The The Alan Rickman Diaries : Lovely Interview With His Widow Rima Horton & Emma Thompson -

Now from roles in Die Hard and Harry Potter movies to Trin the Boars in Shakespeare plays, Alan Rickman won fans of all ages and genres before his death in 2016. Now, for more than 20 years, he also kept a diary, written by hand, packed with anecdotes and razor-sharp observations, as you'd expect, about the people in his life. Yes, I've been speaking to his wife Rima and his old friend and fellow actor, Dame Emma Thompson. The observations in his diaries are exquisite, as you might imagine. That dry wit is shining through. Why not first, though, a little reminder of Alan Rickman in the movies? There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. It's a very nice suit from Mr Takagi. It would be a shame to ruin it. This is my other slightly special personal one. Thank you. I really, truly, madly love you. I really, truly, madly, deeply love you. I really, truly, madly, deeply, passionately love you. I really, truly, madly, deeply, passionately, remarkably love you. Oh, it is well. I've got all my money back. Robbie Doodle's probably dead and I'm going to be king. Oh, as predicted. Rima, lovely to meet you. And you. Lovely to see you here on the occasion of your husband's amazing diaries. The first question I have to ask you is, did you know? Did you know they existed? Oh, yeah. And how much there was? Oh, yes. I remember he wrote them every night. I didn't read them because they were private. But, yes, I knew he wrote them. Sort of day by day, who you met, what you're up to. Were there bits of it that surprised you? I think what I was pleased about more than anything was his humour. Because he was very, very funny, Alan. And the humour's very much in the book. And it sounds just like him. Rima, I think reading between the lines, in a way, the reason he was able to do so much and be so good, I think a lot of people have said this, maybe Emma, you've said this too, is because of you. There was a constant thing which meant he could go out and help people, befriend people, do his thing. Is that something that you get? Well, he says quite a few times in the diary, something that I didn't know he'd written, and then Rima turns up and I calm down. So I think I did have that role in his life of keeping him, I suppose, stabilised. Because Alan was a classic Pisces, swimming in two directions at once. And so I think because I'm an Aquarian, there was quite a good balance to that. I've got a little excerpt here I'm seeing from 21st January 1994. Yeah. Leave a rude note for Emma. That's you, right? Yeah. Do you know? 1994. I think, was it in Los Angeles or something like that? It must have been in Los Angeles. It was. And Alan and I came back home on the plane. Yes, he'd mentioned that. That's right. Said how lovely it was to spend time with you on the plane. And we laughed and laughed and laughed. I remember him telling a story about being very close to a cat and someone who'd farted very loudly and it had parted the cat's hair. I just remember him telling that story in business class on British Airways. And us sort of doing that thing of going backwards and forwards. He was so funny, Alan, that's the thing. And you don't necessarily get that from all of his... His performances are so extraordinary. But when he's funny, oh, my God, is he hilarious. Can you explain the thing that for some people he felt maybe a little... I'm going to say this because I know it's not true, but a little unapproachable that he had that manner that made people a little bit uneasy around him. He was terrifying. He was terrifying. That's fine. Because he was such a... Such a kind of... He had such dignity, Alan, and enormous intelligence. And he was not a frivolous person in any way at all, was he? Well, he could be occasionally. Very occasionally, Rima, I'm sure. But, for instance, like New Year's Eve or when we'd had a few drinks, he could get quite giggly and silly. But generally speaking, he was a very deep thinker and he took the world very seriously and his role in it very profoundly seriously, which is why he was a great artist, actually. It would be wrong of me, on behalf of everyone watching this, to not ask about you, Alan Rickman, and love, actually. Mm-hm. I am so in the mood. Classic fool. Yes, we've also made a fool out of me. We've made the life I lead foolish, too. We were having a conversation before and everyone was going, -"That film!" How special was that time with him? We didn't have very long on it. The strange thing about this profession is, first of all, you end up learning about and meeting people you would otherwise not come into contact with and then you end up playing their wives or their divorced wives or their colleagues or their sisters or their lovers or their murderers. I mean, it's really a strange profession and Alan and I had energies that were almost entirely opposite. His was subterranean and mysterious and dark and mine was canine and above ground and ebullient. So it was like having Eeyore and Piglet on set, basically. And that's what it was like with love, actually. I'd be bouncing around doing Piglet and he would just about put up with my kind of small pinkness. There's a great quote I've got here from the 8th January, which I think, when he was not well, but it wasn't towards the end, and he said that doctors came round after dealing with catheters and drainage and then nervously got to the point, how did you do the fall at the end of Die Hard? They asked. You can imagine the scene, can't you? He's being administered to by the doctors and then boom. Did he always get those kind of questions? Yes, he did. That was quite a common one, the Die Hard drop, but the other ones were basically Harry Potter. It's fascinating hearing people reminiscing about him because all the diary entries are exquisite and his character really comes through because some of them are quite, I don't know what the word is, acerbic, about his colleagues, people he worked with, but they're all compelling and it's lovely hearing those stories. Really lovely. Good interview, that. Coming up to seven o'clock, we'll be back.