Rufus on BBC Breakfast 25 October!!
Oct 25, 2010 21:36:36 GMT
Post by GreenEyesToo on Oct 25, 2010 21:36:36 GMT
Aaargh! The quality of my tape isn't too good, sadly. Anyway, in case it doesn't turn up on Youtube or nobody can transfer it, here's my transcript.
(RS = Rufus, KF = Ken Follett, BT = Bill Turnbull, SW = Sian Williams)
(First they played the clip of the scene where Tom and his men go to the quarry and Tom squares up to William Hamleigh's henchman Walter.)
BT: I thought, ah right, Rufus is going to get in a bit of a ruck here...and actually you don't.
RS: No. No, I don't.
BT: You let someone else do it.
RS: I could've done - I could've done him. I could. If the script had allowed it (??). I'd have taken him down.
BT: Your character's too mild-mannered for that, aren't you?
RS: Well, I'm not going to say - at that stage I was, yeah.
SW: Oh, at that stage you were?
RS: (laughing) No, I'm not making, I'm not making any big promises.
SW: Had you read Ken's book before you made the series?
RS: Well, I hadn't read it when I first heard about it, but I was given the first....two episodes, and then I very quickly.....well, I very quickly got the book, I didn't very quickly read it. I read it, I took a lot of time on it. And that was what I based, you know...I mean, it was such a fantastic character, I knew very quickly, but a lot of my research was basically reading the book.
BT: Ken, how close to real...the real facts is the book and the plot (inaudible)?
KF: Well, he's much too handsome.
(Rufus pulls a face)
SW: Yeah (inaudible)
KF: But actually, that's true - but television is like that, isn't it? Regan, the mother of William Hamleigh, is supposed to be hideous - in the book, her face is covered with boils, and they cast Sarah Parish - who's beautiful, beautiful -
RS: She's so good.
KF: - there was a little birthmark instead of this hideous face.
RS: What you'd call, uh, Hollywood Ugly - it was either that or glasses.
KF: And actually, when you see, when you've read a book and you see the movie, or the mini-series, you always think "Oh! He doesn't look like that", because you have your own...image, of the character, and then the actor comes on and of course it's never what you've...but, but you know, it takes a good actor about five seconds to change that. After seeing a good actor at work, just for a few seconds, the actor becomes that character and you forget your previous image, don't you?
SW: What is this period in history called The Anarchy? I don't remember studying The Anarchy.
KF: Well, there was a conflict over who was going to be king, and it ended up King Stephen, but he was opposed by the Empress Maud, and for a long time - and I chose that period of history so that there would be no central authority, no strong government in London, to settle disputes that happened in the countryside, so in Kingsbridge, which is the fictional village, there are these disputes between the Church and the local earl, WIlliam Hamleigh, played by David Oakes, and so in all these conflicts, and there's nobody they can appeal to, they have to sort it out themselves.
BT: And, but you are...well, so far as we've seen so far, a nice fellow. You play -
RS: You don't know if I'm going to turn, in episode 3! (chuckles)
BT: Ah, yes, because normally - well, makes a pleasant change for you, I would have thought. Well, not a pleasant change -
RS: Well, I've played a few good guys, but you're more kind of...you're more...it's about the things you're in that are successful. Really - you know. So it's nice to play good - I mean, it's one of the reasons that I kind of, I read it and kind of actively campaigned to play Tom. I don't think it's the way they'd originally seen me, but they came round to the idea, so...
SW: And there's obviously this witchcraft element as well? Because, um, the woman that you're involved with, at the moment, as we left the last part, has come back. She's a witch.
KF: Ellen - yes.
SW: Sent out, now she's come back.
KF: She lives in the forest, and she's weird, she's definitely weird -
SW: She is a bit strange, isn't she?
KF: - played by a wonderful German actress called Natalia Woerner. Very sexy.
RS: And crazy (
).
BT: And it was filmed actually - was it in Hungary?
RS: Budapest. Yeah.
BT: And heard you saying something about it was winter-time - it was supposed to be winter...but it was in the middle of summer -
RS: Well, I mean it's just something about filming, it's like it was unbelievably hot when you're supposed to be chilled to the bone, and then they digitally add little...lovely...you know (waving hands artistically), decorous flakes of snow...settling on your nose, and then -
KF: And we were all wearing these medieval robes, of course -
RS: (groaning) Ohhhh......
KF: - I had a small part in it as well.
BT: Did you?
(clip being shown)
KF: - wearing these -
RS: He was very good, too.
KF: - immaculate robes.
(All talking over each other for a few seconds)
SW: - are you in the (inaudible), digging away?
KF: No, no, later towards the end. I'm at a lunch where...people are explaining the history of Jack...uh, Eddie Redmayne plays Jack, and it's what happened to his father and so on, that mystery's explained on one of those -
RS: It was quite a big day, I was annoyed not to be there, actually.
SW: That must have been really good fun, though, wasn't it?
KF: It was.
SW: There must have been a small bit of you thinking "if that gets cut, I'm gonna kill 'em!"
KF: Yeah.
RS: I think it's one of the only times an actor can be that safe that he wasn't going to be cut, right?
BT: And also, didn't everybody else take the mickey - saying, "oh, Ken, go on, let's have a look"? ()
KF: They were terribly nice to me. There I was, with really top professional -
RS: He was very good.
KF: - actors, and they were -
RS: - he was very good -
KF: - very good to me.
BT: It's been hugely popular in America, this series, hasn't it?
RS: Mm-hm.
KF: Yeah, it's been great. yeah. And Spain. And Italy. It's done really well.
SW: What do they get about this sort of period in...this peculiar period in British history - why has it taken off, do you think?
RS: Well, I don't know, but I just wanted to say in Budapest it's a hugely popular book, that we...we did a little bit of stonemasonry practice. And the end of the day - just three or four days, chipping away at stones, all of the stonemasons came in with their own copy of the book for us to...And they were not new books - these were dog-eared, well-loved copies.
BT: In Hungarian?
RS: Yeah, absolutely - (pronounces TPOTE in Hungarian) or whatever, and um....it just turned out that everyone we knew, the girls in the coffee shop, they all had copies of it, so it was very big, so there was an enormous audience for it.
SW: When you say you were chipping away at stones...
RS: (raising an eyebrow and speaking archly) Yes.....
SW: So did you create anything beautiful?
RS: (laughing) No! I don't think I could have sold on the market what I'd made - which is basically...what we'd started was a stone, and then you ended up with a stone with some marks on it, which was courtesy of me.
SW: Yeah, but it's your stone.
RS: But my stone, yeah.
SW: I think you could sell that, probably.
RS: If I wanted to carry it, if I wanted to pay the excess baggage, absolutely.
SW: Nice to see you both.
RS: Thank you.
BT: The next episode of The Pillars of the Earth, on Saturday at 9 o'clock, Channel 4.
RS: Mm-hm.
(RS = Rufus, KF = Ken Follett, BT = Bill Turnbull, SW = Sian Williams)
(First they played the clip of the scene where Tom and his men go to the quarry and Tom squares up to William Hamleigh's henchman Walter.)
BT: I thought, ah right, Rufus is going to get in a bit of a ruck here...and actually you don't.
RS: No. No, I don't.
BT: You let someone else do it.
RS: I could've done - I could've done him. I could. If the script had allowed it (??). I'd have taken him down.
BT: Your character's too mild-mannered for that, aren't you?
RS: Well, I'm not going to say - at that stage I was, yeah.
SW: Oh, at that stage you were?
RS: (laughing) No, I'm not making, I'm not making any big promises.
SW: Had you read Ken's book before you made the series?
RS: Well, I hadn't read it when I first heard about it, but I was given the first....two episodes, and then I very quickly.....well, I very quickly got the book, I didn't very quickly read it. I read it, I took a lot of time on it. And that was what I based, you know...I mean, it was such a fantastic character, I knew very quickly, but a lot of my research was basically reading the book.
BT: Ken, how close to real...the real facts is the book and the plot (inaudible)?
KF: Well, he's much too handsome.
(Rufus pulls a face)
SW: Yeah (inaudible)
KF: But actually, that's true - but television is like that, isn't it? Regan, the mother of William Hamleigh, is supposed to be hideous - in the book, her face is covered with boils, and they cast Sarah Parish - who's beautiful, beautiful -
RS: She's so good.
KF: - there was a little birthmark instead of this hideous face.
RS: What you'd call, uh, Hollywood Ugly - it was either that or glasses.
KF: And actually, when you see, when you've read a book and you see the movie, or the mini-series, you always think "Oh! He doesn't look like that", because you have your own...image, of the character, and then the actor comes on and of course it's never what you've...but, but you know, it takes a good actor about five seconds to change that. After seeing a good actor at work, just for a few seconds, the actor becomes that character and you forget your previous image, don't you?
SW: What is this period in history called The Anarchy? I don't remember studying The Anarchy.
KF: Well, there was a conflict over who was going to be king, and it ended up King Stephen, but he was opposed by the Empress Maud, and for a long time - and I chose that period of history so that there would be no central authority, no strong government in London, to settle disputes that happened in the countryside, so in Kingsbridge, which is the fictional village, there are these disputes between the Church and the local earl, WIlliam Hamleigh, played by David Oakes, and so in all these conflicts, and there's nobody they can appeal to, they have to sort it out themselves.
BT: And, but you are...well, so far as we've seen so far, a nice fellow. You play -
RS: You don't know if I'm going to turn, in episode 3! (chuckles)
BT: Ah, yes, because normally - well, makes a pleasant change for you, I would have thought. Well, not a pleasant change -
RS: Well, I've played a few good guys, but you're more kind of...you're more...it's about the things you're in that are successful. Really - you know. So it's nice to play good - I mean, it's one of the reasons that I kind of, I read it and kind of actively campaigned to play Tom. I don't think it's the way they'd originally seen me, but they came round to the idea, so...
SW: And there's obviously this witchcraft element as well? Because, um, the woman that you're involved with, at the moment, as we left the last part, has come back. She's a witch.
KF: Ellen - yes.
SW: Sent out, now she's come back.
KF: She lives in the forest, and she's weird, she's definitely weird -
SW: She is a bit strange, isn't she?
KF: - played by a wonderful German actress called Natalia Woerner. Very sexy.
RS: And crazy (
).BT: And it was filmed actually - was it in Hungary?
RS: Budapest. Yeah.
BT: And heard you saying something about it was winter-time - it was supposed to be winter...but it was in the middle of summer -
RS: Well, I mean it's just something about filming, it's like it was unbelievably hot when you're supposed to be chilled to the bone, and then they digitally add little...lovely...you know (waving hands artistically), decorous flakes of snow...settling on your nose, and then -
KF: And we were all wearing these medieval robes, of course -
RS: (groaning) Ohhhh......
KF: - I had a small part in it as well.
BT: Did you?
(clip being shown)
KF: - wearing these -
RS: He was very good, too.
KF: - immaculate robes.
(All talking over each other for a few seconds)
SW: - are you in the (inaudible), digging away?
KF: No, no, later towards the end. I'm at a lunch where...people are explaining the history of Jack...uh, Eddie Redmayne plays Jack, and it's what happened to his father and so on, that mystery's explained on one of those -
RS: It was quite a big day, I was annoyed not to be there, actually.
SW: That must have been really good fun, though, wasn't it?
KF: It was.
SW: There must have been a small bit of you thinking "if that gets cut, I'm gonna kill 'em!"
KF: Yeah.
RS: I think it's one of the only times an actor can be that safe that he wasn't going to be cut, right?
BT: And also, didn't everybody else take the mickey - saying, "oh, Ken, go on, let's have a look"? (
)KF: They were terribly nice to me. There I was, with really top professional -
RS: He was very good.
KF: - actors, and they were -
RS: - he was very good -
KF: - very good to me.
BT: It's been hugely popular in America, this series, hasn't it?
RS: Mm-hm.
KF: Yeah, it's been great. yeah. And Spain. And Italy. It's done really well.
SW: What do they get about this sort of period in...this peculiar period in British history - why has it taken off, do you think?
RS: Well, I don't know, but I just wanted to say in Budapest it's a hugely popular book, that we...we did a little bit of stonemasonry practice. And the end of the day - just three or four days, chipping away at stones, all of the stonemasons came in with their own copy of the book for us to...And they were not new books - these were dog-eared, well-loved copies.
BT: In Hungarian?
RS: Yeah, absolutely - (pronounces TPOTE in Hungarian) or whatever, and um....it just turned out that everyone we knew, the girls in the coffee shop, they all had copies of it, so it was very big, so there was an enormous audience for it.
SW: When you say you were chipping away at stones...
RS: (raising an eyebrow and speaking archly) Yes.....
SW: So did you create anything beautiful?
RS: (laughing) No! I don't think I could have sold on the market what I'd made - which is basically...what we'd started was a stone, and then you ended up with a stone with some marks on it, which was courtesy of me.
SW: Yeah, but it's your stone.
RS: But my stone, yeah.
SW: I think you could sell that, probably.
RS: If I wanted to carry it, if I wanted to pay the excess baggage, absolutely.
SW: Nice to see you both.
RS: Thank you.
BT: The next episode of The Pillars of the Earth, on Saturday at 9 o'clock, Channel 4.
RS: Mm-hm.
)
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