Entertainment
‘Downton Abbey’ star Dan Stevens stars in classic ‘Blithe Spirit’
Fans of the Downton Abbey series will long remember the last episode of Season 3. The character Matthew Crawley, who was the series’ main male romantic, heir to the Earl of Grantham title and a nice guy, has been killed. . This plot shocked and angered viewers. But it was a different story for Dan Stevens, the man who played it for those first three seasons. His career took off.
The British actor had done a lot of theater before and was racking up appearances in a number of TV series, mini-series and TV movies when he landed the role on Downton. But three years of living among the people upstairs and downstairs in North Yorkshire Manor was enough; it was time to spread his acting wings. A play in New York (The Heiress) led to a role in one movie (A Walk Among the Tombstones), small plays in other films, a lead role under a lot of makeup in Beauty and the Beast, and three seasons as a leader in the sci-fi action series Legion.
In the new movie Blithe Spirit, a remake of Noel Cowards’ 1941 play, which became a classic 1945 film starring Rex Harrison, Stevens plays the male lead, Charles Condomine, an alcoholic trying to adapt one of his own novels actually written by someone else in one screenplay, but suffers from writer’s block, and is harassed by his needy wife (Isla Fisher), the ghost of his mischievous first wife (Leslie Mann), and a fraudulent clairvoyant (Judi Dench). In acting terms, Stevens tries his hand at a raucous and vicious comedy. He spoke about the film by phone from his home in Los Angeles.
Q: How did Blithe Spirit come into your life?
A: There was a kind of circularity. My first theater work in the West End was in a production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, starring Judi Dench, and directed by Sir Peter Hall. And now years later his son Ed approached me and said, ‘There’s a really fun new adaptation of Blithe Spirit, I’m going to direct it, you wanna be involved? And there were all the right characteristics of something that I would like to do.
Q: So, did you go back to watch the Rex Harrison movie from 1945?
A: I know the Rex Harrison version, but I wouldn’t say I reviewed her for that. There is no point in doing something the same way again. In my mind, I’m not doing it for cowardly purists. It’s to present some comedy and silliness based on something that was written by Coward, but to a modern audience, and hopefully with a little modern flavor.
Q: Was there anything in particular that made you want to play Charles Condomine?
A: I always thought of him as some kind of classic British character, a man on the phone, whether John Cleese type, or maybe Leonard Rossiter. Men who are sort of on the verge of a nervous breakdown, usually fueled by a martini or two. I always thought there was something funny about their pain, in a way. Their tragedy is that they are just ridiculous and funny.
Q: I have two questions from the start of your career. What were you doing right before you found out you landed the role at Downton Abbey?
A: Our first child had just been born. So, probably right before I got this job, I was changing a diaper.
Q: And is it true that you did a stand-up comedy?
A: I did it as a student, and shortly after. I love to go there and watch it; I love it as an art form. I had the opportunity to try it with the Cambridge Footlights [sketch comedy group]. Writing your own stuff and making it work on stage, with just you and a microphone, is a truly enviable skill, and I loved doing it. But I never really had the ambition to be a stand-up, in the long term,
Q: You moved from England to the United States a few years ago. Was this yet another case of too high taxation there or was it strictly a career change?
R: I would credit [writer-director] Scott Frank for that. He offered me the role in A Walk Among The Tombstones. We were talking about the role in that movie, and he said, I’ve never seen you do that before; I would love to see you try. But the attitude in England, too often, was that I’ve never seen you do this before; I don’t think you can do it. I was so encouraged by the Scotts attitude and belief. And then Adam Wingard came up with the guest and said, I’ve never seen the guy from Downton Abbey do an action movie, but I’d love to see you try that. And that’s what turns me on as an actor. I want to be challenged and I want to surprise people.
Blithe Spirit is theaters of insects and on VOD.
Ed Symkus can be contacted at [email protected]
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