There on my television screen, in a somewhat surreal sequence, was Boris Johnson contemplating the women in his life. And suddenly before me appeared the famous Wyatt features: first eyes, then a nose and then a mouth, right into camera. Medium-range shot and then a close-up. Ah, we had faces then. And then I looked harder, and my blood turned to Freon. It was just a large photograph of me stuck on a 10ft projector screen. Couldn’t those cheapskates at Sky have got a goddamn actress instead of a Polaroid?
As it turns out, This England, the Kenneth Branagh series about my old friend Boris, is more Psycho than psychodrama. Someone in the make-up department seems to have thought they were remaking What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The prosthetic mask Branagh wears makes Boris look like a burns victim. And what is that blond fright wig? Boris’s hair deserves an actor all of its own. In real life it sings, it dances, it stands up and takes a bow. In This England it doesn’t even move in a hurricane. And why are his shirts always tucked in? It amounts to the desecration of a national monument.
Did I have to be played by a hag with staring eyes, standing on what appeared to be the River Styx, my abilities seemingly impaired by a fifth of vodka?
Branagh and I used to share a singing teacher. I like old Ken. Or rather I used to. He once invited me down to his film set when he was making a musical version of Love’s Labour’s Lost. We even danced together. I believe I wrote a puff piece about him. There is no gratitude in that industry. I mean, whatever happened to nepotism? Hollywood used to run on it. So I was less than gruntled to appear alongside Ken in the This England fright fest.
It wasn’t just that one appearance, either. In another episode, Boris was supposedly having hallucinations about his exes – and there I was again. OK, this time I got an actress, but what an actress! Did I have to be played by a hag with staring eyes, standing on what appeared to be the River Styx, my abilities seemingly impaired by a fifth of vodka? Christ! Weren’t Rachel Weisz or Kate Winslet free? This was sheer hagsploitation. I think I shall sue. Surely this is detrimental to my ability to earn a living?
And why was I speaking in Ancient Greek? Boris tried to teach me Ancient Greek once, but we didn’t get past Alpha. Yet here I was like some Fury in Euripides. At this point in the melodrama, may I add, Boris is in hospital with Covid. A doctor wakes him up and says, his voice heavy with sympathy, ‘sometimes Covid patients have strange dreams’. Strange dreams? This was the stuff of nightmares.
And for your information, Ken, Boris doesn’t launch into lengthy monologues from King Lear or Richard II whenever there’s a crisis in his life. He puts his head in his hands and says: ‘Oh, shit. Someone get me out of this.’ Which, all in all, was a succinct summation of my thoughts on This England.
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