Post by beckettologist on Oct 4, 2012 12:21:42 GMT -5
The real Rev - how I helped Tom Hollander get into character
Saturday Live presenter the Rev Richard Coles - one of the clergy consultants for the BBC2 sitcom - says life often imitates art
Excerpt:
When Rev met Rev
Our lives at the margins of things is one of the realities that informs the series Rev on BBC2. It also caused the second overlap between church and media for me this week, for its star, Tom Hollander, came to my church to read the Lesson at our Festival Evensong.
Tom plays Adam Smallbone, vicar of a stalling inner-city parish, and I am one of the real Revs who helps him get the character right. This mostly involves being taken out to lunch and trying to explain why you wouldn’t wear preaching tabs with a fiddleback chasuble and the difference between an archdeacon and an arch-heretic (not as easy as you might think). As a thank you he came and read a particularly baffling bit from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in a service that is the culmination of our Flower Festival.
At school assembly I was so excited I announced that one of the Pirates of the Caribbean was coming to church and then had to spend 15 minutes explaining that it wasn’t Johnny Depp to seven-year-old girls, who seemed a little disappointed. We adults weren’t, however; indeed we were all fascinated to see Tom at the lectern, looking very much at home.
Tom said he gets quite a bit of “Oi, Rev!” from strangers in the street, which is partly celebrity-ness, but also because his performance manages to capture the authentic texture of what it is to be a vicar today, conveying the peculiar comedy and pathos of our calling. I think that is what audiences really respond to, not just the slapstick of falling in graves and getting drunk in front of the great and good, but because there is something about a decent person trying to do good without much recognition or reward that moves us and makes us think there may just be something in this after all. Well, on a good day.
Entire article:
www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-10-04/the-real-rev---how-i-helped-tom-hollander-get-into-character
Saturday Live presenter the Rev Richard Coles - one of the clergy consultants for the BBC2 sitcom - says life often imitates art
Excerpt:
When Rev met Rev
Our lives at the margins of things is one of the realities that informs the series Rev on BBC2. It also caused the second overlap between church and media for me this week, for its star, Tom Hollander, came to my church to read the Lesson at our Festival Evensong.
Tom plays Adam Smallbone, vicar of a stalling inner-city parish, and I am one of the real Revs who helps him get the character right. This mostly involves being taken out to lunch and trying to explain why you wouldn’t wear preaching tabs with a fiddleback chasuble and the difference between an archdeacon and an arch-heretic (not as easy as you might think). As a thank you he came and read a particularly baffling bit from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in a service that is the culmination of our Flower Festival.
At school assembly I was so excited I announced that one of the Pirates of the Caribbean was coming to church and then had to spend 15 minutes explaining that it wasn’t Johnny Depp to seven-year-old girls, who seemed a little disappointed. We adults weren’t, however; indeed we were all fascinated to see Tom at the lectern, looking very much at home.
Tom said he gets quite a bit of “Oi, Rev!” from strangers in the street, which is partly celebrity-ness, but also because his performance manages to capture the authentic texture of what it is to be a vicar today, conveying the peculiar comedy and pathos of our calling. I think that is what audiences really respond to, not just the slapstick of falling in graves and getting drunk in front of the great and good, but because there is something about a decent person trying to do good without much recognition or reward that moves us and makes us think there may just be something in this after all. Well, on a good day.
Entire article:
www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-10-04/the-real-rev---how-i-helped-tom-hollander-get-into-character