level 15

"The script does all the heavy lifting. Richard tells the audience about how wrong he feels in his body, about being dejected and overlooked, and about being unable to be part of a royal courtly life with the Plantagenets.
"In Richard III he gives a speech about how he’s going to go and kill the king, Henry, and how this ties into his feelings about himself as a disabled man. I think that humanises him.
"I’ve never worked with her before and it was amazing that she got to play my mum. She’s very close in age and in friendship to my mum. They've known each other for a long time, since drama school. I rather embarrassingly publicly asked Judi to give us the nod at the Hay Festival last year and she was very game and agreed, which bagged us a Dame!
"There’s an immediacy and an availability to having Shakespeare on television. It’s in your living room, rather than having to make a journey to the town centre to see it. Hopefully seeing recognisable faces will draw in a new audience.
"I was literally dressed as Shakespeare’s version of Richard III when I received the email from Leicester University saying that I was a not-altogether-ridiculously-distant descendent of Richard III. I’m a third cousin, 16 times removed, which is still distant but puts me ahead of an awful lot of other people.