The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman

by Neil Daniels

  ‘Because as the best television gets more and more what we would call filmic,’ Freeman said to Nerd Repository’s Kyle Wilson, ‘and a lot of the best writing I think has been pretty much acknowledged for ten years has been on television, I think there’s much less of a differentiation now than there was maybe twenty, thirty years ago. And so I don’t have a preference.’

  Fargo challenged people’s perception of Freeman as an actor, showing film and TV followers that he is more than capable of playing edgy characters. It was a wise career move and one that will no doubt pay dividends, especially in the US where he remains best known for The Office, The Hobbit and Sherlock. In June 2014 Billy Bob Thornton picked up the Best Actor In A Mini-Series Or Movie award at the fourth annual Television Critics’ Association Awards, beating his co-star Martin Freeman. Allison Tolman, their co-star, scooped the Best Supporting Actress In A Mini-Series Or Movie award. Freeman’s other show, Sherlock, went home empty-handed despite several nominations.

  The 2014 Emmy Awards nominations were announced in July, which featured some well-known British names, including Martin Freeman. Fargo picked up a staggering eighteen nods, including nominations for its two lead stars, while Freeman also bagged a second nomination in the Best Supporting Actor In A Mini-Series Or Movie category for ‘His Last Vow’.

  The 2014 Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles on Monday, 25 April. Freeman and his fellow Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch were not at the ceremony to collect their awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor In A Mini-Series. Steven Moffat also won Best Writing In A Mini-Series for the final episode of the third season of Sherlock. There were four awards for the universally acclaimed BBC series, including Best Cinematography, Music, Single-Camera Picture Editing and Sound Editing.

  ‘It’s great to see Sherlock being recognised so spectacularly at the Emmys,’ said Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama. ‘I’m delighted that the BBC is home to so much world class acting and writing talent.’

  Freeman’s other TV series, Fargo, bagged the award for Best Mini-Series.

  It was announced in mid-2014 that Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Colin Hanks and Allison Tolman would not be returning for the second series of Fargo due to air in late 2015 at the earliest. Noah Hawley was confirmed to continue as writer and executive producer but there’ll be a new storyline and time period spread over ten episodes. As with True Detective, Fargo will be an anthology series, which recalls the old pulp-story anthologies of the immediate post-World War II era. There’s no question that Freeman fans were disappointed by the news.

  Some fans always feel cheated with anthology series because they get so close to the characters that, by the end of the season, they’re left wanting more, but the end is the end. Will viewers return for a second season? Will the scripts and actors be as good as season one? Vintage anthology series such as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone have had a massive impact on science-fiction and fantasy and American Horror Story is a successful contemporary anthology series that has run for four seasons with the possibility of a fifth (at the time of writing) but, mostly, anthology series don’t have much of an impact, especially in an age of multiple channels, the Internet, downloading and streaming.

  On the positive side, it meant that Freeman was free to move on to other roles. He is not an actor who likes to be tied down to projects for long periods of time, though Sherlock and The Hobbit are two obvious exceptions. He signed onto Fargo knowing there would be no more than the ten-episode first series.

  Hawley dropped hints to The Hollywood Reporter about the possible concepts for season two: ‘I feel like I’m close to a new idea for another Fargo ten-hour idea that we’ll talk about in the coming weeks… What’s really interesting about this exercise of emulating a movie, as a storyteller, is having available to me a whole body of work. The Coen Brothers are so varied, from Raising Arizona to A Serious Man – there’s so much… What is the inspiration for this season? It’s always going to be rooted in true crime. There will always be a grisly murder, with good versus evil.’

  Just as Matthew McConaughey can sit back and enjoy season two of True Detective as an ordinary viewer, Freeman will no doubt enjoy watching Fargo season two when it broadcasts on TV, and may even pick up the box set for his ever-growing collection of DVDs. Martin had moved on to the stage in his career where he could pick and choose, quite literally, which roles he wanted to play. The scripts were coming in left, right and centre and his US and UK agents were busy on the phone negotiating new contracts and roles. He also has the opportunity to pick roles that will pay much less than he is ordinarily used to without having to worry about not being able to support his family and paying the bills.

  Freeman made a return to the London stage with a production of Richard III in the summer of 2014 at Trafalgar Studios. His Hobbit colleague Richard Armitage was at The Old Vic starring in The Crucible, the acclaimed Arthur Miller play.

  ‘… that’s a pretty iconic role and that’s one I’m very happy about,’ he said to ShortList.com about being cast as Richard III. ‘I wasn’t expecting that and I didn’t see it coming, so when that came, director Jamie Lloyd asked me to do that – I was very pleasantly surprised to be asked to do that, and one that I grabbed with both hands.

  It was Freeman’s first theatre role since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park, directed by Dominic Cooke at the Royal Court four years earlier, but he was more than pleased to be back on stage starring opposite The Borgias actress Gina McKee. Additional casting includes Alasdair Buchan (Ensemble – an ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principle actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a production), Simon Coombs (Tyrrel), Philip Cumbus (Richmond), Madeleine Harland (Ensemble), Julie Jupp (Ensemble), Gerald Kyd (Catesby), Joshua Lacey (Rivers), Paul Leonard (Stanley), Gabrielle Lloyd (Duchess of York), Forbes Masson (Hastings), Paul McEwan (King Edward IV/Bishop of Ely), Mark Meadows (Clarence/Lord Mayor), Vinta Morgan (Edward of Lancaster/Ensemble), Lauren O’Neil (Lady Anne), Maggie Steed (Queen Margaret) and Jo Stone-Fewings (Buckingham).

  Freeman feels very comfortable in theatre. However, the deformed Machiavellian regent was his first stab at a professional Shakespeare production, much to the surprise of some people given his background in theatre and TV.

  ‘There have been amateurish-in-drama-school ones,’ he informed the Daily Telegraph’s Craig McLean. ‘But yeah, I can’t believe it – I’ve been out of drama school nineteen years, and this is the first time I’ve done it professionally. I’m surprised.’

  Martin has always had an interest in the Bard’s plays on a professional level, as he said back in 2005 when he spoke to The Globe And Mail’s Simon Houpt: ‘I’d love to play Macbeth. See, the thing is, what I think I can do and what the perception of what I can do – there’s quite a gulf between the two, because obviously people don’t know my work. But I do. Probably no one would think I’d make a good Macbeth, but I know I would.’

  Richard III was directed by Jamie Lloyd. He had also directed James McAvoy in a production of Macbeth but, whereas Macbeth was set in a future dystopia, Richard III is ‘an imaginary dystopia from a few decades ago. Twentieth century,’ as Freeman described it to Craig McLean of The Telegraph.

  ‘When I first met Jamie he asked if I’d seen this documentary about this political event in our British history,’ he continued.

  The official press release for Richard III described the play thus: ‘In the aftermath of civil war, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, makes a hateful resolution to claw his way to political power at any cost. A master of manipulation, subtle wit and beguiling charm, he orchestrates his unlawful ascent by spinning a ruthless web of deceit and betrayal. His staunch ambition soon begins to weigh heavy, as the new ruler finds himself utterly alone and steeped in dread, forced to answer for his bloody deeds and face the horrifying consequences.’

  Lloyd’s Macbeth made tough viewing for members of the audience but Freem
an shared a similar vision with Lloyd that they are totally against making people bored in the theatre, which makes Richard III rather more difficult as it is the second lengthiest work in the playwright’s hefty catalogue of plays. They made sure that the physical deformities – malformed arm, limp and hunchback – were all there, which has a major effect on his view of the world, and Freeman, as Richard III, begins the production by telling the audience he’s not a nice person and he’s going to plot and scheme because of the way he’s been treated due to his deformities. Characters’ actions have to be justifiable. There is a reason why bad people do bad things. Freeman even made remarks to the effect that the character of Richard III is much like Gollum from The Hobbit.

  Freeman made damn sure that his version of Richard III was as far away as possible from his own likeable, everyday persona. Indeed, with Fargo and Richard III, it’s almost as if Martin is undergoing a professional career makeover.

  ‘When you get known for something, you get a few more of those roles and before you know it you’re in people’s consciousness as that thing,’ Freeman told Neil Smith of the BBC News website. ‘But I’m not just that optimistic, nice person or mild-mannered sweetheart next door. So it’s nice when people see something in me that isn’t Love Actually.’

  However, it was reported during the play’s previews in the first week of July that over-eager younger fans of The Hobbit were ruining the play by clapping and cheering at inappropriate times.

  Claire Dikecoglu, a well-known Arts blogger, said, ‘I was irritated when the audience interrupted the flow of the play to clap and cheer Martin’s first scene. I understand that Martin Freeman is popular, but I have no bigger pet peeve, than everything getting standing ovations these days.’

  ‘Martin Freeman’s face is on every bus in London,’ said actress Maureen Lipman, as referenced in The Independent. ‘The producers are aiming for people who spend most of their day with wire in their ears. It is not so much Richard III as Richard the rock concert.’

  On Twitter, the director Jamie Lloyd said, ‘A few people clapped after the first scene during the first preview. It is not unusual for an audience to clap during scene changes…’ and, ‘It has never happened since and has been completely overblown. Ridiculous. The standing ovations have been instant & from young & old alike.’

  This was a refreshing role for Freeman that not only challenged him as an actor but, much like his recent choices in film and TV roles, challenged audiences’ perceptions of him as the dreaded and now clichéd ‘everyman’. There must come a point where people no longer see him that way.

  Professional theatre critics gave the play mixed to positive reviews but praised Freeman, though many found the play to be complicated. The set from award-winning designer Soutra Gilmour was also highly praised.

  Critics appeared to share a similar mindset that, while Freeman has a much-deserved reputation for his sometimes quirky yet interesting approaches to texts due to his impeccable comic timing and underlying anger, his performance as Richard III all comes down to how the viewer interprets Richard III in the play, regardless of who the actor is. Some prefer Richard III to be played as a brooding man who has boundless amounts of charisma, yet he is someone who is sickening and repulsive at the same time. He is also amusing.

  Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote, ‘It’s fair to say that Freeman’s Richard is perfectly suited to the concept. This is no grandiose villain but a dapper, smooth-haired figure who only gradually reveals his psychopathic tendencies.’

  Paul Taylor of The Independent enthused, ‘Freeman gives a highly intelligent, calculatedly understated performance, full of witty mocking touches in his rapid line-readings (he refers to ‘this princely… heap’ with a comically fastidious pause) and creating a rapport of shared superiority with the audience over his dupes.’

  Ben Brantley of the New York Times wrote, ‘What he lacks is that hypnotic force of will that allows Richard to seduce a country, not to mention women like the doomed Lady Anne (Lauren O’Neil). It seems fitting that a later potential conquest, Elizabeth (Gina McKee), will listen to Richard’s suit only after she’s been trussed up in a chair by his henchman.’

  Meanwhile, Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph wrote, ‘As the evil Richard, Freeman seems frankly miscast. The great trick of the play is that Richard seduces the audience with his wit and panache, even as he leads us into a moral wasteland of cruel barbarity. Compared with the great Richards I have seen over the years – Antony Sher, Ian McKellen, Simon Russell Beale and Kevin Spacey – Freeman seems like a boy sent to do a man’s work.’

  Henry Hitchings of the London Evening Standard observed, ‘Martin Freeman is a smiling, self-satisfied Richard III – not the psychopath we tend to see, but instead an illustration of the banality of evil. He makes the hunchbacked monarch efficient and dapper, rather like a prim bureaucrat. Yet he punctuates this ordinariness with moments of malign mockery and savagery. It’s a crisp, thoughtful performance, in which Freeman successfully shakes off his familiar Nice Guy image. But he never seems truly dangerous.’

  It is not unusual for high-profile actors to receive criticism in the theatre. It is part and parcel of the job. However, it was actually Freeman’s intention to bring Shakespeare to younger audiences, as he told Andrew Marr on his TV show that he wanted to cut out the ‘boring bits’. He said, ‘Among very educated, very smart, very theatre-literate people who sort of tolerate the boring bits and boring passages without telling anybody and tolerate the bits of the play where they think, “I don’t know who she is,” and, “Who’s he talking to?” without saying so because that would sort of be a black mark against them.’

  Some theatregoers and critics may find his remarks patronising but there is something noble about wanting to entice younger people to the theatre. The play’s website stated that only people over twelve should see the show. As quoted in the Daily Mail, Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, rebutted, ‘I don’t think children should get some diluted version, it’s very patronising and it means they will never understand what drama is about.’ He continued, ‘But [Mr Freeman’s] view isn’t unusual, it’s very prevalent within schools, the idea that children can’t cope and that it has to be watered down… I think it’s very anti-educational and very patronising and it deprives children of an understanding of what a play is all about.’

  However, and despite the minor controversy, Freeman was applauded by audience members as many fans posted rave reviews of his performance on Twitter. Such is the age we live in that social media is awash with instant reviews, headlines and newsbytes. Fans used to have to wait for the newspaper or magazine reviews, which could take days or weeks, but in the twenty-first century everything is instant.

  While Freeman was on the London stage until September and Cumberbatch was busy with multiple movies and a move to the theatre with a production of Hamlet at the Barbican, it meant that series four of Sherlock could not be filmed in the autumn as originally hoped, and so the schedule was put back to begin in January 2015.

  Freeman told the Sunday Telegraph’s Seven magazine, ‘If that’s going to be a special – I’m speaking off-message here; if this was New Labour I’d get fired – I think that might be for next Christmas. A Christmas special. That’s what I understand.’

  It was then confirmed by the BBC that Sherlock series four would be broadcast in late 2015 with a one-off special. In the same interview, Freeman also said that his partner is likely to return: ‘While we play fast and loose with the original stories, we generally follow the trajectory of what Conan Doyle did. So he [Watson] gets married, and then Mary dies – so at some point presumably she’ll die.’

  In the original Conan Doyle stories, Mary Morstan dies sometime during the period between Holmes’s apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls and his shocking return three years later. However, both of these events have already taken place in Sherlock. In the stories, Mary dies of natural causes but it is likely she will meet
her demise in a far more adventurous fashion in the series, given that she is a former assassin. Watson picks up the pieces and joins Holmes in more adventures, which opens up the possibility of more one-off specials or even a fifth series but Freeman is likely to be in the frame of mind that the fourth series should be the last. A twelve-episode, four-series run is perfect and will have the sort of longevity afforded to all the great long-running TV shows.

  Freeman told BBC News in August 2014, ‘It’s going to be full of surprises for you, and for us and for everybody. I think we just know to expect the unexpected now.’ He added, ‘The plans they have got for the overarching series – oh man, it’s just so exciting!’

  In a sense, Moffat and Gatiss, the creators of the modern-day Sherlock, are living on borrowed time. The Hollywood careers of Cumberbatch and Freeman are doing so well that it is unlikely they will want to keep going back to the BBC regardless of how loyal they are to the small-screen show. It’s not about ego but rather the logistics of making a TV show – regardless of its global popularity – around so many Hollywood movies. Perhaps there is also the question of money because, usually, the more successful an actor is, the more expensive he becomes. Of course, actors take salary cuts but Hollywood is fickle – as is the entertainment industry in general – and an actor’s success tends to be based on his financial worth. An actor who makes millions is generally considered to be very popular. It’s doubtful that both of the Sherlock protagonists will stray too far from their London acting roots though.