Let’s do this. We need to have a conversation about Benedict Cumberbatch’s Richard III wiglet. IT IS AWFUL. There. Conversation over!
The BBC’s Twitter account issued a flurry of tweets today about Richard III, The Hollow Crown and they ended up releasing the first official photo from Cumby’s turn. He’s currently filming his part in The Hollow Crown, and Judi Dench has said that they’re probably going to be filming for the next five months. You can read more about the production here. The BBC is really laying out some money for these actors and for a really high-quality production. Bendy is going to be in the Henry VI part and Richard III, obviously.
I am by no means a Shakespeare expert and Richard III is far from my favorite play, so maybe I’m not qualified to make this kind of assessment, but… why does Richard look so awful? Like, why are they styling Benedict to look so mangy and unwashed? I blame the wiglet. With a better wig, this wouldn’t be so bad. Spend a little money on a good wig, BBC.
By the way, I think the BBC released this first “official” photo because Cumberbitches were stalking the set and tweeting photos.
Photos courtesy of the BBC’s Twitter.
If the wig folks were going for Richard III inspired by Edward Scissorhands, then they NAILED it.
The horse looks amused…
I think he looks about right for the times. Richard III was no glamour piece.
Agree I immediately thought the same thing, they were all a little bit smelly and none too clean in Medieval England so he just looks in character to me. Shakespeare wrote Richard as an absolute rotter as a piece of Tudor propaganda – he never wrote him as a handsome Prince.
Came here to say the same thing. Hair was not pretty back then!
The images of him with the smooth pageboy cut were court pictures so I doubt his hair would’ve been that kind of perfect in battle. It’s not fantastic in terms of wigs but I think it’s scene-appropriate.
I completely agree.
he looks good and in character
Eh. I don’t mind the wiglet. And BBC historical drama is always welcome 🙂
Um. Oh my god. WTF were they thinking?! I know that the few portarits of R3 that are around have him with long hair, as was the style back then. But they could have simply left his hair (glorious, glorious) alone. Many men had quite short hair, esp. in war/battle. It kept the lice factor down. My only comfort from that stillis that man’s seat. Perfection.Please stop consulting Travolta’s hair person.
Uh eww
What a cuberabundant day today! Or is it cumberedundant? 😀
Don’t agree about the wig though. He looks quite fierce!
…or Tarzan, Lord Greystoke.
I’m sure I’ve seen this hairdo on the (rather wonderful) Mat Baynton of Horrible Histories…
http://verecunda.tumblr.com/post/6007717025/obligatory-dick-turpin-picspam
Thanks for that, that’s got to be the campest Dick Turpin I have ever seen 😀
🙂 You may also enjoy the video it’s taken from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdKjY7AOgA
(For non-UK readers, Horrible Histories is a brilliant comedy/ history series, ostensibly for kids. The songs are hilarious – this one’s based on Adam & the Ants.)
LOL 😀
J’adore ‘horrible histories’. ‘Born to Rule’ by the 4 Georges boy band is a masterpiece that should have topped the charts!!!
HORRIBLE HISTORIES!!!
The best reason for YouTube to exist when I first discovered it. Um, of course there have been a few more good reasons since. 😀
Mat Baynton is delicious. He is also a great actor with incredible facial expressions.
All the cast is fantastic, really. Never has a ‘children’ show been so educational and funny at the same time.
If you have not seen HH (Horrible Histories), check it out. It’s totally worth it.
I agree with LAK as the 4 Georges song is pure genius and should have topped the charts.
“We were boooorn to ruuuule oooover you.”
I’m off to youtube!
I like the Batch but even I’m getting Cumberfatigue. Not with him, he’s doing this thing but here.
Yet still I click. Meh.
Not with him
He’s doing this thing
But here
Yet still I click
Meh
Sounds like a beautiful Haiku.
At least this Richard III isn’t deformed like he’s usually portrayed. I am wondering if there’s a withered arm under that cape.
Or a hump?
I was just about to say that.
I like Benedict Cumberbatch with the wig. Yes it’s not top quality, but I’ve seen worse in films.
And I prefer long-haired dudes to short-haired ones, so this wins by default.
He had curvature of the spine IRL, if I’m recalling correctly, so some abberation from “typical” body would be expected, but I wonder if they are going with the Shakespeare depiction of him as “horribly deformed”…Or if it’s going to be just a slight hunch and a nod to having a spinal issue
Wouldn’t it be great if it were the Blackadder interpretation? (Richard = the tall, lithe, and thoroughly benevolent, Peter Cook!)
I can’t wait for the scene where Richard seduces the recent widowed Lady Anne. That scene is hot! 😉
It is a totally hot scene – but that wig would kill even the widowed Lady Anne’s Lady Boner.
I hate that scene, totally misogynist.
he does not seduce her -he basically he gives her no choice. This is not the White Queen .She hates him but he manipulates her into believing it will be a safe alliance,
The best scene is the one between Queen Elizabeth and Richard 111 if It us done well they have a lengthy slagging match re his proposed marriage to Anne . I think Keeley Hawes will be playing her but there are two queen Elizabeth’s
Wait, where’s the cigarette?
Haha!
At least the poor sod’s still got his horse…..
🙁
he has a stash under his cloak
I have to admit i had to search Cumberbatch in that photo. The horse is an eyecatcher and very beautiful!
Mte. Beautiful animal.
Yeah, love the horse! And it’s grinning! 😀
My first thought was “Oh no!” but it soon evolved into “Oh… maybe?”
Didn’t Martin Freeman play Richard III in theatre? How was he? And I think it’s cute that he and Ben are both playing the same role (only different settings and different acting environments).
The play itself got good reviews and his performance in particular.
I saw the play. I was sort of more interested in seeing Martin’s interpretation than Benedict’s, since Martin is not an actor who’d come to mind when anyone thinks of Richard III. I feel like I know exactly how Benedict is going to play the character. He’ll be great, of course, but his casting isn’t weird or a bit out of nowhere.
Richard III is a fairly ridiculous, showboating role. He’s the Shakespeare character actors play when they want to do some SHAKESPEAREAN ACTING and they’re too old for Hamlet and too young for King Lear (except Benedict’s doing it the wrong way round…).
Anyway, Martin was really good as Richard. He was perfect for the dark humour in the piece. He dragged moments out and threw in little quirks and asides that were obviously meant to disorientate the actors and the audience. He made me feel uneasy, in a good way. The production itself, though, was a bit flat. It was set in an office in the 70s, for some reason, and felt static and restricting.
It feels like the photo of Benedict is missing a pout.
I thought Freemans production was interesting but they cut the play so badly that it undermined the secondary characters and they lost a lot of oomph.
Martin was good but not epic but he did bring the humour out and made you feel uncomfortable.
Well, you have to keep in mind that Richard III is (at least in part) full of Tudorist propaganda. This was to legitimize their claim to the throne and discredit Richard’s (even though he was, y’know, DEAD and all) which is why the role is so very hamtastic and hokey. It’s also how the deformity thing got started. It’s true the man had scoliosis or something similar, the Tudors and their supporters just sort of…ran with it. A lot.
Urana: it’s not ‘just in part’ Tudor propaganda, it’s 100% Tudor Propaganda. The only true thing in it are the various characters’ names. The rest is made up for the reason you’ve pointed out.
Rigby
Great comment….and the ‘showboating’ aspect’s so true.
I saw Ian McKellan’s 30s fascist dictator, (dehumped, but smoking….), and Antony Sher’s bloody terrifying creeping black spider, with his groping long crutches, like additional limbs.
Both actors were clearly having the time of their lives. Bon courage, Benedict!
I needed a laugh this morning so thank you.
Ooh, now I miss the carefully crafted curl. I think if he had grown his own hair out to that length it wouldn’t look so stringy.
First time I found him attractive! I have a thing for long haired bad boys. I want to tear him down from that horse and hit it hard. And then steal the beautiful horse 🙂
Yep! Benedict/Hutchence is more fanciable, imo, than with the short back and sides. (Actually when I’m in charge, I’m making longer hair a tax-deductible thingy.)
Yes! More long haired men to the people! On the other hand, I would never get anything done ……could be worth it thou 🙂
I sigh at all the ridiculous inaccuracies thrown about vis a vis Richard 3.
Those Tudors have a lot to answer for and I hate that people take that shakespeare play as accurate history. It’s a piece of the worst kind of propaganda which is so sad considering some of the things we enjoy as a modern society that can be traced back to Richard 3.
Oh me too LAK, a fervent Plantagenette!
Bloødy Tudors and all those godawful half-timbered double garages all over the Home Counties!
🙁
yes but it does make for a great story if you do not take it to seriously.
Oh no question, Icerose…
Given the urgency of bolstering the legitimacy of Henry Tudor’s claim, Richard was traduced long before Shakespeare got hold of him. But thank gød he did!
If I were to be granted literary immortality, though I lose my good name, far rather it be at the hands of THE greatest writer (I shall brook no argument!!), than by the pen of the ruthless More.
Harrumph.
😉
Icerose: i’m a history buff with a particular interest in the Plantagenets. The story laid out in the play is complete hogwash. It doesn’t even fall under the umbrella of ‘inspired by true events’.
While we are here, i’m equally offended by Macbeth whose real life inspiration has been traduced by the play.
Overall, Shakespeare’s history plays are so riddled with historic inaccuracies that it makes my teeth ache. Which would be fine if people approached them as art rather than accurate history.
EDIT: look at some of the comments on this post. There are people asking about humps and withered arms, all things put forth by the play. A play which goes on to use his alleged disability as proof of his evil nature. Nuff said.
Actually, he DID have scoliosis of a severe degree. It wasn’t a “hump” but he would have had a visible and real difference in his body from a typical person of that time. That said, yeah calling him “Evil” for being disabled was and is shitty, as any right-thinking person knows.
LAK
But Icerose is right, it’s a stonking good story!
Be honest……the plays are worth the distortion of the facts, wouldn’t you say?
Still, as it happens, now Richard’s remains have been found (fancy apparating under a carpark!) and he has come back from the dead to clear his name and be allowed to stand up straighter, I would bet my last sixpence on Richard having been fully rehabilitated by 2025, and the play’s version of events being known as fiction by the vast majority. .
I love the vision of you wagging a finger at Shakespeare and taking him down a peg or too…..go girl!
😉
Unfortunately any ailments of the time were seen as “curses from god” or some sort of damned evidence, so I’m not too surprised that they held these things against him. Typically anything abnormal would have been hidden from the public, as we’ve found out later with various rulers.
I mean he’s no saint, but later rulers did things just as vile. He might have just been one of the first cases where it was so blatant and known by the public at the time of the events. That said, I’m not an expert so I can only guess based on some limited research.
Missmary: he had scoliosis and curvature of the spine, but he was also a great warrior – not an era where these titles were handed down on a plate simply because one was a royal/lord etc. Infact, being a lord, one had to prove themselves.
There is also the small matter of being born and lived at war. Clearly, his deformity didn’t hold him back.
Breezy: the Tudors expunged a lot of public records except the propaganda they put about. What we know about the real R3 is to be found in European records since ambassadors would update their sovereigns with copies of documents and correspondence. There was also unearthing records of contemporaries’ recollections of the period that show R3 was beloved and his death not the welcome event that the tudors put to history.
His own brother Edward IV so trusted him that he gave him command of the council of the north, effectively dividing England into 2 kingdoms, and the North loved him back.
Richard was also very open about his actions and answered his critics very publicly with speeches where he would lay out evidence to support his actions. All this was expunged by the Tudors under pain of death if caught with copies and or openly acknowledging it during their time.
The tudors went to extraordinary lengths to blacken R3. They didn’t stop at his death, every single one of them, from Henry Tudor to Elizabeth added a piece to the black puzzle to cover their treason and illegitimacy.
@LAK: There was a truly fascinating special on the other night on PBS’ “Voices of the Dead” series about him and they had a young man of his approx. height with the exact same spinal problem go through the things Richard III would have in terms of training, wearing armor, etc, and basically proved that he (the king) could have been an amazing warrior on horseback and while he may have had problems hand to hand due to how the curvature might have compressed his lung on one side, he was in no way “lame” or “defective” in battle. It was pretty fascinating to see how they reconstructed his life and death and knocked the whole Shakespeare/Tudor mythologies about him out of the water.
Thanks LAK,
This area definitely isn’t my specialty but it’s fascinating in a tragic way.
MissMary: I saw that programme. It was on CH 4 over here. The man used in the programme gave an interview saying he his own abilities improved 100% after the months of training he’d received to match the sort of training R3 would have received. He said that he felt so strong and capable afterwards that he sometimes forgot he had this disability.
On the subject of the series… what do y’all think of Andrew Scott being cast as Louis XI? Heck, what do y’all think of the rest of the casting, in general?
I’m a fan of Andrew’s work so I’m happy to get to see him again. I like his style. I have to admit I haven’t dug into the rest of the cast yet. I’m sort of waiting to see the performances before I find out too much. Otherwise I tend to pick things apart.
I may or may not have squealed a little when I heard about Andrew Scott in The Hollow Crown. Love to see more of him!
Haha remember guys, he’s not supposed to be attractive in this. I actually think they did a good job. If you look at the bust they made of him based on the bones they found, I think they did a good job framing his face with the hair.
Obviously it wouldn’t be amazing in battle (or really any other time with the hygiene practices of the day). You have to remember that even good looking portraits were propaganda, not just the fucked up ones.
They’re probably going a bit grittier too since his reputation is so poor. I’m sure that’s going to play a big part. I think that’s risky but probably more accurate than trying to clean up his image to make him attractive. I’m interested to see where it goes from here.
R3 wasn’t a saint, but he was loved. His poor reputation is a work of fiction put about by the tudors.
I can’t wait to see this being a Plantagenet junkie, especially following the War of the Roses. The North loved Richard since he grew up there and spent much of his time in that region. The city of York especially loved him and truly sorrowed at his death. I really wished his remains were to be reburied in York rather than Leicester because of the reciprocal affection each had for each other.
Despite his scoliosis, Richard was a master horseman to the degree where even his enemies marveled at his skill.
Feeshalori
Yes, York indeed…..(yet again, Westminster Abbey, as a king.)
Gosh, he’s really in the air since the Leicester discovery, (obvs, duh) which was an extraordinary flipping tale itself, wasn’t it?
.
Other influences are also being reassessed though….for example, the reputation of Thomas More, who with Henry VII perverted truth and damned Richard……More was deemed a true saint 50 years ago. But now the opposite’s true.
During that same period, historical fiction has found an insatiable, ever-expanding appetite in the general public, and people are absorbing far better researched amateur history than was available previously. The Innerweb of course had made every home a Bodleian Library. Being an amateur historian is quite possibly one of the nation’s top hobbies, and more rewarding than cupcake racing, or greyhound decorating.
Sorry, getting carried away…,tis.just that I’d assert that Richard is already taking shape outside of Shakespeare and beyond the confines of academic study, as people fossick about in the past as a leisure activity, which is a Jolly Good Thing, imo.
530 yrs since Bosworth next year…..I think Richard will be much more kindly remembered than even as recently as 1985.
How fantastic, seeing history rewritten and wrongs righted.
(Do excuse waffle, pinned to the sofa here by cats.)
As a monarch, Richard should be entitled to burial in Westminster. But I’m just glad that his remains were discovered and he’s to be interred with honor and dignity. I still can’t get over that he was discovered underneath a parking spot marked “R.” Talk about the obvious! And wouldn’t it be absolutely amazing if the age-old question of who murdered the princes in the Tower was revealed as a result of all new research being done? Alas, it may remain one of the unsolved mysteries of the ages, but one can dream that Richard could be exonerated of that dastardly act. He truly was tarred and feathered by Tudor propaganda.
And waffle away, Chris, I have cats of my own…….
The mystery of the princes in the tower is another one of those lies advanced by the tudors because in his own lifetime, the princes were designated missing not dead.
And because the princes were missing rather than dead, many a rebellion during the tudor era was formulated by people pretending to be the long disappeared princes. And the public, not least Henry Tudor himself, actually believed these pretenders.
The play definitively pins their alleged death on R3, but in reality, no one knew for sure that they were dead unless they had been involved in their death.
I agree, LAK, and there were other contenders including Henry Tudor, Margaret Beaufort and the Duke of Buckingham who had a vested interest in the death of the young princes, but unfortunately it’s Richard III who has been accused throughout history as the princes’ murderer. It’s only recently that there’s been some doubt cast upon Richard as the perpetrator due to the other parties who had a horse in that race.
some of the fan photos (unauthorized) show him looking a bit off kilter posture wise so they are probably going to show him with a bit of spinal curvature, but it wasn’t all that extreme as I recall.
There is a fairly new Channel 4 documentary,they are the folks who were involved with the Archaelogists and the lady from the Richard 111 society who had a young man with the same curvature as the remains of the King,and took him through the same challenges,very interesting indeed .I think it’s still avail on 4OD….The original documentary The King In The Car Park was fascinating,especially when they started to uncover the remains and found the spine!!It didn’t help that the archeologist put a mattock in his skull but having read the full version of his post mortem then that was a minor injury!!
This is a clip from an action scene so in defence of the ‘BEEB’ and the hair and make up dept it is accurate, as always ,and will look appropriate in the film I am sure
Shezza. On a horse.
Yep…that’s it!
I didn’t like the wig at first. Probably because I saw the fan photo. Very fuzzy. Its starting to grow on me a bit (yeah, I know. I used grow to describe hair). I’d do him, but what else is new?
This pic tells me that bbc is going for historical accuracy for looks. It will still be in the context of Shakespeare, however. I’m kind of surprised that shakespeare never took on the true royal monster-henry v iii. Probably because the Tudors were still reigning?
Shakespeare knew which side his bread was buttered on since he wrote during the Elizabethan period, so he in no way would write defamatory plays about the Tudors. If he didn’t want to be thrown into the Tower, he wouldn’t dream of writing a scandalous play about Elizabeth I’s dear old dad – even if it was the truth. That’s not how one obtained royal patronage, and not how you kept your head back then.
Both he and the horse look like they have a hangover.