(APPLAUSE)
I've got two amazing people here who need no introduction.
Today's Monday,
and I came in and I said to these guys I thought was their day off.
But actually they're working after they've done all of this with us.
It's a really intense play,
and I just wondered how on Earth you've managed to do that day in, day out,
and still give it the best possible shot.
Er... I found with this play, it
You never know, residually, what it's taking out of you.
You never are aware how your body is affected,
obviously, by the tiredness, the physical stuff, but emotionally as well.
Your body doesn't know you're lying
and you are putting it through these traumatic events,
you know, to the best of your ability, in terms of the truth of it.
So, yeah, I get to the end of a run of plays that I've done
where they have had a greater emotional heft
and you do feel slightly wiped out by it.
All the way through, you're thinking, 'I'm fine. I'm just tired, physically,'
but I think, actually, the emotional effect does build.
And Anne-Marie?
When you're inside of something you have to truly believe you're inside of it,
but at the same time, there still has to be that membrane saying,
'This isn't really my experience.'
So there's a kind of tightrope that you walk.
It's interesting, because you want people to know that you're heartbroken
or you're grieving or you're whatever.
You want people to buy it. You don't want people to go, 'Oh, that's very clever!
'Isn't that very clever the way they look like they are?'
You want people to forget and go, 'Oh, my God! I feel that too, sometimes.'
Were these two parts, parts that you'd long wanted to play?
You know, when you'd come to acting, when you were younger,
did you think, 'It'd be wonderful to play this part'?
Generally, my career has been a surprise. (LAUGHTER)
So... Yeah, I guess, in the back of your head you'd thought about playing big parts
but you never took it for granted or presumed that anyone was going to ask you.
What I wanted to do when I was young
and I used to come here as a boy,
was work here — this is what I thought acting meant.
And this is where I thought I saw the best stuff and where I got inspired to act.
So, obviously, to be able to play these hugely challenging
and engaging and, yeah, exhausting roles
in the place that you first were inspired to become an actor is a huge privilege.
Anne-Marie, for you with Lady Macbeth.
Was that a role that you came to feeling worried or anxious or intimidated by?
Could you identify with her?
Yeah, weirdly, I could... I can.
I had played Lady Macbeth before, a few years ago,
but not in London, I played it in New York.
So I had been a wee bit inside her head before.
But... I'd always been very angry about the way that people perceive her
and how she's become a sort of...
..you know, a reference point for a certain kind of female behaviour.
It makes me really angry because I know the play.
People generally use that she's.... You know.
They'll accuse a woman that they think is the dark shadows behind a man
as being 'very Lady Macbeth' or whatever.
'She's just some excuse for his bad behaviour.'
Which isn't what Shakespeare writes at all, you know.
They really are Bonnie and Clyde, they're in it together, you know.
And as Rory pointed out actually, earlier on,
they both have a real sense of morality.
So, I was very interested in that, and also, you know,
Shakespeare lets us know that they are parents grieving.
You know, she talks about having nursed a baby.
We know that they've lost a child just from tiny things that are said.
I'm also fascinated by the way people behave when they're inside grief,
and things they will do to have a sense of future
or to stay alive themselves.
She'd be great to sit in a therapist's chair.
Do you think it's important, when you play a role like this, a role so big,
that you need to be able to identify with the character in some way?
Like you find a way to be like them or find a way...
There is something in you that's similar to them,
you know, in order to really live it.
Or are you such a great actor...
(LAUGHTER)
Just give me the boots! (LAUGHTER)
I do tend to find I have to find where the character sits in me.
You know, we've all got the capability to be billions of different people.
And we've all had the potential to live a billion different lives according to,
moment to moment, the decisions or the effects that life has taken on us.
So, you know, I don't want to be myself in every role — whoever that is!
(ANNE-MARIE LAUGHS) But I do...
I can feel when something slots in and when you're forcing it.
It's about asking and being really, really honest with yourself
about your behaviour, about the way you think, about the way you feel.
And there's a kindness in that, then, isn't there, in your interpretation.
You're not judging. You have to kind of
And that's weird!
Or even... Myra Hindley, you know.
And that's weird, but in order for you to tell the story well and properly,
you do, don't you, you have to go there,
you know, and make them have a truth.
Because if there's no truth inside, who cares?
Can you tell me a bit about what it's like when you first start working together
and rehearsing and you're trying on these characters for size for yourselves,
but also to ensure that they work together?
Actually, when I came in, these two, they're genuinely close friends,
they were chatting away to each other about their children...
(LAUGHTER)
It was really hard to get a word in edgeways.
— (LAUGHS) — We were talking about you!
You two are such good friends
and you said you knew each other a little bit before.
But what's it like when you come to a play like this you have to do for weeks on end,
almost every night, twice a day sometimes,
sort of trying the characters and having your own dynamics between you as well?
Tell us a bit about what that process feels like and how you get through it.
It's funny, I think you learn very quickly, actually,
how easy it's going to be with somebody.
It becomes apparent quite quickly, doesn't it?
That...
I knew so early on in rehearsals...
Obviously, Rory's a brilliant actor, but he's so open and easy to play with
and I felt...
You kind of have to be each other's parachutes, you know,
when you're playing big emotional stuff, so that you can leap off
and you know the other one will be there for you.
That happened very quickly for me with this play.
I never doubted that we would have a good time together.
— I... I've never really... — ..liked Anne-Marie Duff!
(LAUGHTER)
That's what I was going to say!
A bit rude she finished my sentence for me, but that's what I was going to say!
I don't like saying publicly or admitting to the parts I want to play
because you don't end up playing them.
— That's true! — Or you don't necessarily want a director
to go, 'Oh, yeah. I'd like do it with him.'
I want it to come from a director wanting to do the play.
But in my head, I'd wanted to play this part,
and I'd always wanted to do it with Ann-Marie.
And we got really fortunately paired together to do a scene of it
on the telly for a gala thing at the RSC a couple of years ago.
And I thought I'd chance my arm and say, 'Would you ever want to do this?'
She said, 'I've already done it.' I thought, 'Well, there goes that chance!'
(LAUGHTER)
— But I lured her in! — (ANN-MARIE LAUGHS)
So I thought, 'I'd better be
— And when she, um... — (ANNE-MARIE CHUCKLING)
When Rufus then came and said, 'How about doing the play?'
and I said, 'Can we do it with Ann-Marie?' and she said, 'Yes.'
That was kind of... I know Rufus really well.
I thought his imaginative capabilities being brought on this play, in particular,
I didn't have any worries.
Here's a segue — from your relationship to Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's relationship.
How would you describe that?
I know there's some students, some sixth-formers, perhaps, in the audience.
It's a GCSE question, an A-level question. How would you describe that relationship?
I always feel that they really love the bones of each other.
They've been through so much together,
but they're sort of at... I mean, it's that thing, isn't it?
If you talk about them as being grieving parents.
They imagined what their life would be,
let's say, and their relationship would be,
then suddenly there's a huge vacuum there, and what does it get filled with?
They're sort of trying to find their sense of their... together future, aren't they?
But unfortunately, of course, it becomes so fractured.
I know that Rufus was really keen on that being,
that there being no doubt that they loved each other
and that kind of being the spinal column of the play, in a way,
was their relationship.
I think it's the trajectory of the play, in some ways,
if it's going to be affecting or sad, is to see the breakdown of a marriage
of a couple that loved each other.
And maybe, at the end, realise that they still did.
Or at least Macbeth is afforded the time to realise that her death has...
His response to her death is to say, 'I gin to be aweary of the sun.'
He gives up on life after she does.
And they spend very little time with each other.
And you see them together just before the murder of Duncan.
And then you see them together, alone together, some time after it.
The difference between those scenes is the beginning of the marital disintegration
as well as their own mental disintegration.
And that thing of, 'If we do this, if we kill Duncan,
'not only our lives and our material lives, potentially,
'but our togetherness — will we be happy again?'
Particularly in a world in which there must be so little happiness
and, obviously, the loss of a child as well.
That sense of, 'What can we do to find happiness?
'Will this be it?'
'Will status or safety or people looking after us,
'will that give us happiness?'
Then, of course, that provides them with this great moment of togetherness
before the murder, which they never have again.
I've got a final question for you guys.
I started by saying, please do tweet tonight,
and I was wondering this afternoon
and I was wondering what it's like for you as actors,
to be dealing with living in the age of social media and Twitter.
We were saying backstage, 20 or 30 years ago,
if you wanted to not read newspapers or read reviews, you didn't have to.
How do you deal with the fact that we live much more publicly
and much more intimately and publicly now than we did before?
So, if there's a good, a bad or a mixed review,
it's there and people have got direct access to you.
Although, of course, the two of you don't have Twitter accounts.
— No! — That's our way of avoiding it!
That's it. You don't let them in that way. Keep your doors locked.
And you don't Google. You just avoid in a different way.
That's the curious thing about the internet, isn't it?
It's given us so many things,
but at the same time we're looking at the mental welfare of young people
and we're really looking into that now.
And, you know, the whole notion of trolling and all of these things.
Sometimes, people, en masse, love something.
And sometimes they don't!
And it can be to do with the timing.
It can be to do with lots of factors of which you have no control.
All you can focus on is the heart of something and know that you're all in it.
You're all doing your best to tell the story
the best way that you feel is possible at this moment in time.
And sometimes that will click and sometimes it won't.
You know, you look at Pinter!
One of our greatest playwrights
and yet, you know, terrible reviews when his plays were first performed.
— So what are you gonna do?
Art is so subjective and again to do with timing and fashion and all those things.
At times, we're meant to hear certain stories, and at other times we're not.
You know, it's an interesting thing.
You've just got to engage with your heart, haven't you, in life?
Because it's the same with all of us every day, the way we exist in the world.
You can't live your life worrying too much about what
Gosh! You'd go bonkers!
We do have to wrap up now, I'm afraid, but please give them a round of applause.
(APPLAUSE)