-Our next guest is
an Emmy Award-winning stand-up comedian
and an actress you know
from the TV series "Hannibal"
and films such as "Ocean's Thirteen"
and "Victoria & Abdul."
Her new movie, "Six Minutes to Midnight,"
comes to theaters and Demand on March 26th.
Let's take a look.
-So what brings you here, Mr. Miller?
What sort of Englishman would accept a post
teaching Herr Hitler's League of German Girls?
[ Speaking German ]
-I do not like surprises.
I will place you on a trial period.
-Please welcome back to the show Eddie Izzard.
How are you?
-I'm very good. How are you doing?
-I'm good. It's been a very long time
since you've been here, seven years, I believe...
-I know. -...and I'm so happy to have you back.
-I wanted to stay away for seven years,
as absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Something like that. Yeah.
But it seems like yesterday.
Didn't we have a chat at "Saturday Night Live"?
We talk together?
-We have. Yes, absolutely.
-One of the times I turned up there.
But, yeah. No, I've been watching your "Closer Look."
I get it. Because I don't know if your show
totally comes over here to Britain
because, you know, sometimes bits come over,
but I've been watching it for ages and then, they said,
"Hey, come and do that."
Great. Excellent. Fun to talk to you.
-It's even nicer when people who watch the show agree
to come on because most of our guests
aren't aware of what we're doing here.
-No. I see you go in and you're fighting the fight,
which is great, you know, because I've got this hat,
which is...
And that's what I do on my marathons and raise money.
I don't know where I got "Make Humanity Great Again" from.
It just came to me one night. -[ Laughs ]
-I'm like, "Oh, yeah.
I think there's another slogan like that out there somewhere.
-Yes. I think you got there first.
I think you got there first. Now, you mentioned marathons
and you're not being --
This isn't just, "I ran a marathon, ha ha ha."
You have just finished --
and we've talked about this in the past.
You've just finished 32 marathons in 31 days,
which, obviously --
You raised £200,000, which is amazing.
But just talk us through how you even go about that.
-I've got to say I did more. A third of a million,
we got to, £333,000.
and George Clooney was counting it down.
Basically, I was doing it on a treadmill.
You know, it's COVID lockdown,
so, yeah, every day, I was doing a marathon
and doing a stand-up gig at the end,
which is kind of crazy, but, you know,
you try to raise money.
I've done a few of these before,
but I was talking to people for six hours.
I mean, you do your show, you talk to people.
I was doing six hours of this every day,
chatting to people and running on a thing,
which actually was good for me because it was
so mindlessly boring, running on a treadmill.
So I do this. I raise money.
You know, I want to be a member of parliament.
But, meanwhile, I'm doing my film
"Six Minutes to Midnight," in which I do a lot of running.
But Make Humanity Great Again is my slogan
and it includes all Americans in it.
People say, "That's not good for America."
No, Americans are in humanity.
Everyone's included, 7.8 billion.
And George Clooney was counting down the numbers
as we did the last double marathon on the last day.
So it was a beautiful thing to do, kind of crazy.
-So you did a double marathon the last day.
And I will say,
it all sounds impossible, but, as you mentioned,
it strikes me as so much harder on a treadmill
than it would be in the great outdoors.
-For the brain, it's just mind-bogglingly --
I thought we would talk to two or three people a day.
As soon as I got going on this, I said,
"Just line the people up.
I need to talk." Talk about anything --
cats and dogs and trees and helicopters --
to get my mind off this endless pounding and not going anywhere.
And, you know, so, it was good, in the end.
And I talked to some wonderful people.
And, you know, the people you're raising the money for is
for charities all around the world.
So, yeah, it was a beautiful thing to do.
I'm just kind of bonkers and out there,
so I do this stuff.
-You shared with us.
This was in The Guardian,
which, you really have taken away
the marathon bragging rights.
Basically, we have a character here, saying,
"Will you sponsor me for my marathon?"
"But you only ran the one."
And then, "Damn you, Eddie Izzard!
You've spoilt it for everyone!" And I think
most marathon runners would probably say
that you have effectively spoilt it.
-I have, a little bit, but other people
have done as well. My dad cut that
out of The Guardian newspaper in Britain
and he put it next to my bed when I came home to visit him,
so that's kind of nice. My dad.
I thought my dad wasn't really into my career,
but he seemed to collect everything from my career.
But, yeah, so marathon running is something I can do.
Because, if you are a trans person, as you know,
you said actress there [indistinct]
but I'm gender fluid
and this is a male role that I've played.
I've been out for 36 years, but people suddenly
sort of noticed it, which is a bit weird.
Like, "Oh, you're suddenly tall! What?
You didn't give us any notice."
Thirty-six years' notice, guys.
So everyone -- It's great. Thank you so much.
It's a great honor to be promoted,
but I'm pretty fluid. I see in boy mode
and girl mode, like a superhero thing.
That's how I see transgender.
And so I can be either one or the other
and, this film, "Six Minutes to Midnight,"
is set in the hometown where my dad grew up
and I grew up, in this girls' school.
Judi Dench plays the woman running this girls' school,
which is full of the daughters of the Nazi High Command,
and goddaughters.
Himmler's goddaughter
was actually at this school,
in a seaside town in England, learning English,
these German girls used to hang out
with the other right-wing people in the British aristocracy.
Edward VIII was very into Hitler
and you'll probably know this kind of history.
So I didn't even know this was the truth,
but the school badge had a British flag
and a Nazi flag on it and I thought,
"Whoa! There's a film in that."
So the basis of the story is true --
real girls at this school doing this stuff --
and then, we've written a thriller on top of it,
Judi Dench, myself, and Jim Broadbent.
-Obviously, you are a very accomplished writer,
but you had never written a screenplay before.
Did you find it daunting?
Did you enjoy that process?
-Yeah. You were talking to Amy Poehler.
She said don't do writing, you know, this thing.
Because you're obviously a wildly experienced writer,
but, you know, I come from where you've lived
a lot of your life, that shorter sketch thing?
I came from sketch. Then I went to stand-up.
I had to learn a whole new different thing.
I couldn't do stand-up.
I broke into Pinewood Studios when I was 15.
And Steven Spielberg, I think, worked at Universal
when he was about 17, 18, you know,
so I was trying to do this similar thing.
He got his career going bam!
And mine took
30, 40 years, you know. [ Laughter ]
The fine-wine approach to careers.
Because I knew I didn't know how to do story structure,
character -- I didn't have the sense of it,
so I wrote with two other writers.
And this has obviously got a powerful thing
because like the message was from the 1930s
and then, you had this thing, particularly in America,
you got Brexit, you've got Trump,
the same kind of thing.
You've got the Alternative for Deutschland
in Germany again, and Marine Le Pen,
all this right-wing thinking around the world,
which is like going back to the 1930s,
as we're trying to drag the world to the 2030s
and say, "Let's move forward."
And some people, it's like, "No, let's go back.
Let's have another go at the 1930s.
How did it turn out last time?"
[ Laughter ]
Our film has, hopefully, got a message in there
that is, you know, "If you do not learn from history,
you're doomed to repeat it."
And, now, more than ever, it's just resonating.
And our film sits there, right on the eve of World War II.
These girls, the fight for hearts and minds.
-Well, congratulations on the film.
Congratulations, again, 32 marathons, 31 days,
a third of a million pounds.
And it is just a delight to see you, as always.
Please come back soon.