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TeaThe three of them entered the restaurant like soldiers emerging from the fog of war. david harwood shows the way, beside toby jones And Caitlin Fitzgerald, bringing up the rear. They appear with bleary eyes. A little shocked. “It’s OK when you’re in the rehearsal tunnel during the week, but then the weekend comes and you fall over and have to climb up a ladder to get back into that position again,” huffs Jones, clawing at the air. It’s the Monday blues times a million.
to be fair, othello Taxing at the best of times. Shakespeare’The tragedy of a great black general being incited to murder his wife, it is full of violence, racism, murder and misogyny. Watching a drama can feel like an emotional sandblast; I’m sure acting in it is a completely different thing. Harewood says fortunately, he has a “drama therapist” at his disposal for this new production, directed by Tom Morris. He last played the lead role in 1997, becoming the first black actor to play Othello at the National. This time, he stars opposite Jones’s Iago, Fitzgerald’s Desdemona – and his drama therapist Samantha.
“She helps us feel those dark moments in the room,” says Harewood, “but also, Jones says, she also helps them process it afterward.” “It’s weird because I think, what have people done before, you know? And I think the answer is, go to the pub!” They all laugh. Fitzgerald quipped, “I mean, there’s a bar backstage at the National.”
We give up drinks today. The trio are on a lunch break from rehearsal and the clock is ticking, so in quick succession: a medium rare steak with truffle fries for Harewood, and two Green Goddess salads for Fitzgerald and Jones. I go for the Caesar. “It’s really delicious,” Fitzgerald assured me. “If I didn’t have to smooch David I would order the same.” Harewood laughs, pointing out the fact that he ate Thai green curry before their first kiss. “But I warned you and I ate about 45 Listerine strips,” she says. “My mouth was on fire!”
Instead of remaining silent in silence, all three are finding the presence of a drama therapist invaluable. However Jones, a beloved telly fixture who has recently been seen ITV’s phone hacking drama hackHe is the first to admit that he didn’t like the idea initially. He says, “I thought, what is she going to do? This was very unusual. The way my generation was trained was very different; you have to learn to be tough and be tough with each other.” “But that resulted in misogyny.”
I keep having nightmares about people hitting me so maybe I need to work with a drama therapist a little more
Caitlin Fitzgerald
Like Jones, Harewood is known for her prolific work on the small screen. Like Jones, he is also 59 years old and has had enough of a walk to remember the time without any protection under his feet. “There’s a fine line between coddling actors and allowing them to talk when they’re uncomfortable,” he says. “I definitely grew up in a generation when there was nothing like that, and I think I’ve been harmed and benefited.”
As Chairman of London’s Rada Drama School, Harewood is in a better position than most to comment on his peers in training. “I think now young actors have become a little hesitant. They might say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that. It makes me uncomfortable,’ whereas I think, and maybe it’s the generation I grew up in, but sometimes you to do Must feel uncomfortable.” That’s why Fitzgerald became an actor, she says, out of feeling uncomfortable.
But the purpose of a drama therapist is not to provide round-the-clock comfort; This gives actors a long time to explore, while knowing they can find their way. “You can go to these dark, bleak, dirty places and hopefully leave it behind at the end of the day,” says Fitzgerald. “Speaking for myself, I’d rather leave the theater not feeling like a victim.” He joked, “I’ve been having nightmares about people hitting me, so maybe I need to work with that a little more.”
Fitzgerald tells us a story she heard about Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith when they othello at the Old Vic in 1964; Apparently Smith was so fed up with Olivier’s diva behavior that during one of their fight scenes he pulled his fingers across his black-painted face, leaving Olivier to look like a child with a tiger face painted on for the rest of the performance. I tell them another story I’d heard in which Olivier, unhappy with Smith offstage, hit her so hard during a scene that she started seeing stars. “And that’s exactly what happens when you don’t have a drama therapist!” Fitzgerald yells.
It’s certainly a different world now than when Harewood made history as Othello in 1997. “Strange that it took so long,” he says, shaking his head, “and a lot of the broadsheet newspapers were saying it was a terrible idea.” how come? “legacy. black face Was removed from television in 1982, but somehow survived stage blackface [reckoning] And by the 1990s, actors were darkening it.
As a brief aside: Harewood clarifies that her comments defending the use of blackface in 2023 were taken out of context. “The BBC were taking liberties in what I said,” he says now, adding that the ordeal was infuriating. “This was nonsense. I jokingly said that if a white actor wanted to play Othello in blackface, do so and I would probably sit in the front row laughing. Of course, this was transposed to ‘David Harewood says white actors can black up.'” (An addendum was added to the article in question, along with the change in title.)
The gravity of playing the role of Othello and the responsibility of being the first black actor at the National to do so was not lost on him at the time. “I wanted to play the character with more dignity as a real black actor rather than a pretentious black actor,” he says. “I was very concerned about authenticity, every minute, every second, every line was 100 percent authentic. And that obviously forced me to push the emotions, to push the anger.” He didn’t think twice about taking out his anger at that time on his Desdemona, Claire Skinner – to whom, by the way, Harewood would like to “formally apologise” for all the “screaming and scuffling”.
This time, Harwood says he was afraid to even touch that level of toxicity. “I was wondering, can I be that terrible? Am I allowed to be that terrible? Moving to that line, I felt really uncomfortable.” He had spent three weeks being “nice and polite David Harewood” and then suddenly he was growling at everyone. “Becoming a monster was very, very uncomfortable. It really shook me, I had to go into a corner and sob a little bit because the horror was overwhelming me.” However, with the help of a play therapist, he sorted it out, “and it became fun to play in that area”.
“Now we yell at each other all the time,” Fitzgerald says, smiling. It’s not without reason that Harewood calls Fitzgerald “one of the bravest actresses he’s ever worked with” – a compliment she’s critical of, but he doubles down on it: “You’re fearless.”
When you think of Othello’s sweet and submissive new wife Desdemona, “f***ing fearless” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, which, let’s face it, is a bit of a wet blanket. But Fitzgerald’s take on the character is far from ordinary. “My first meeting with Tom [the director]I came over wearing my worst leather jacket and told him I didn’t want to do the holy and virgin thing and he said, ‘Great!’ And I mean, trying to have a voice in a man’s world is definitely a challenge that I know about.
In many ways, the basis of the play is Othello’s transformation from devoted husband to jealous murderer out of money. It is a sharp silvery change, white hot and slippery. The job of any actor is to make it believable, to embody what is already present in Othello to make his corruption possible. For Harewood, that thing is “vulnerability.”
We live in a world where you have to be the alpha male, everyone is trying to be ‘alpha’
david harwood
“We live in a world where you have to be the alpha male, everyone is trying to be ‘alpha’ – and I work a lot in mental health and you realize that men don’t just talk about their wife. You need to talk about your feelings. It’s so mental that we don’t do that – and we should. What we should really be doing is gathering around, having a cup of tea and having a chat, but we don’t.” And it comes out as aggression, toxicity – Fitzgerald interjects: “- and beating your wives!”
According to Jones, lack of communication between men has become the reason for this. his big hearted comedy detectoristAbout two ordinary people in search of treasure, a huge hit. He credits his co-star and writer Mackenzie Crook, saying, “I think a lot of people see in that show an example of the gentlemanliness and male friendship that they yearn for.” “I think that’s why it really resonates with people. It’s a very progressive show in that way.”
Jones as Iago is a wonderful casting force. The actor is so often known for his kindness and perceived gentleness that it’s easy to forget his potential for those more mustache-twirling roles. For example, he was surprisingly convincing as the morally ambiguous Truman Capote. Infamous And also the psychologically opaque Alfred Hitchcock GirlIt has been over a decade since he performed Shakespeare on stage and Jones is a little intimidated by the technical challenge presented by Iago’s fast, fluid speech, or as he put it: “complete verbal diarrhea”.
“But still, I feel intimidated by most jobs these days, whereas when I was younger, I would just do them!” He adds. “Now that I’m older and I should think I know how to do it, I feel exactly the opposite; I don’t even know if I can do it anymore!” But it’s a nice feeling, isn’t it? Feeling so invested in your work so late in your life? “Ah, yes, as ancient as I am,” he laughs, cupping his hands around his ears and joking that he is hard of hearing: “You’ll have to repeat that.”
Over the decades, there have been countless iterations of othelloPresentations set in modern-day wartime, amid the fluorescent bureaucracy of a 1930s office, and even in the galaxies of outer space. However, details related to this are under wraps. “It’s kind of beyond time and space,” Jones says, laughing at how out of place he sounds. “There are echoes of today throughout the play,” said Harewood, who is a little more forward. “It’s a place where racism exists, but a person can be successful in that racist society just like in today’s society. And there are calls to ‘send them back,’ which, of course, is very reflective of today.”
What they will say is that his take on Shakespeare’s tragedy has more bearing on the rhythms of a modern thriller than a 400-year-old text. What viewers take from it is up to them, Jones says. “I just want the same thing I want from anything: I want them to be thoroughly entertained.”
At the Theater Royal Haymarket, London, until 17 January 2026; othelloonstage.com