-Our first guest tonight is
an Emmy- and Golden Globe- nominated actor
you know from movies like "A Beautiful Mind"
and as Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
He stars in "A Very British Scandal,"
which is streaming now on Prime Video.
Let's take a look.
[ Cheering and applause ] -I'm sorry, but I just --
I don't like it.
-I can't put you down.
Everybody's looking.
-Oh, no, you're going to drop me.
-I'm not going to [bleep] drop you.
-Look, will you please put me down. Please.
♪♪
Ian.
[ Grunts ]
♪♪
-There, you're down.
Happy?
-Please welcome back to the show
Paul Bettany, everybody.
[ Cheering and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back!
-Nice to be back. -It had been a long time.
-It has. Why haven't you had me back?
-Well, I was waiting for you to do good work.
[ Laughter ]
And I really enjoyed this show a great deal.
So this is based on a real-life scandal,
the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, which sounds made up,
[ Laughter ] but in that really awesome sort of British way,
those were real people.
-They really were, yeah.
And he was dreadful.
-Yeah, he was a real bad guy.
And you really own it, yeah.
[ Laughter ] -Thank you very much. Yeah, it was disturbing,
how quickly I fell into character.
-[ Laughs ] -It was really nice.
It was a nice palate cleanser because, you know,
Vision is sort of warmth personified.
-Yeah. -It was nice to go
and play a little, you know. bit of an ass[bleep].
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, he's a full [bleep]heel.
That was a really good clip because it gives you
a good sense of how the marriage is just off to a bad start
right from the gun.
-Right off the bat.
-Did you know much about this scandal?
-I didn't. It sort of
played out in the '50s and '60s
and it's going to be hard for you to believe,
but it was slightly before my time.
[ Laughter ] -No, I believe that, yeah.
-Yeah. So, no, I didn't. I didn't know anything about it.
-And I guess that speaks to this thing that I've often thought,
which is maybe I think us Americans assume
that every British person is deeply invested
in sort of the royal family
and its offshoots, but that's maybe not the case.
-Well, I think because you don't have to pay for it...
-Yeah, that's true. -you know?
[ Laughter ]
-You have a resentment about having to pay for it.
-Every time those kids get married,
it's like £36 million of taxpayers' dollars.
[ Laughter ] -And you can see it on the tax bill?
-Yeah.
Well, what you get is you get to watch
some medieval procession that you don't really understand
going on for £36 million.
-Claire Foy was in "The Crown."
-She was, yeah. -Wonderful in "The Crown."
-Very great. -It's wonderful to see her in this.
You weren't in "The Crown."
[ Laughter ] -[Both] Yeah.
-You're 100% right.
I'm like the only British actor
that hasn't been in "The Crown." -Yeah, that's what
I was kind of getting at. -Or "Harry Potter."
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-Truth is, Seth, I'm actually
from Hoboken. -Oh, wow!
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, and I just do this for work.
-It's really good. -Thank you very much.
-I mean, for somebody from Hoboken,
it's very, very convincing. [ Laughter ]
Your parents were actors.
-They were, yeah. -Was this something that,
from a very young age,
you thought you were going to jump into?
-No, I didn't want to do it at all.
-Because of of watching them
or...? -It's just a bit silly,
getting dressed up in other people's clothes.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, yeah.
You know? And so I wanted to be a guitar player.
I wanted to be a guitar player and I just wasn't very good,
so I sort of fell into acting?
Yeah, that's how that happened.
-So, how do you fall into it? Does somebody just kind of say
like, "Hey, you"? -Well, I was living
with these -- I had two roommates
and I was a busker on the streets
and the two roommates did a midnight flit
and left me with the rent
and the landlord took my guitars.
And so I sort of rung my parents up and went,
"I failed!" And I thought,
"What am I going to do with my --
I guess I'll do some acting."
[ Laughter ] That's really how it happened.
-You have children now.
Do you think you would recommend acting to them?
-God, no. -Okay.
[ Laughter ] -No!
-Are you afraid, though, that they might?
I mean, again, you live an interesting life.
Are you worried they're going to see it
and be like, "I want to do it"?
-Well, I've got two -- I've got three kids.
Two, I've put off acting.
I've got one left to put off acting.
My eldest child is an aeronautical engineer.
-Really?! -Yeah.
He's not biologically mine, which is why he's
[ Laughter ] an aeronautical engineer,
because he wasn't encumbered with my math genes.
I haven't understood a word he said to me since he was ten.
[ Laughter ] -Really? -Yeah.
-So he's that far advanced from you in maths and sciences?
-No idea. -Yeah.
That's got to be hard. [ Laughs ]
-Not really because there's my wife.
-Yeah, yeah, that's right. -Because my wife.
Because of my accent, my wife thought
I was super clever and stuff.
[ Laughter ]
Because you get away with it, with a British accent,
and she actually went to Yale, initially, to study physics
and she met me and she thought I was really smart
and I actually left school at 16.
[ Laughter ] And it was just awful,
watching the light die in her eyes as she...
[ Laughter ]
...realized actually how deeply
[ Laughter ] stupid and ill-educated I am.
-Before dinner parties, does she tell you like,
"Just maybe don't talk too much"?
-Yes! Yes. [ Laughter ]
-"Let other people do the talking."
That British thing where you're nodding.
-That's exactly what I do.
-Are your kids --
Do they like -- For example,
being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
is that something that your kids think is cool,
that their dad's an Avenger?
-Yes, but they torture me with it.
My daughter has moved
through all the different Avengers as her favorite.
It's never, never me. -Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
And, actually, just recently, I turned on --
I wanted to watch "Moon Knight," which is fantastic.
-A fantastic show, yeah, with Oscar Ethan.
-Exactly. And I tried to log in
to my Disney+ account and they had edited my profile.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah. -And I believe --
-Yeah, we have it here. So this is, again,
one of your children did this?
-Yeah, I have my suspicions,
but I don't actually know who. [ Laughter ]
-This is very cruel.
[ Laughter and applause ] -I mean --
Maybe you're all beginning to build up some, you know,
picture of my home life. [ Laughter ]
What I like is that I feel like that's the face
vision would make on the day he found out he won that.
[ Laughter ] -It's not even me!
It's a model of me.
-They didn't even use you.
[ Laughter ] -They didn't even use me!
-That must've been --
You know, I got to talk to Elizabeth about it.
That must've been such -- "WandaVision" must've been
an incredible show to do, as an actor,
just because it spanned so many different genres.
-Yeah, that was a real joy.
We didn't feel any pressure because we were supposed to come
second out of the gate and we thought
we were going to be the sort of kooky,
niche show that, you know, five people would watch,
but those five people would really love it.
And then we came out first and we kind of [bleep] ourselves
[ Laughter ] and then it went down really well.
But it was, it was so --
it was so lovely. I grew up watching
those sitcoms, you know.
I grew up watching "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
In London, in England, they would play,
you know, reruns on Saturdays and Sundays.
And I sort of had in my head, "I know what these shows are.
I know what Dick Van Dyke does."
And then I went back to sort of, you know, research them
and they are brilliant. He's brilliant.
-They really are. They're so well-choreographed,
everything about it.
-And they shot them in two days.
I mean, it was extraordinary.
-And you actually shot -- I guess the first episode
was actually in front of a live studio audience.
-Yeah. -And when was the last time
you had performed in front of a live studio audience?
-So, 25 years prior to that [ Laughter ]
and I was really resistant.
I really didn't want to do it
and I said, "I think this is a really bad idea."
And they said, "Well, we think it's the only way
we can sort of get the energy that they have
when they're projecting past the cameras to an audience."
And I said, "Okay, okay."
And I was so nervous
and then I got on stage, I got my first laugh,
and I'm so shallow that I was like,
"I've wasted my entire life!
[ Laughter ] I should be doing sitcoms.
What have I done?" Yeah.
-Well, it paid off. I think we're all very happy
you've managed to find a way to do both
and thanks so much for being here.
It's been too long. Come back again soon.
[ Cheering and applause ] Paul Bettany, everybody.
"A Very British Scandal" is streaming now on Prime Video.