Williams’s first film was, (in)famously, seen by almost no one. The Postman, Kevin Costner’s expensive futuristic misfire, may have summoned her from the depths of chronic unemployment, but the first time anyone actually clapped eyes on her was in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, in which Bill Murray most understandably falls in love with her peachy reserved English rose. Then came The Sixth Sense, in which with great subtlety she in effect gave two performances as... Read more... |
Anna Maxwell Martin: 'I like playing baddies' - interviewTuesday, 28 March 2017
She was Lyra in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at the National, she has shared the stage with Eileen Atkins (in Honour and The Female of the Species), played Isabella in Measure for Measure, Regan in King Lear and Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
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