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Geoffrey Rush on Elizabeth: The Golden Age
By Fred Topel | Image property of Universal Pictures.
Many sequels have a hard time getting the original cast back, let alone the rare sequels to Oscar-nominated historical epics. Elizabeth: The Golden Age continues the story of Elizabeth I's reign, and they couldn't leave out her faithful advisor Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush). However, now that Liz is a reigning queen, her backstage handler has less to do.
Rushed Advice to Elizabeth: The Golden Age
"Shekhar [Kapur] said to me two years before we started filming, when the idea of the project was looming, because there are quite different chapters in these two films, quite different historical time frames," said Rush. "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. 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.' 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."
Blanchett had to be sold on the idea of doing another Elizabeth. Rush might have been instrumental in mounting the production, though as he assures, he didn't "sign any cheques or anything like that."
"There are a number of elements and there's a certain mythology to that story now. Shekhar and Cate and I had a fleeting opportunity about three or four 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 co-ordinators 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. Maybe she felt that reinventing the same character was not going to be as great a challenge as she would like."
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Only a close personal friend of an actress could make the following suggestion, as Rush did. "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, you've got Queen Margaret to look forward to and a few other things like that, maybe Cleopatra. 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 calibre.' And I wanted to be there on the sidelines watching her rev up those Rolls Royce engines."
Recently, more has come to light on Walsingham too, but Rush wasn't looking for an ego project. "There have just been two recent, quite very significant and very important new biographies on his life, and 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. In his time, from when he came back from Paris in the early '70s to when he died in '93, I think he more than tripled 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 0r 500 years old."
Elizabeth: The Golden Age opens to theaters on October 12th.
For the trailer, stills and more movie info, go to the Elizabeth: The Golden Age Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Universal Pictures.
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