Kenneth Branagh 1993: Directing His Wife, Emma Thompson | Dini Petty

I had the great pleasure of interviewing one of my favorite actors, Mr. Kenneth Branagh. He was in town to promote his wonderful new movie, Much Ado About Nothing. It opened in theaters across Canada last Friday. I should tell you just a little story. You could have never gotten me to go to a Shakespearean play. I would never have gone in my life. I went to see Henry V reluctantly. I was absolutely mesmerized. You opened a whole new door for me into a world that I have never been to. You've done the same with Much Ado About Nothing. I'm not sure if part of your reason for doing this was to take a portion of the world who has never been exposed to this and say, Look, here is this great literature. If it was, congratulations, because that's what you've done. Well, thank you. Certainly, I come from a background that is not versed in Shakespeare. I didn't grow up watching it. When I was first exposed to it, it was in school, and I was intimidated by it. I was forced to read it aloud, and it made no sense to me. I saw around me, I can remember very vividly, the pained expressions of kids for whom this was torture, not just sort of boring, but actually just sort of made them feel stupid. It really stuck with me then. I've also, as I've worked as an actor, resisted when actors or directors or whatever are elitist about it or think they know best or they perform it in a way that somehow implies with a strange voice or this or that. There's a sort of way of doing it that only a few people understand. When my response to the material is that, for instance, a piece like Much Ado About Nothing is understandable by anyone who's ever been in love. These situations, these characters are so recognizable, and because they're written by a really fine writer, I think that they are funny, and they're touching, and they get the little hairs on the back of your neck going because he's got the soul of a poet. And so, yes, for the hundreds of kids and teachers who wrote to me after Henry V saying, thank God, oh, that made that English class so much easier, or you made me shut those kids up for two hours or whatever. It isn't me, it isn't us, but it's William Shakespeare with us, as it were, trying to unclutter him, trying to take away the stuff that we bring to it that makes us think, oh, God, Shakespeare. One of my thoughts since seeing both of them is this is how they should teach Shakespeare. If they taught me this, if in school I'd seen the film, I would have, oh. I mean, it isn't this hideous, horrible stuff that I can't understand. Because I don't, I haven't read Shakespeare, I'm not an expert. Is what I see in the film, is Much Ado About Nothing, is it abridged? Is it exactly the same? This Much Ado About Nothing is a trimmed version of the play, but it's not massively trimmed. Nothing is changed. I mean, no words are changed. The language is absolutely as Shakespeare wrote it, but some of it is cut. I mean, the play runs in the theatre for about two and a half hours, and this is about one hour, 50 minutes, and also in the theatre it spreads a bit, and on film you can tighten everything up. So a bit has been cut. Some scenes have been changed around a little, and that's because certain conventions that we use in the theatre don't really work on screen, and you take a view that you should change them. You take a little bit of license, so that there's a little more logic, movie logic. I mean, because it's a very slender plot, Much Ado About Nothing, and, you know, for instance, we have this romantic couple who fall in love instantly, passionately devoted to each other, they're going to get married, and suddenly he thinks that she's deceived him, and publicly, in front of the entire congregation, he shames her, he throws her down, it's a very ugly, violent scene, the whole thing changes. And often in the theatre, you watch that scene and you think, why doesn't somebody stand up and say, hey, stop, this is rubbish, this is rubbish, why is anyone believing this? But on film, actually, we cut and trimmed it a little to keep it so fast-moving that people actually are there and shocked and so caught up in it that they suspend judgment in just the way the characters do, and you find yourself swept into it. Those are the tiny adjustments that are made, but I would absolutely say, for me, it's in the spirit of Shakespeare, and as it were, nothing's been changed to simplify things, but we have changed a few things around to clarify things. You didn't also, and you mentioned this earlier, often I always thought that Shakespearean accents, you always had to do this ponderous thing, but they don't. I mean, you have English accents, you have American actors who just use their own voice and their own accent, and I find it, for me, makes it more real, but why did you decide to just allow it to be that way? Well, for that very reason, for it to be more real, for it not to be, not to feel as though there was a secret sound, a Shakespeare sound that people should know about. Academic experts say that the Elizabethans, when originally performing these plays, their accent would have sounded much closer to a modern American accent or to a Northern Irish accent, in fact, Northern Ireland, where I come from. And when you do hear his words in that way, when you hear a lot of wonderful accents up at Stratford, Ontario, where you hear an edge, that hard R just gives a kind of edge, a muscularity to the language, instead of a sort of dangerously mellifluous smoothing thing that makes everything sort of cream out and be lovely, which is good for some things. It's just that it can be many things, and a play like this, I think, responds well to a different sound. But so that for an audience it looks and feels as though it's real, it's about people and not about, you know, museum exhibits. Most of the interviews that I've seen with the wonderful actors the cast is in, it seems to me that for many actors, that Shakespeare is such a wonderful thing for them to do, I suppose because they're such great stories and because the... I suppose just because he's such a great writer, but they all seem to say the same thing, what a great opportunity to do great work. Yes, well, very vivid characterisations, a lot of wonderful lines, a lot of wonderful lines that people would wish to say, a lot of simple scenes. A favourite scene of mine in the film is where Don Pedro, Denzel Washington's character, this rather melancholic, very gentle and genial, effortlessly authoritative prince, who is the head of this bunch of soldiers, in a sort of little aside scene says to Beatrice almost casually when she says, oh, I'll never get a husband, and he says, well, perhaps you'd like to have me? And suddenly he kind of turns on a sixpence and suddenly there's this little intimate scene where he's rather vulnerable and she says, oh, are you sort of serious? And she says no and he's a little shy and then she kind of lets him off the hook. And that kind of thing, it's a very simple scene and rather, it just feels very recognisable. A very sensitive scene. Very sensitive. She doesn't want to hurt him. Exactly, and it feels very human and those are little scenes that are beautifully done. They're very economically written. Not many words, actually, but the situation is beautifully judged and for the actors, it's a lovely thing to play and it's not really a scene you find in lots of kind of modern films. Is it difficult to work with your wife? Is it difficult because you're so close? I mean, I'm trying to put myself in that situation where I know... Is it hard sometimes? It hasn't been so far. She's a great actress and she's someone who leads the company, takes a lot of weight off my shoulders in terms of setting the atmosphere. She's always on time, always knows her lines. You talk if she was late, though, and you'd have to, you know? Yeah, well... Excuse me, miss. Well, she just... She wouldn't happen, you know? I mean, I'm a stickler for all of that so I let everybody know up front what would happen in that case. But, no, she's very... She just takes the sort of leading by example very seriously. As a director, you have so many other things to think about that you actually spend less time with your actors, including, in this case, my wife, than you might think. And so we're not really in each other's hair, you know, as much as people might think. So in the evening when we do get home is really the first chance we have had to see each other properly. Because even between takes when we're doing a scene together, I'm usually talking to somebody else and then I'll come and say a few things to her about the scene. But if she's in it, it'll be a collaborative thing. I don't, say, suddenly dictate to her. It's a joint effort. But so far it's been very pleasant. It's interesting. I mean, I would say to people, if you've always hated Shakespeare and never thought you'd like it, you have to go see this film. I mean, that would be a wonderful premise, having had my own experience. And after we've had this discussion about you realise what it's done to people like me to introduce us to this, will you be doing more? I very much hope so, and I'll be interested to see what the reaction is and, you know, who tends to go and see it. I would love kids to go and see it. I would love them to see it now rather than kind of necessarily wait until they get it in their classroom. But I would absolutely agree with you. I would say, if you've never seen a Shakespeare play, I promise you, you can go and see this and you'll be seeing a movie. You'll be seeing a movie. You don't have to think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I mean, you can have any reaction you want. But you don't have to go and take a university degree. You don't have to have an intelligence test before you go. Just go, see it, and see what you think. It's a wonderful story, and congratulations again. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay.