Edward Hardwicke on going from theatre work to Colditz
Edward Hardwicke: ...I did a tiny, tiny bit of television, not a lot. But then I went back to Nottingham and I found myself suddenly... I remember very clearly, I was asked to be in a series called Colditz. And [at the time] I was in a production at Nottingham which I’d asked to do with Derek Jacobi. We were doing a Stoppard play. And Ian McKellan was directing it.
And suddenly this – and I’m not exaggerating – carton, big cardboard box was delivered to the stage door with 15 scripts for Colditz. Well I got... I mean, Derek and Ian gave me a terrible time and said, ‘how dare you do this?!’ - I mean joking! I remember we all went out to dinner and I was sent up rotten about the fact that I was doing this TV series. And that would have been... it would have been about 1959, something like that, I’m not sure... ’60. I can’t... no it must have been later than that. I’m terrible on dates.
But it was from Nottingham anyway. And that... then that was a long stretch in television which, you know was a completely different world.
Kate Harris: When you say it was a different world, what was it initially that was so different for you?
EH: I mean, I think the thing about... I suppose one would have to say... acting, as long as it’s... you strive to be truthful. And if it’s truthful it can be big or small, it’s just a question of like turning the volume up and down.
But I do remember I worked with... Robert Wagner was in the series. And we became quite good friends. He was wonderful because he was film actor, you know and he’d... worked with Tracy and all sorts of people. And he used to just come up and say ‘don’t do that, don’t move your head, keep yours still’ or whatever. And I learnt a lot from him. I mean in the nicest [way]... You respected all that film background that he’d been though.
KH: What were people’s attitudes to you going to work for television, when you first started working in television?
EH: What, my attitude to it?
KH: Or other people’s, either.
EH: Well we were all a bit... all the theatre people were a bit grand about it. You know television... it’s not like the theatre... The Theatre! But I actually got to enjoy it enormously. The only trouble with doing something like particular series is that we had an exterior set which was supposed to be the courtyard of this prison camp. And over a long period, which we were doing, you did find yourself thinking ‘how can I lean up against this wall in a different way from last week?’! [Laughs] There are little tiny things like that, which sound ludicrous, but which kind of... get out of proportion. The physical limitations of something like that series are quite difficult to overcome.
Edward Hardwicke in an interview with Kate Harris, 6 November 2007.
Read the full interview here.
