STACK NZ Jun #74

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alter or modulate for the screen version of her performance? What she and I talked about was that she needed to exclude the audience from the conversation. Maggie is such a great, great stage actor -- she’s a great film actor as well -- but, as a stage actor, nobody is able to include the audience so deftly. And she was keen that the performance never felt that it was pushed too hard. So it was just that, really.

How did Alex Jennings come to your attention for the role of Alan Bennett? I first worked with Alex in 1985 and I’ve done many, many plays with him. And he played Alan Bennett in an autobiographical play in London that Alan wrote a few years ago called Untold Stories , which I’d done at the National

Theater. And Alex was so good as Alan in that show. He was better at playing Alan than Alan is at playing himself, which Alan has quite often [done] over the years. Alan is an extremely well loved and celebrated figure in the British performing arts, on television and on stage, but he’s gotten to the point where

he really doesn’t play himself well any more and Alex plays him much better.

On set, was Alan’s screenplay sacrosanct or did you allow your actors to improvise? With Alan’s scripts, I know exactly where you can’t deviate from them.

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