By Stephen Becker
The Dallas Morning News / Posted on Thu, Oct. 19, 2006
(MCT)
DALLAS - Michael Sheen is making quite a career out of playing Tony Blair. The 37-year-old Welsh actor first played the British prime minister in 2003's "The Deal." Now, he's re-teamed with "Deal" writer Peter Morgan and director Stephen Frears to play him in "The Queen."
"I would have been very upset if they hadn't called me after playing him in `The Deal,'" he says. What's more, the trio are looking to make a third film together, once Blair leaves office. Sheen discussed playing the same man at different ages and looked back at how Lady Diana's death changed Britain during a visit Tuesday.
Q. How did you approach playing Blair differently in The Queen?
A. The first one we did concentrated on him when he was a much younger man, when he first got into politics, when he first joined the Labour Party, up until the point where he becomes leader of the Labour Party. So there were certain things about him that I couldn't really bring into that performance, because he was a much younger man than what we're used to in Britain. So with "The Queen," because it picks up the story four years after "The Deal" finished ... he's got more depth to him and more weight to him. When we pick up and meet him, he's not as bright eyed and bushy-tailed as he was in "The Deal." He's much more wary of things and a bit more internal.
Q. At the beginning of "The Queen," he still seems in awe of his new job - and going to meet the queen.
A. He's the most popular man in Britain at that point - he's just won this huge majority victory. And yet going in to meet this woman reduces him to a schoolboy in front of his head mistress.
Q. Have you ever met Blair?
A. I met his daughter, Kathryn Blair. I went back to my old drama school and was talking to some of the students there, and one of the students is friendly with Kathryn and we agreed to meet up with her that evening. She came over and said, "hello" and I just completely bombarded her with questions about her father. Then after embarrassing her in front of her friends for about an hour, I just let her go.
Q. When you think back to the time surrounding Diana's death, what do you remember?
A. Millions of people descending on London, and the flowers being left outside Buckingham Palace. For a woman that, on the whole, these people who are grieving had never met. She came to symbolize a shift in British culture, which is one of the things the film is about.
On the one hand, you have the royal family, who represent older British characteristics like tradition and duty and a very particular way of doing things. A code of behavior. And then on the other hand you have Blair's new Labour government, which is more about being in touch with people, finding out what they want, taking polls, sort of a more touchy-feely, informal kind of atmosphere. In the middle, you had Diana, who built a bridge between those two worlds. And when she gets taken out of the equation, these two worlds completely collide into each other, and that's what the film's about. It's that moment when we realized in Britain that a huge shift in our culture had happened, and Diana's death was the thing that crystallized that.