Worshipping Dibley's high-priestess

December 13, 2007


RICHARD ARMITAGE, who spends most of his working life up against Robin Hood as the nefarious Guy of Gisborne, admits that even jobbing actors get star-struck.

He had to pinch himself, he says, when he recently did a casting with British theatre and television actor Patrick Stewart.

On the subject of playing opposite comedian Dawn French in the two Vicar of Dibley Christmas specials, he says it "took a long time before I stopped sitting there, looking across the table, and saying, what the f--- am I doing here?"

Armitage comes to the village of Dibley as Harry Kennedy, a London accountant in the midst of a seachange. Upon meeting the vicar of Dibley's St Barnabus' Church, Geraldine Granger (French), a romance is kindled.

"I suppose he's looking for some peace, on a little Buddhist journey," says Armitage. "It's not really explored in depth in the story but he's been working in the city and he's burned out and he's come to the country to find some harmony."

Harmony? Dibley? Hardly. Geraldine and Harry's romance hits its first stumbling block when he is seen with the very attractive Rosie (played by Keeley Hawes), while Alice (Emma Chambers), Dibley's verger (an Anglican layperson who works in the church), believes she is descended from Jesus, after reading The Da Vinci Code. (The clue? Her name rhymes with "chalice".)

Despite the long shelf life of the series — it premiered in 1994 — only 18 episodes have been produced, plus a handful of short segments for British charity Comic Relief.

While the early episodes focused on Geraldine's difficulty in adapting to country life, the town's difficulty in adapting to a female vicar and the romance between Alice and Hugo Horton (James Fleet), the last handful of episodes have explored Geraldine's desire to marry.

But is Harry Kennedy Mr Right? Armitage, who comes to the role with an impressive body of dramatic work behind him — the role of John Thornton in the television adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South and Macbeth, in the BBC's modern adaptation of Macbeth for its ShakespeaRe-Told series — says he just might be.

The most challenging aspect of the job, he says, was the looser, less text-based environment of comedy, where there is less emphasis on the complexities of the character and more emphasis on mining the moment for its humour.

"I think comedy writing is quite difficult because you don't really explain the character or display the character, but as an actor there are certain things that give you a heads-up. He's an accountant, and a London boy who had come to live in the country, so you can find the tone," he says.

But his biggest fear, he says, was the challenge of actually being funny. "I have done very, very little comedy, and I'm so not funny and Dawn is probably one of the funniest women in the country," he says.

"But the fantastic thing about Dawn was that she completely destroyed my fears about comedians. I'd always thought they would be the funniest people but she was tentative with everybody, particularly with me, and she found out where my sense of humour was laying and started to play with me.

Once she'd located it, she started pushing my buttons. We have very similar senses of humour and it wasn't until we'd finished filming that it occurred to me the reason we have similar senses of humour is that I grew up watching French & Saunders, so my sense of humour had been shaped by her."
The Vicar of Dibley airs Wednesday at 8.35pm on ABC.

Was denn, der Mann und nicht lustig?

Also der Inhalt des Interviews ist ja nicht neu (und damit meine ich nicht das Datum), aber wieder schön zu lesen. Ich finde es einfach nur mega sympathisch, wie wenig eingebildet Richard zu sein scheint und wieviel Respekt er anderen gegenüber erbringt.

Also der Inhalt des Interviews ist ja nicht neu (und damit meine ich nicht das Datum), aber wieder schön zu lesen. Ich finde es einfach nur mega sympathisch, wie wenig eingebildet Richard zu sein scheint und wieviel Respekt er anderen gegenüber erbringt.