Patrick Stewart & Henry Cavill - Actors on Actors - Full Conversation

so patrick how are you i'm uh i'm okay i've i did a 90-minute fresh air interview yesterday and i talked too much so that's why i'm talking like this now because my voice got very tired so i thought you were just doing an impression of my character from the witcher it was that as well yes you can hear you know the the kind of modest respect in my voice now i i thought it was more effective than me yelling at you like i did a couple of days that's that's exactly what i did with the character you're exactly right here so patrick we met many many years ago i believe it was in 2003 uh you were casting for the line in winter and i had been acting for three years at that stage i had my first job which was the count of body christo and i was 17 years old i was i left school one year early and i was incredibly nervous to audition in front of an actor of your caliber and i went into the audition i i had spent weeks learning my lines and by the time i got in there i had whipped myself into such a frenzy that i completely flubbed the audition i didn't remember my lines i forgot how to act and then i i left with my tail in between my legs and called my agent immediately afterwards you were very gracious he said thank you very much and it was it was clear to me that i was not going to be getting this role so i called my agent and told my agent as much and they said don't worry about it it's okay uh you will um there'll be other auditions this you're not gonna get everyone not gonna nail everyone and as i was walking down a street in london i forget which one it was i suddenly thought i'm not going to walk away from a an audition with patrick stewart and have it be a bad one i'm going to at least try to get back in there because i know i can do better and so i went back in and my agent arranged me to come back in you said it was okay and then i did another audition which went far better it wasn't good enough to get the job but it was far better and and you you gave me very very kind words and you said i'm so glad you came back in and that gave me such strength throughout my career and i've never forgotten it because it's i tend to find as an actor we can judge ourselves incredibly harshly if we get it wrong and i feel like i'm acting as is a skill which doesn't always appear when you reach into that that abyss hoping that you can clutch it and and pull it out and um on that day i did not and then i came back in and i managed to find some space and you were very very gracious and you let me know that i did the right thing and that meant a lot to me so thank you thank you for that oh henry that's a delightful story um i think it probably says more about me as a producer than it does about you as an actor um i i was uh glenn close and i were playing the leading roles in line in winter but i was my company were also producing it too and i was continually finding myself in situations that were unfamiliar to me and auditioning was one of them um i had some bad audition experiences in my career i mean again directors who took telephone calls while i was actually doing my audition actually that happened to me twice um and the second time the director said yeah you know just go on he's fine fine just go on yeah yeah i know what i'm going to come back yeah i'm never hiring this guy not this guy no so i always when i when i was in the auditioning spot the audition er i always tried to be as welcoming and relaxed and as easy going as possible because the the one thing i learned about sitting behind the table have you produced or directed henry i have not produced nor directed um producing is something which i have my eye on and and i've started to get the itch for directing i i've got a lot to learn but i haven't done anything yet well what i discovered i i started sitting in on auditions when we were filming star trek the next generation and first of all i was shocked by how brusque and offhand my fellow producers and directors were with actors who came in and i would always make a point of getting up from behind the table meeting them as they came into the room shaking hands with them asking them how they were a few questions and then sitting down until my fellow producers said to me will you stop doing that you don't have to make friends with these people i say but all i'm trying to do is relax them you know make them make them feel easier but the one thing that i learn which i tell young actors if i'm you know doing a master class or whatever you must realize that when you audition the people who are doing the auditioning and watching you they want you to be the best actor that ever walks in right now that's what we're hungry for we don't want another disappointment we want something that will blow us away so i say you've already got a head start they're happy you're in their room they want you to do remarkably well just you know hold on to that and then the other thing about auditions i've always find is as soon as you've done them erase them because the chances are you won't get the job and you'll just fret about it and be sad i thought it shows great balls that you came back a second time thanks for that story yeah whether whether it was for better or for worse it was uh it definitely it was it was a good moment it was a good moment and normally i would just forget but i had grown up watching you with my father um on the next generation so it was it was something which i really really wanted to do well in and i thought i'm not gonna i'm not gonna accept that as as his lasting impression of me and uh and i'm glad i came back as well oh well yes well i am only glad to be sitting face-to-face with you although face-to-face thanks to technology not in real life where are you by the way i am in the uk i'm um in just near reading there's a there's a studio here which um i'm i'm nearby and i'm using it because it has a better wi-fi um than my home or the home i'm staying in yeah well um welcome to los angeles thank you very much we are in lockdown here in l.a um i wanted to ask you something i i know that you had um as we would say a public school or here they would say a private school education and do you have any sense at all what impact that kind of education had on your ambition to act and the way you acted and what i assumed that you were acting on the stage to begin with was there any impact because i had no education at all i'm i'm an ignorant son of a [ __ ] and and i i i've always been curious about someone like you um i i think i think it did actually um have have a fairly serious impact uh i consider myself incredibly fortunate to have gone to a school like uh stowe school which is the school i went to uh they had a really good acting department and i do they did yes i mean i don't know if they still do if it's gotten even better than it was but there was a full theater in the school um and there was a a very small theater as well for um house productions boarding house productions um we had house plays every year we had a senior play and a junior play as well and i'm i of course i when i went when i was in boarding school and even now actually just not a very cool person and i i didn't have a a very uh successful time socially at school and so acting was a wonderful wonderful outlet for me um i could it was all as children i think a lot of us have that that sense of um uh trying to discover who our person who we are as personalities and i was struggling with that because my who what my personality was was was not um was not considered cool or popular or whatever was was was down at that time and so i got to be whoever the character was on stage and i couldn't be criticized for that ironically because we live by as critics now but um i couldn't be criticized for the character i was because i was playing a character from um from a playbook and so it it just was a wonderful outlet for me and i really really enjoyed it i consider myself incredibly fortunate and they were always very supportive there was two casting groups came round uh my boarding school when i was young one for i dream of africa i think it was my dream of africa uh with kim bassinger and i got shortlisted for that didn't get that role and then the second one was for the count of monte cristo which i did get and then i left school one year early to go do that and so that education the education which really helped the part of it really helped i find was the the boarding school element because when you get thrown out into the big wide world and especially in the acting world you have to accept knockbacks an awful lot and everything feels like a judgment of your ability and character and having been in boarding school having been separated from my parents um for a while and used to it by the time i was out there and acting and looking for jobs in la and london it was no wasn't so bad i i was okay with it and i wasn't suffering from homesickness at that stage it wasn't a distraction it was it was actually enormously beneficial to have gone through the boarding school experience am i right in thinking from what i just heard you say that you felt comfortable becoming somebody else and for a short period of time not being henry cavill but being whoever you were playing is that what you were saying that is absolutely correct yes well it's extraordinary i maybe we should do huge research with equity because that was totally my experience but the the biggest attraction to me to be well two attractions one was that i was no longer patrick stewart who i didn't think was up too much and the other thing was because my home life could be a little bit scary at times i i felt safer on a stage being somewhere else than anywhere else in my life at that time and i it would be it would be great to know if this was another experience that actors had at the very beginning that made the theater so appealing but people who are not actors say to me i don't know how you do it you walk out onto that brightly lit stage and there are 1500 people all there sitting in silence waiting to hear what you're going to say and do and i i couldn't do that but you and i do that and it feels so good to be there am i right you are absolutely right it's it's actually you you've put it perfectly that's exactly exactly how i felt in school on stage and exactly how i feel when the cameras are rolling on set it's uh it's an interesting insight to the psyches of actors the escapism from ourselves so you were acting in school i when i was 17 i went to the bristol olympic school and um that was where my life really began because to be surrounded by other people of my age i was robin phillips the rest in peace the director and i were the two youngest people in my year um but to be every day surrounded by people who felt like me who wanted to do what i did because i would i had been thought of as being a bit weird where i was growing up because i wanted to act and and to them to my friends it was just i was a show-off and that was all and it wasn't true there were other reasons but then to find a whole community a society of people who felt just like me and i think it's one of the reasons why what i i've come to love companies so much whether it's on stage or like doing a show like picard or next generation we were a company um i i continually insisted that we should think of ourselves as an ensemble and there wasn't jean-luc picard sitting in the captain's chair but we were a group who were all united in doing one thing you know and does that does that make sense to you it absolutely does make sense it's um i it's something which i'm uh beginning to experience more and more these days i i don't have a big theater background i did a little bit of theater in school before going into the big wide world and acting professionally and i i haven't really been part of companies before i've been i've been part of casts and crews on films but it's there's a different kind of connection there it's it's often only the people who you're doing scenes with that you can really build a connection with and i found the older i've gotten it's i want to get more involved with everyone else given the time of course i mean tv is is is very quick these days and schedules are very tight um but it's i do like the idea of of the companies i mean i i come from a family a big family and so large groups of people are something which i i gravitate towards and so i i do definitely feel that and it's something which i'm embracing a lot more uh the more experience i get and and the less i i have panic when i'm on set and more about enjoy this experience because it's it's a wonderful dream job and and it's exciting to act rather don't be terrified of it like go on there smiling and and love every second now you've done one season of the witches is that right uh yes one season of the witcher and uh we have we just started season two before lockdown happened and we're we're hopefully going to go back soon right right because that will hopefully strengthen that feeling more and more as you get into a second season and maybe a third or a fourth you know well wow what is that it's the wizard seal the gin do you mind if i yes yeah take back that bit about my fillingless pie take it back and then you can have your ginny jin gin let go no no let go with next generation which i i watched growing up i was watching interview recently and you had said that initially when you joined the cast everyone was doing a lot of uh joking around on set and there was a lot of good times and you were a lot more serious and it was a lot more of a sense of of um no we've got to take this seriously and then throughout uh the series as the show went on you actually uh opened up a bit more to the idea of it actually being really good fun and i do you did you try and bring some of that to picard uh to star trek picard um because i see a lot more in the way of warmth in the character and and lightness in the character um yes i'm not a writer so although i was allowed as a co-executive producer i was allowed into the writer's room but i would just sit there with my mouth open listening to these great ideas that would flash backwards and forwards across the table and then be thrown out of the window and i want to go no no no that was wonderful i loved being in that room i i wish that i could have recorded every moment that i i sat with our writers um but i the only things i think that i actually contributed in terms of dialogue were jokes like we had a we had a piece about um one of the other characters he's reading a very famous i think an asimov book a science fiction book and jean-luc picard i i said you know i i could never really get into science fiction it didn't didn't mean anything to me to have captain picard talking about science fiction as though it was an alien concept was something which i really enjoyed and um tl grey decaf was my idea as well because i thought i thought it was time to have some jokes with the character um because there was a lot of grimness surround him otherwise and i was very reluctant very reluctant to go back to that franchise but every day my satisfaction and pleasure and fun grew and grew and grew and i am i am so glad that they came up with the idea alex kurtzman and my fellow producers and that it was and they cast the group that they have because we have a brilliant cast with us it's um and and the story is going somewhere else and it's affecting all the characters very differently so there's an unexpected quality about it all the time but like you we're just waiting to begin our second season i need a secure subspace link to starfleet command what and what's the nearest starbase uh deep space 12 laying a course and so coming back as as a producer on on a star trek show what what were the differences uh coming back as a producer aside from having the luxury of sitting in the writers room uh what were the what were the differences as opposed to just being one of the ensemble actors um having a hand in directing where the narrative would go and being able to contribute personal private feelings about the character about jean-luc picard which would also influence the direction of the narrative um of course i was also involved in casting too which um okay which i enjoyed very very much and although it became very difficult because you know you you see so many i mean with young actors today there is so much talent around extraordinary talent yeah and it was thrilling i didn't know i had no personal connection with any of the actors who were cast in picard but um auditioning that was exciting and working with them has been even more exciting uh that those are the main elements for me of being an executive producer also i do get to hear about things a little bit sooner than the actors do [Laughter] right you get to hear the have the pages two days early rather than the night before exactly yeah exactly um issa brianna's was absolutely fantastic in the show what was it like working with her because her performances were extraordinary i i i thought she brought um something incredible to the show which which really worked so well with picard well we we had a good working relationship and of course issa in that first season actually played three roles three different creatures um yeah who all look the same issa is the only member of our company that i asked if i could audition with so when she came for her final callback um rather than having a casting director's assistant reading with her we did i think we did two scenes together and it made such a difference to me to be looking her in the eyes and and responding to her and vice versa um issa came to us hot from hamilton she did she was in the north american tour of hamilton and she's a singer and uh and a wonderful voice she has too um but for her it was a transformation she came from the stage to a some stage from a musical to a science fiction drama um and i i think we were all a little cautious and a little uncomfortable maybe to begin with but it very quickly dissipated and um and the sense of of uh uh kind of fearless commitment to doing the job became uh what everybody was contributing that's that's that's your perfect story she was maybe 19 perhaps just 20 when we auditioned her goodness me that's a that's that's a big step that's a big step at that age and the same goes for evan evagoria the australian actor who plays yes well he didn't play the little boy but he grows up to be a man and is brought up with warrior nuns um yes he had had very very little experience and it has been marvelous working with evan to see his confidence grow and his risk taking grow um it's i actually do at times feel like a father figure um because they're all so much younger than me and uh and i am enjoying their contribution enormously you said you take me home yes and i will but we face a powerful enemy we can't do it without support look you have no choice but to trust me and i know that would make me angry too but i understand so for you with with picard was there anything that you wanted to bring to this character which was going to differ particularly from next generation what were you what were your goals for the character for the evolution of the character and i'll try and keep this as as short as possible henry um during the seven years that we filmed next generation series and the four feature films that followed it yeah without intending to picard came closer and closer and closer to me to patrick so that after a while there was no place that i could identify where jean-luc left off and patrick stewart began they they became one so i i didn't have to sit and brood about you know what kind of breakfast i'd had that morning as my character before i went on the set there was so much already at work within me um what i did want and i to the writers i cited the movie logan that i i did um with hugh jackman the last of the x-men movies yeah where uh that last movie logan found the two of us in conditions that were totally unlike anything that we'd experienced before and it was thrilling for both of us because we were continually being challenged in very different ways so i said to our my fellow producers i would like the same thing i don't want you to rewrite logan for me no no but the the contrast between the picard that i had been in next generation and and the how the 17 18 years that had passed had changed and affected him he was now angry moody uh guilty sad lonely all of those things which he had never been before so without changing the most internal parts of the man he had to be different his responses to the world were different from what the next generation was jean-luc have been and you will understand how much fun that was yes absolutely absolutely uh you you almost described my character then when um you were saying angry sad lonely it's it's all of these things that that geralt obrivia uh tends to be and it was it was one of those challenges to play the character in such a way that all these things came through but they didn't dominate the character entirely so you end up with some someone who is wholly unlikable i i'm i'm reading um kurt douglas's autobiography at the moment um nearly finished it at one point in that he said that he was given a great piece of advice by lawrence olivier that no matter what kind of character you are playing there must always be one little element and it can be tiny which makes that character likeable okay and i i saw it in olivier's stage performances and some of his screen performances too um and certainly with kirk douglas i could see it um that there was there was a an empathic reaction that one had to them even in the worst possible conditions and it was because there was there was this element of likability i found does that make sense it really does make sense absolutely and it's something which uh i i i wanted to give the character uh especially in in the show was an essence of a likability or connection an audience connection because we had in in the books which which the character comes from there's the luxury of lots of inner monologue and long complex nuanced dialogue scenes with other characters and so despite the exterior of this character or despite the front he presents and some of the acts he commits you get an insight to who he is yet an insight to his philosophies his beliefs and and the way he views the world but because the showrunner's vision for this show was uh far more of an ensemble piece and uh the the characters of cyrilla and yennefer drove the story a lot more and so i had to try and find a way for the audience to connect to my character in the same way that the reader would connect to the character in the books and for me it was because we didn't have the luxury of of long lengthy wordy dialogue scenes with lots of uh erudite sentences and and philosophy it was i thought okay instead of making the character emotionally demanding by saying how he's feeling all the time on what his intentions are i said i'm going to draw back from that and make him more of a cipher for the audience to try and crack because all the other characters they have origin stories and you and they are as i say they're really driving the story forward and every time geralt came on screen i wanted the audience to try and work out who he was he clearly wasn't a bad guy even though he's done some bad stuff and he has a very brusque um stony exterior and so i wanted to try and show that perhaps that was a stoic exterior instead of stony and the less he would say the more the audience would think what is he thinking and it became more of a performance of reactions to other characters and and listening to other characters and then you have these few moments where you kind of get to uh get a tiny insight and hopefully hopefully that worked for the audience to think oh okay i i have a connection now and i like him because i'm trying to work him out and that for me was was the major goal with my character and what about looking so unlike yourself um i didn't recognize you when you first appears get out at all um and how much of that was an aide into getting inside this i mean were they your ideas that he should have this mane of hair hanging in front of his face um and uh you looked massive on the screen you looked you know seven foot tall and broad it was extraordinary the wonders of of good camera work i think um when it came when it came to uh the character and how he looks there are descriptions in the books of how he looks um of course uh there are arguments about what some of those descriptions mean and there are also um there's a very popular video game series where he has a a very particular look and so within pop culture there is there is a certain look attached to the character and so i drew elements i i wanted to draw on elements of all of those things and bring it to the show and that really really helped me it was about a an hour and a half to two hour process every morning before rehearsals and so it was my my work period really because that was an extra two hours on top of the day and i would spend my time then really really reading and reading reading and reading scripts going over my lines for the day doing the things like working out what my character had for breakfast that kind of stuff and by the time i was in my my full geralt rig as i call it it was it was like i was looking at a different person and i felt uh halfway to the character just through the physicality alone i would move slightly differently and then as soon as the contact lenses went in it became a whole different thing my everything shifted and my interactions were completely different and the only time they went back to being truly henry was probably when i was passed out asleep in a chair in my trailer for 20 minute breaks i admit i could have better prepared you for jennifer you're under her spell on here i wish i was but no it's a simple issue of body chemistry you're in love with her you did a lot of your own stunts didn't you i did yes yes for me it was uh when when it comes to that kind of thing like stunts i i've always enjoyed doing the physical stuff and uh working with tom cruise really uh helped or maybe in the eyes of producers made worse my enjoyment for uh stunts because i i really want to do them now and i think it's an essential piece to the character for me geralt if an audience is watching geralt on screen it must be me they must believe that it is me and i put a lot of work into how geralt moves so i put a lot of work into his his physicality and and each little piece even if it's a very very long shot of him walking down a hill somewhere if it's not me i feel like i've betrayed the character in some way and and so i i try and do i as much as a production will let me i will do all the stunts for my characters if possible and i really enjoy doing it for geralt especially the fights in particular are extraordinary the speed with which you move is incredible i used to love doing stage fights and then one day i didn't i i worked at an actor who i it was in the production of corey elena's and i was playing tillerson phillies and right at the beginning of the play there's a battle scene in which comes face to face with carrie elena's and uh we would rehearse in a rehearsal room an hour before the show we'd do it slowly the whole fight and then do it at speed and it was always perfect and i love working with this actor everything was accurate and choreographed and brilliant and yet seeming natural when we come on stage i would look into his eyes and like red mists that clouded and he would do anything so i mean most of the time i was going backwards because i had to because otherwise i'd walk into a sword or something and there was one there was one night when um our swords met and the his sword broke and the blade went somewhere and he was left with the hilt of the sword in his hand now i don't know if you know this another there is a tradition in stage productions when there are fights that you always put a substitute sword down stage left and done said right just behind just receiving your heart to the exit so and the rule is every actor knows it your sword breaks you step apart and do nothing and the actor who saw's broken will go to the nearest silent stage pick up the sword come back and we will begin again and and the audience can accept this well this particular night this actor his sword broke he looked at the hilt in his hand and then he threw it at me i died like this and he hit a member of the audience and there was this i mean the person that actually hurt it was it was not fun so from that moment on uh stage fighting became less and less attractive to me because i was always afraid i would one day not duck fast enough i would be i was a desperate old man quixotic paranoid possibly senile let's just leave it at quixotic and now the windmills have turned out to be giants you want an apology i want a squadron jean-luc clancy while on set um as much as i do love doing the sword flights uh when and i i worked with an incredible uh stunt person by the name of lucy cork for the episode one stunt fight which was by far the most technical and both of us afterwards had uh cuts all over our knuckles our hands were shaking from exhaustion it was it gets to a point where because you have to throw so much into each each piece and it has to be filled with so much aggression and you are drawing from so much adrenaline you start to get that bit where you think i'm tired and i feel like it's getting dangerous but we only have half a day to get this so we have to shoot it i can't i can't back out now i have we have to do it and um it's it's a real testament to how talented she is as a stunt performer to to be able to work with her and any mistakes i made she would adjust to and any mistakes she made i would try and adjust to and it becomes a real real dance uh but it's terrifying um towards the end of it by the end of it it's just you're you're completely adrenaline drained and you just want to stop and i i i love doing the stunts but when when it's at the end of the day i'm very happy the first fight in the first episode how many how many characters were you for actually fighting um it seemed like a soccer team it was just above a five-a-side soccer team yeah i think i had a uh one two three four five six in the no seven seven in the first bit and then just uh the rent-free character in the second bit yeah yeah yeah yeah okay i got a question for you okay henry uh what can you tell me about the snyder cut oh the snyder cut the um the famous slash infamous slash all sorts of things snyder cut uh i can i can't really tell you anything aside from the fact that uh all i know is that hbo max will be releasing it i believe and it'll be zach's final vision for for the movie and i don't know anything more than that and i i'm i'm just really happy that zach got to realize his vision i think it's important for a filmmaker and a storyteller to have their vision their intended vision released and shown to the world and i'm looking forward to seeing it myself oh great it's been quite the ordeal sort of with uh with all of that yes i mean with with justice league when it came out and and that counted apart because of a death in the family and then a separate director joss whedon was brought on and there was a a mix of visions and the movie wasn't well received and then over the subsequent years um there was a big push behind the sea there's the fabled snyder cut and now that time has come and and i think it's going to be i think it's going to be very enjoyable to watch uh zach finally release his vision as i say thank you oh that's great and uh and when will we see it do that i i don't know i don't know when they're planning to release yet um i am i am just an actor and so i i know these things um not not necessarily ahead of time if we are lucky as actors a role comes along or an offer comes along that has an enormous impact on what follows and that impact can go on year after year after year um did that happen for you with superman i i believe it did and it's something i've always been incredibly grateful for i've always been a fan of superman so just alone having the opportunity to to literally wear his boots uh for a number of movies and and to wear wear them not just on set either with a character like that you you carry the mantle with you offset and it becomes it becomes part of your uh public representation people when you meet children children don't necessarily see me as henry cavill um or even gerald to riviera but they they might see superman and there's there's a responsibility which which comes with that and it's because it's such a wonderful character it's actually a responsibility i'm i'm very happy to to have and i i hope i hope that i get to play more of superman in years to come my life has changed dramatically because of it um it has given me plenty of opportunity for roles and yeah it was it's been one of those characters which changed the entire course of my career and i'm incredibly grateful for it and it's also taught me a lot about myself the nature of the character is is so good in that way he he's so good the character and he's he's so kind and and when when you start to compare yourself to him because you're playing him it you start to really look inwards and you say am i am i a good person can i be a good enough person to play superman and and if you ever find a whisper in there which is like hold on a second maybe not then you adjust it and and you make sure you are a better person and i think that's all we can do in life uh when when as we grow and we gain experiences is not beat ourselves for the mistakes we make but to to endeavor to to be better people as as those mistakes happen my well there was a touch of that certainly about um both jean-luc picard and charles xavier for me i felt with both of them that they did have an impact like you have described on my private life right in that there was a sort of standard of morality and behavior that you needed to uphold because uh if you did they would reflect badly negatively on the on the um on the character that you were playing um i over the years have had so many extraordinary stories talked to me by people who watch next generation i you you've now joined the list of them too which is great um and i i mean ranging from uh a man who who is a police sergeant in las vegas who wrote to me saying how much he enjoyed the show and how much he enjoyed being a policeman he always wanted to be a policeman and he loved the job but there were nights when he came home when what he had seen and heard and experienced was so awful that it almost made him despair from mankind and for the world and when that mood took him he would go to his vcr collection and take out an episode of next generation and put it in to be reassured that the world was going to get better i was so touched and moved by his honesty in the way that he told that so from a police sergeant in las vegas to people who are now important uh people at nasa who are involved in the actual space program because watch star trek oh wow and you know one often what we go ahead and we do the work and we love our job and we love that the the experiences that it brings to us but then hearing that you have actually impacted somebody's life is is a a great gift i think it must it must have been and did that did that factor into your decision to to play picard again when it came to star trek the card it factored into the changes that had happened to him because i knew what people were going to see at the very beginning of star trek picard right was going to be something someone rather unlikable somewhat unlikable and i think in a way that's why the jokes became important to me as well as having to communicate why he was in such bad shape jean-luc when we first met him depressed and anxious and guilt written you know um but uh my wife is a singer a musician sing songwriter and i don't think saw a lot of theater when she was young although she was trained classically as an opera singer but she has been the first person in my life who actually has commented occasionally negatively on how i bring a character home with me oh okay right something you have the absorption has been so real and so intense um just sitting in the back of a car being driven home is it is not sufficient to free yourself of all of that and i now have to consciously think about i am this woman's husband you know i'm not crazy charlotte picard or charles xavier and and that is the most important role that i have to play so come on patreon get ready for it get ready for going home yeah yeah yeah um what do you have do you have any personal uh work ambitions i don't mean particular project but is there a direction you would like to go in i mean do you think you might at some point do more theater work or i i do i do love the idea of doing theater work i when i was very young it's how my first experience of acting was was theater i was um in in the school plays from the age of honestly ten so i i do love that feeling of walking out on stage that sense of is that that mild panic which is replaced by by elation when when it all begins and i love it but i also love tv and film and i i think for now for now i'd like to remain in tv and film i i'd like to get into producing and maybe even one day directing and in the future perhaps uh when i'm ready to embarrass myself and it won't matter when i do i might try going back to the stage i just as you were talking just now i certainly had the the image of me walking into a room to audition for you i i think i might see if i can't get that if artificially set up that it would be actually quite good sir patrick uh as as you were saying um that maybe maybe one day you had this image of you one day auditioning for me i i i think it would be wonderful and i will definitely have it arranged but only if sir ian mckellen is walking in as you are walking out so you get to cross each other's path and then wonder [Laughter] i could hear uh you or one of your colleagues say oh thank god he's gone i'm good now now what have we got coming in this morning this guy's gonna name it ian is a dear dear friend i and i love him i am actually in love with him um and we in the past few years have done so much work together i was hugely intimidated by him we both worked for the royal shakespeare company together but um and and he was a star of the company and i was still making my way up and i never had a conversation with him because i was too terrified of making a fool of myself now uh you know we we're you know i love being embraced by him and kissed by him it just feels so fantastic um but but we too are looking you know we're hoping to try and find something else there are not many possibilities where you would have two characters that we could each lose ourselves in and connect with together i hope it happens speaking speaking of the uh the shakespearean connection we have a lot of actors on our show who have um experience with theater and shakespeare and anya chalotra who is playing yennefer who is probably one of the best actors i've ever worked with and joey beatty who plays uh yaskia who's a wonderful foil to geralt he has a lot of shakespeare experience but i've noticed you are doing um sonnets daily sonnets on your instagram what has inspired that and and i often pop in there and look at them and then you have your favorite one or you have friends reading them and where is that inspiration come from well um once again i have to say it came from my wife one saturday night a couple of months ago we were sharing a bottle of wine and into my head they're floating the first lines of sonnet 1 16 let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments and uh so i said a couple of lines and sonny said what what is that i said oh it's a it's a shakespeare song she said well go on do some more of it i it's a song i know by heart so i did and when i finished she said i want you to do it again and i'm going to film it i i want to i want to have a record of this oh lord so i did it again and and then she said i think we should post this just put it out there on social media and i said it says sonic nobody's going to care about us solid and you know okay this is a well-known one but you know and anyway we did the response was overwhelming uh from so many people who said how lovely it was to listen to those words and to hear that feeling behind them so we talked about it and i said look we're in shutdown shutdown was just starting when i was little my when my mother would cut up fruit for me she used to say an apple a day keeps the doctor away and i said what what if we were to say a sonnet a day keeps the doctor away now i do not mean to be disre disrespectful to those poor people who have caught the coronavirus but that's what we decided we would call it so i'm doing one sunday today but we've taken a break because um what has happened in minneapolis and what has been happening in other places is so sad and then raging and infuriating i felt i just couldn't deal with sonnets not at this present time they were they were not appropriate so we've just called a temporary halt to that but any day now we're we are going to go back to it i think uh instagram is is such a a wonderful way it can be used as such a tool for good and and for positive thought and uh it's it's incredible i used to fear it so much i resisted social media for for years and years and years where my my agents or publicists were saying you have to get onto social media and i said no that's not who i am i don't want to put myself on the internet i'm out there enough already as it is and i it took me a while to realize but it can be used as such a wonderful tool for positivity good great messaging and i i i love it for that and i think your son is so absolutely wonderful well and of this societal good that it can do there is no better example than that 17 year old girl who filled what happened in minneapolis to george being his neck being knelt on the the courage of that girl to stand so close to that scene and to show the world what was going on was extraordinary maybe the most remarkable thing that i've ever experienced you know on social media well i look i i want to make a deal with you um henry that uh next time we say hello hello it will be face to face oh i'm pretty much gonna be even when we go by the way this morning the l.a times said that tomorrow friday there are going to be certain relaxing of the uh the lockdown conditions and it actually mentioned that film television and music was included in that i mean you know uh production yeah absolutely so that's fantastic uh we are still quite strict over here the article i'm sorry say it again we're still quite strict over here where things are starting to relax a little bit but it's uh we're still reasonably strict oh well here too you know we're both in countries where it is still very very unsafe and um but i you know if it's in the l.a times it's got to be true absolutely i mean it's always true right when next generation was announced when there was they were going to revive star trek the los angeles times in the article the first article they wrote about this said and the captain of the enterprise will be played by unknown british shakespearean actor patrick stewart and um a few weeks after we'd started filming one day i arrived at paramount and there was a notice stuck to the door of my trailer and in big red letters it said warning unknown british experience brent spiner uh my dear friend had had got this thing set up and somebody tried to sell it at an auction a couple of years ago and i was able to step in and say that's a fake because i have the original at home you have the original fantastic yeah it's been great great talking to you it's sorry can i ask one more question because i'm i'm really really interested in um on brent spiner and data and data's eulogy uh you said such stuff it was such stuff as dreams were made on was one of the lines and was that your influence that put that into the eulogy i i i never proposed those shakespeare references ever they always came from the writer's room because i didn't i didn't want it to seem that in the middle of this science fiction i was pushing my own acting history which right for so many it was with shakespeare um yeah but we all love doing it we did do we i think we did a scene from henry the fifth or maybe it was oh no it was hamlet data was hamlet and i was one of the great diggers if i if i remember in disguise oh well it's it's been wonderful talking to you and thank you so much for your wonderful stories and and all the insight into every all the work you did in that character and for the years you've done and as you say next time i would absolutely love to be talking face to face it's up to you you've got it [Music] you

Channel: Variety

Views: 375,620

Rating: 4.9805927 out of 5

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio, Patrick Stewart, patrick stewart star trek, patrick stewart star trek interview, patrick stewart star trek picard, Henry Cavill, henry cavill interview, The witcher, henry cavill the witcher interview, Henry Cavill the witcher, star trek picard

Id: 7TcFBP_M31Y

Length: 61min 25sec (3685 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ILoveSpaceStuffs]

You can tell by how he thinks before he speaks. Most extroverts speak as they’re processing their thoughts, as though they’re thinking out loud.

I also thought it was interesting how he really didn’t want social media accounts. That’s probably why he (seemingly) only posts before he’s going to announce something business-related, to warm up the audience before promoting something. That’s very common for people with personal brands who aren’t really into social media.

[u/RomanGenesius]

Lmao he has always been an introvert. Even from the very beginning. Especially since superman and how he talked about video games and such, I already knew then he liked to be alone.

[u/DaddysPinkKitten]

Well...yeah, it's pretty obvious he's an introvert if you've ever heard him talk on other interviews as well as his stories of his life before making it big with superman. Dude sat in his room and played video games, mainly WoW, all the time. He almost missed his call for Superman because he was playing WoW. I know not everyone who plays WoW is an introvert but you don't need to psycho analyze him to see he's very clearly an introvert. I don't know why it's always a shock to people when someone like him is an introvert or why it's a big deal. He likes being alone in his house and recharges away from people which is a very normal thing.

[u/anonymous723690]

He's always been an introvert. It's not just now.

[u/ILoveSpaceStuffs]

Haven’t watched all of his interviews, but I know the guy also likes going to nightclubs/bars/social events - which is why it may not be obvious to some that he’s an introvert, since MOST introverts stay away from crowds.

[I know not all introverts don’t like crowds, and not all introverts think before they speak. 😉 I’m referring to the majority, not the outliers.]

Also, didn’t mean it was “shocking.” Just found it to be interesting.