Academy Award-winner Geoffrey Rush (Shine) returns as Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I's closest confidant, in the dramatic film Elizabeth: The Golden Age. In this sequel to 1998's critically acclaimed Elizabeth, Sir Walsingham continues his behind-the-scene maneuverings and uncovers a plot involving Elizabeth's cousin, Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton).
Geoffrey Rush Press Conference
Did you take a different approach to playing Sir Francis Walsingham this time?
“Shekhar said to me two years before we started filming, when the idea of the project was looming, he said — because there are quite different chapters in these two films, quite different historical time frames — he said, ‘Your role obviously in the first film was that you are mentoring this young woman coming to a position of power, and that she was deeply reliant on your philosophical and political resourcefulness.’ And he said, ‘I think probably the most interesting thing to explore, now that she's reached that well-seasoned level of power, is to eat away inside of him some surprising sense of self-doubt as to what his methodology might have been.’
I think you should talk to Shekhar. He's quite interesting and I don't really want to borrow his words. He spoke very much about those who were the immortals and those who were the mortals within the universe of this story. And he said, as we know historically, he dies, and really the whole role for me was following that trajectory through to loyalty until the death.”
You were responsible for getting the film made. What made you so passionate about getting this project into production?
“There are a number of elements, and there's a certain mythology to that story now. I mean Shekhar and Cate Blanchett and I had a fleeting opportunity about — I can't remember — 3 or 4 years ago. It was like 2003, 2004, where we all happened to be in L.A. for about the one evening. And through all the various coordinators and publicists and minders, we said, ‘Let's set aside a couple of hours and really talk this idea through.’
I think from Cate's point of view she may have felt, ‘Well, it's a role I've played,’ and as you can see from her repertoire since she first blazed onto the scene 10 years ago, she's a very exploratory, very risk-taking and very unpredictable chooser of repertoire. And maybe she felt that reinventing the same character was not going to be as great a challenge as she would like. But because I'd worked with Cate in the theatre back in the early 90s and knew her very much as a colleague and a friend, I just leant on her and said, 'You know, even in the theatrical repertoire, as you get older the roles become less. If you're into Shakespeare, yes, you've got Queen Margaret to look forward to and a few other things like that, maybe Cleopatra but,’ I said, ‘in terms of film, it's probably going to be even less less opportune. And a great multi-dimensional character like this needs an actress of your caliber.’
And I wanted to be there on the sidelines watching her rev up those Rolls Royce engines, because it's a great -- I'm very into the notion of virtuosic performance in people. I think it should always be an aspiring level where you can thrill an audience with the magnitude of your imagination and Cate, to me, is very much that kind of actress.”
Was Walsingham responsible for the creating something like the Secret Service?
“Walsingham is now being discovered, and I think it has very little to do with my presence in these films, but there have just been two recent, quite very significant and very important new biographies on his life. People are starting to ask why isn't he as well known as Churchill or Wellington or any of the other great figures in British histories. Because he did really set up and create a blueprint that I think is probably still the foundation stones of most contemporary secret service activity. And he more than surged. In his time, from when he came back from Paris in the early 70 to when he died in 93, I think he more than trebled the activities of his underground network.
You look for certain resonances, but I don't think it's necessary to play it so the audiences goes, ‘Oh, get it?’ Hopefully they bring their understanding of that and maybe become intrigued by the fact that these kinds of things are 400 or 500 years old. Some of the press challenge… There have been people who nitpick about the historical accuracy, and I say, ‘Well, the major sequence of events in this film…’ I can't quite remember when the Babington plot happened, that was a huge thing in its time. But Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1586 and the Armada was 1588 and Walsingham died in 1593. I can't remember specifically when Raleigh came back from the New World, but generally we're all hoping that films like this are perceived as dramas. That people go into the kind of mixture of legend and story-telling and dramatic constructs, and that the films become a trail for those people who want to go Google Dr John Dee and say, ‘Who was this guy? What's going on there?’ Because he was a major major figure forgotten by history that David Threlfall plays in the film. I find that intriguing because in our more pragmatic contemporary world, it's again hard to imagine the astrologer, scientist, philosopher, alchemist all being enveloped in the one kind of Elizabethan mind, if that was the case.”
Is there a cherished character you’d love to play?
“Not particularly. No. Not even theatrically. I mean, if I didn't have to ride a horse -- I just don't do equine. I just love the story and again, on this level of legend and mythology and the fantastical storytelling dimensions of it, I love the Don Quixote story. I think that still speaks volumes about that gulf between aspiration and delusion. The great Chuck Jones quote to me certainly defined [the] 20th century. Bugs being who we would like to be and Daffy being who we really are. And that's there in Don Quixote as well.”
Page 2: On Elizabeth 3 and Pirates 4
