Saturday, August 22, 2015

‘X-Men’ and ‘Star Trek’ star Sir Patrick Stewart: I never knew I could do comedy

While he’s best known as Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the Star Trek series, Stewart has spent more of his profession on stage than in the X-Mansion or on the USS Enterprise.
“It’s a fairly recent development, ” Patrick Stewart said. “When We first worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, I were only available in what’s called ‘low comedy’ roles, like Touchstone, Grumio and Lancelot. Then, something happened, and I was just playing deeply disturbed kings and neurotics. I never truly went back. ”
After commanding a starship and a group of mutants in sci-fi and superhero franchises, Stewart’s newest mission is starring in his first-ever TV humor. With his role in Starz’ Blunt Talk as kinky newsman Walter Blunt, the classically trained theatre acting professional is discovering at the age of 75 that he can make individuals laugh.

‘X-Men’ and ‘Star Trek’ star Sir Patrick Stewart
‘X-Men’ and ‘Star Trek’ star Sir Patrick Stewart

Besides playing everyone from Claudius to Macbeth, he’s performed a one-man rendition of A Christmas Carol as well as finished a West End and Broadway run a year ago of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot with buddy Sir Ian McKellen.

“It’s no different, ” said Stewart. “It’s only a lot more fun. The fundamentals don’t change because going for reality, realism and spontaneity is all still the objective, but now it is also about going for humour. I’ve found the more severe you play the words from the script, the funnier they are able to become, so to my relief, it works. ”

Sir Patrick and the Blunt Talk team
The Blunt Talk team and Sir Patrick 
In Blunt Talk, Stewart plays a cheeky Falklands War expert and host of a cable news show. In the premier, the booze-and-cocaine-loving anchorman is caught in a car having a prostitute and attempts to rehabilitate his image through interviewing himself.

“Walter wants to change the world, but their private life is a complete disaster, ” said Stewart. “That’s where a lot of the humour comes from in the show. Just how can he possibly balance his journalistic passions and keep their life in somewhat reasonable order? ”



The collection is executive produced by Seth MacFarlane, who worked with Stewart on Family Guy and American Dad, and developed by Jonathan Ames, who collaboratively fashioned the role associated with Blunt of Stewart.

“I wrote this show with regard to Patrick Stewart and created the character for him. It had been the actor first, then the character. It began along with how he looked. Patrick Stewart has always performed leaders and heroes. I wanted to make Walter Bunt the hero but a confused hero, a Don Quixote, ” he said.

“It feels so good and so various, ” he said. “I truly felt when The Next Generation ended in ’94, I could not face that stress and those hours any more. The idea of a half-hour comedy display had never been part of my game plan until Seth called me, and here I am. There’s no going back right now. ”

Stewart said he didn’t think he’d actually be back as a regular on a TV series after Star Trek: The Next Generation warped away over 20 years ago.



Sir Patrick Stewart has confessed he never really considered himself a funny guy when it came to acting roles. See more in the original post 


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