{"id":5375,"date":"2017-11-01T19:37:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T17:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/?p=5375"},"modified":"2019-07-27T19:41:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T17:41:41","slug":"eddie-izzard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/?p=5375","title":{"rendered":"Eddie Izzard"},"content":{"rendered":"

On<\/em><\/strong> Victoria<\/em><\/strong> &<\/em><\/strong> Abdul<\/em><\/strong> and<\/em><\/strong> Revamping<\/em><\/strong> His<\/em><\/strong> Acting<\/em><\/strong> Career<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After hearing about how our favourite English comedian, Eddie Izzard, might possibly be giving up on comedy to focus on becoming the first transgender MP, he\u2019s back with new surreal material, ramping up his acting career like never before. Izzard plays Bertie in his latest film, Victoria & Abdul. Check out our interview with the brilliant actor on the film, his career, and his political plans.<\/em><\/p>\n

Set the scene for Victoria & Abdul.<\/p>\n

This is the story of Queen Victoria<\/strong><\/p>\n

having a relationship, in the last years of her life, with an Indian gentleman called Abdul Karim. He was brought over for her golden jubilee. If anyone knows Britain, ings and queens have these jubilees where they say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019ve been around for a long time, let\u2019s spend more money on something.\u2019 So these guys are brought over. \u2018You\u2019re coming over. Give the Queen this.\u2019 He\u2019s told never to look at the Queen, and he does look at the Queen. The Queen is surrounded by yes men \u2013 \u2018anything you say my Queen, yes my Queen\u2019 \u2013 and they\u2019re flatterers, jockeying for position. Abdul is just very human to her. He looks at her and talks to her, and kisses her feet at one point. She goes, \u2018this is very interesting. I want him as a personal servant.\u2019 So this relationship develops.<\/p>\n

Did you know a lot about Bertie before taking the role?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think he\u2019s not that well known. They get him mixed up with Eddie VIII, who said, \u2018I\u2019m off with Wallis Simpson.\u2019 I know a lot about history, so I knew he was there, but I didn\u2019t know for quite how long, and I didn\u2019t know what he did. Bertie wanted Mum to stop living really. \u2018Give me a go on the throne. It\u2019s my turn.\u2019<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve already mentioned Bertie\u2019s weight. How key was the physicality to finding his character?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a very key thing. I put on 12 kilos to play him. I couldn\u2019t grow this two year beard \u2013 it\u2019s a massive beard that he had \u2013 so it had to be attached to my face. But there was also the way that I carried myself. When I was walking around, once I was Bertie, I moved totally as him, all the time. And there\u2019s the cane. I\u2019m very wary of props, but you can<\/p>\n

understand why people had canes. They\u2019re just intriguing. It seems like a commanding position. You can poke at things.<\/p>\n

Was working with Stephen a big draw on this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Stephen had said, \u2018Look, there\u2019s a film. Judi Dench is in it, I\u2019m directing it. Do you want to play a blade of grass?\u2019 I would have said \u2018yes.\u2019 The fact it was playing Judi\u2019s son \u2013 Judi Dench in a Stephen Frears film \u2013 it\u2019s just great. Also, there\u2019s the fact that Stephen came and saw my stand-up, which is surreal comedy, and still gave me the gig. I normally encourage people not to see the day job. It is a weird thing I\u2019m doing here. I\u2019m trying to hold back comedy while pulling up dramatic acting. They are cousins, but there\u2019s not a huge amount of crossover, so they\u2019re confusing I think.<\/p>\n

How did you return to acting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It took so long for comedy to come. I did sketch, then street, and then stand-up. When the stand-up was taking off, when I was just about 30, I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to put a pin in all of that, and I\u2019ll get a separate agent.\u2019 So I got a separate acting agent, Nicki van Gelder, and I said, \u2018I just want to do dramatic roles.\u2019 I started trying to bring that up to catch up with this, and hold that back. Which is a very odd thing to do. If you know careers, you don\u2019t do that. It\u2019s confused everyone since then. But it was pulling this rug out. So, the comedy is now in four languages, and I think I\u2019m doing pretty interesting stuff, and the drama\u2019s getting pretty interesting too.<\/p>\n

You did some stand-up in India recently. What was that like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was fantastic. 200 Million Indian citizens are speaking English, and those kids are doing stand-up in English and Hindu, with Hindu punch lines sometimes. It slips in and out, which is fantastic to watch. I went and saw an Indian<\/p>\n

stand-up club, and those guys are ready to rock and roll, they\u2019re ready to play the world. I just thought, with the history of India, I wanted to play there before the film came out. It was beautiful to get in there. When I was in Asia, to be honest, in a number of countries I was playing, a lot of expat audience was coming, and I just love playing to local citizens. In India, it was 95-98 per-cent Indian citizens<\/p>\n

coming. That was in Mumbai, Bangalore, and New Delhi. I was very happy.<\/p>\n

Do you adapt your material to local audiences?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. Dangerously, I don\u2019t do that. You would think that you should, but that\u2019s not the way I drive it. What I\u2019m trying to do is like this film. We don\u2019t say, \u2018From your perspective, it\u2019s more like this.\u2019 We say, \u2018Here\u2019s a story.\u2019 I open my<\/p>\n

stand-up by taking about human<\/p>\n

sacrifice, and saying, \u2018Why did<\/p>\n

someone say the weather is bad, the crops have failed, the gods obviously hate us, so we\u2019re going to have to kill Steve? Why kill Steve if the crops are bad?\u2019 Somebody said that, and they were saying it all around the world. So when I get to Stockholm, the kids go, \u2018Yeah that\u2019s crazy.\u2019 When I get to Moscow, they go, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s stupid.\u2019 Everyone gets it. So I try and do a show that will play all around the world, in 45 countries now, and four languages. Everyone digs it, because they\u2019re just open-minded.<\/p>\n

How have you been able to do stand-up in four languages?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s just hard work. People might say I have a facility for language, but I don\u2019t think I do. I think I just have a desire to learn languages. It\u2019s a positive thing for humanity. It\u2019s anti Brexit; it\u2019s anti Trump hate, anti all that negative stuff. I\u2019m saying, \u2018I\u2019m proud of my country, but I want to reach out to all the other countries. Can we learn from you? Can you learn from us? What have you got going? What have we got going? How can we all move forward?\u2019 We\u2019re all human beings, and I\u2019m not going to be prejudiced against anyone. I was born in Yemen. Arabic is the fifth one I\u2019m going to learn, and then Russian. I\u2019ve toured France to 5200 people, tout en Francais. And I\u2019m going to improvise my next show, to develop it, in Paris, in French. It\u2019s good that the moderates of the world really get motivated. I\u2019m a radical moderate; I do radical things with a moderate message. If the extremists of the world have got wind in their sales and it\u2019s taking us back to 1930s politics, us moderates have to get up there and get out there, and do things, invent things, come up with stuff, and show a positive face. Because otherwise we\u2019re just going to be dragged back down into this hatred place, and we\u2019ve done that, and we know it doesn\u2019t work, and it\u2019s not the way forwards.<\/p>\n

You said recently that you plan to stand for parliament in the UK. Are you still on track for your political career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I will try and stand to be a member of parliament in the first general election after 2020, because now the goalposts have been moved about when<\/p>\n

elections happen. But the first general election after 2020 \u2013 that\u2019s what I\u2019ll go for. So I\u2019ve got to write films, make films, do tours, learn languages, up to then.<\/p>\n

Is there a particular historic figure that you would like to play?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not historic, but I\u2019d like to play Richard III. I\u2019d like to do Shakespeare. I still haven\u2019t done Shakespeare. But no, there\u2019s no particular role that I look at and I<\/p>\n

hanker for, in case I couldn\u2019t get it. I do like playing driven people, and I\u2019m happy to play twisted bastards, because I think maybe we have all that potential inside all of us. Certain people inside countries give permission for people to behave badly, which happened to Germany in the \u201830s: \u2018If you want to behave badly, my name is Hitler,\u2019 he said. \u2018Hey, behave badly. Join our team.\u2019 So the potential is maybe in all humans, but I try and fight not to have it in my real life.<\/p>\n

Do you think you\u2019re fundamentally an optimistic person?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I just think if you\u2019re a transgender guy who\u2019s come out 32 years ago and running 80 marathons, you\u2019ve got to be fairly optimistic, otherwise you wouldn\u2019t be here, so yeah, I\u2019m definitely an optimist. I\u2019m a \u2018glass is two-thirds full\u2019 optimist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After hearing about how our favourite English comedian, Eddie Izzard, might possibly be giving up on comedy to focus on becoming the first transgender MP, he\u2019s back with new surreal material, ramping up his acting career like never before. Izzard plays Bertie in his latest film, Victoria & Abdul. Check out our interview with the brilliant actor on the film, his career, and his political plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":0,"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5377,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5375\/revisions\/5377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insight-egypt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}