wise owl edits suggested by @yonderghostshistories <3
goddd even just skimming through this one was tough... it's SUCH a brutal & chilling (but amazing) episode! (i actually think i managed to scare myself with some of these edits tho so uh... sorry if i give y'all nightmares lol...)
Michael Sheen reflects on his performance in Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!
As part of Radio 4 Extra's marking of the hundredth birthday of Kenneth Williams, Michael Sheen reflects on his award-winning performance as Kenneth in Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!
Michael reveals how he researched the role, Kenneth's status and influence when Michael was growing up, and what has stuck with him from making Fantabulosa! two decades ago.
Full transcript below the cut ⬇️
Hello, my name is Michael Sheen and I played the role of Kenneth Williams in 'Fantabulosa!'.
Clip from 'Fantabulosa!:
Ron Cook as Peter Eade, KW's agent: Do you have to, Kenneth?
Michael Sheen as KW: Have to what?
PE: Talk so loud? The whole restaurant can hear you.
KW: (extra loud and camp) Can they? (in Stop Messing About voice) Ooh, well, they shouldn't be listening! (in posh voice) I expect they probably recognise me from appearing on the television!
I researched the role by just watching everything I could, reading everything I could, and listening to everything I could. Which was a big challenge, because there's a lot of it! You know, there's the diaries, so there's a lot of material. And in the diaries he mentions music that he loves, books he loves, films he's watched that he loves… and, you know, so I would go off on tangents. So there was an incredible amount of research material to go through.
Because, in playing any character based on a real life person I find it's sort of a bit like white noise to begin with, there's so much information the person is giving off through everything you can look at and read… and you need a way in. So I was sort of just waiting for that, really, whilst I was, like I say, immersing myself in it all. And eventually, it was watching 'An Audience With… Kenneth Williams', that series -- that brilliant series of live performances in front of a studio audience that various people did. But the one that Kenneth Williams did, I watched probably more than anything else I came across in the research.
And he is just extraordinary in that performance, his artistry and his timing and his storytelling ability, and just everything. But there is one moment where he's telling the kind of punchline of a story, and he just messes it up slightly -- just slightly -- and the mask drops a bit. And what he was so brilliant at a lot of the time was making it appear like he didn't have a mask on, that he was sort of just being spontaneous. But it was so perfectly rehearsed, and worked, and honed. And just, in tripping up slightly, on the punchline, I could see vulnerability in him in that moment. I could see behind something. And suddenly, I sort of found that was my way in.
Growing up, Kenneth was just sort of everywhere. There were certain people who were just part of the fabric of our cultural consciousness, I think, and he was certainly one of them. And there's sort of no one like him.
I think what he did -- his ability to ape the establishment and ape respectability, only to kind of undercut it with muckiness (laughs) -- there was something innately British about that, and a sort of commentary on Britishness. And there was no one else who was able to do that in the way that he did, in the form of sort of light entertainment. The fact that he could do the, you know the (posh voice) plummy voice of the establishment, and then all of a sudden, (Stop Messing About voice) going to that, immediately, and undercutting it. That says something about who we are in Britain, and certainly at that time. He was sort of able to be something and its opposite at the same time, and prick the pomposity of things.
I can't believe it's been 20 years! You know, over those 20 years, people still, to this day, come up to me and talk about it and say how affected they have been by it. And, of all of the characters I have played based on real people, he was the hardest one to let go of. Because of a number of things: the amount of work I'd spent on it, the amount of time I had spent on it beforehand, and how much I had gone into the character, the person. How much there was to research. So it was sort of like disappearing into a black hole. And, talking of black holes, the gravitational pull of his personality, which did sort of suck you in, like a big black 'ole, as he would probably say. That has always stayed with me. It was very hard to just let it go, at the end, you know, when we finally got to the end of filming. I sort of felt like, well, what do I do with him now? What do I do with all this? It was very hard to let go. And because of his obsessive nature, and how obsessive I had been in working on it, it has never really completely gone away, you know, it has stayed with me. So something of his personality either connected with a part of mine or has just stayed with me. It's rubbed off on me, and yeah I've never really been able to let that one go.
