by Sam Heughan
And finally, I was sitting at the same table as him, promoted to ‘Scottish Lord Number 4’ at the Lyceum Theatre, as Banquo’s ghost appeared and Tom hurled his fake clay drinking vessel at the apparition. At the table, the lords would shake their heads and mutter in bemusement at Macbeth’s erratic behaviour, whilst secretly giving Tom the footie score.
I would love to do a production of Macbeth with Graham. He would make an outstanding Lady M.
GRAHAM
Well, if Fiona Shaw can portray Richard II or Helen Mirren Prospero, why not? I’m game for everything. I said that when I signed with Outlander and ticked the nudity clause with great enthusiasm. Never got to take my kit off, though, a source of consternation and regret.
Sam: I can arrange for you to strip off . . .
Graham: No, because what you will arrange will hurt or involve freezing cold water that will cause my testicles to retract.
Sam: And, helps with your performance of Lady Macbeth.
Ahem.
Graham as Macbeth:
There’s comfort yet; they are assailable;
Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight, ere to black Hecate’s summons,
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note . . .
I really would love to play Macbeth but it’s been a case of ‘always the bridesmaid, never the bride’. I have been Macduff once, Malcolm once and Banquo twice, including in Jeremy Freeston’s 1997 film, cunningly entitled Macbeth.
Banquo
O treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!
Thou may’st revenge – O slave!
Arguably my favourite Shakespeare play, it’s like an action movie. Written specifically for King James I (James VI of Scotland) who had just come to the throne, it is in many ways the ultimate high-class job application. And it worked because shortly afterwards Shakespeare’s Company, the Lord Chamberlain’s men, became the King’s Men. It deals with witchcraft, one of Jimmy boy’s favourite subjects (he’d even written a book on it – Daemonologie, in 1597, a copy of which resides – of course – with Lady Cawdor. Coincidence? I think not.) [Sam: Just to be clear, it’s not a biography of Matt Damon.]
The play does a terrible disservice to the real Macbeth, who was actually a bit of a star in Scottish history and not an ambitious psycho with a power-hungry wife who loved to wash her hands. [Sam: Er, Macbeth did still kill King Duncan in real life. AND Duncan’s dad!]
My first experience was the best. It was in 1989 at Dundee Repertory Theatre. I had just come off doing the movie Erik the Viking and had moved back to Scotland to be with the woman I loved – only to be dumped shortly after I arrived! I ended up sharing the huge three-bedroom tenement flat with . . . myself. And, instead of starting a new, exciting chapter with my girlfriend, I spent three months feeling pretty shit about life in general.
Then I got the audition for Dundee Rep. It was to do the whole season (sadly this is now a thing of the past – actors in repertory, learning lines and rehearsing one play, while performing a different play at night. Hard work but bloody good fun, and a great training ground). When I auditioned I was seen by all three directors, all of whom couldn’t understand why I wanted to do rep in Dundee after being in a big movie. I think it was difficult for them to understand, but I just really loved to work, to act! I didn’t want to sit around waiting for the phone to ring like so many actors. It’s why I’ve done about sixty stage plays while many people have only done four or five. I had written and performed my own show, I’d done fringe, but this was my first ‘proper’ theatre gig, and I couldn’t wait.
SAM
Sorry to interrupt but, yes, Dundee Rep was every young actor’s dream. They were still one of the few theatres to run an ensemble company and you could see your favourite actor play in multiple productions, throughout a season. From comedy, to new writing, farce and pantomime. I was lucky to play Dundee Rep in Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately not as Romeo (I did that at drama school and think he’s a precursor to Macbeth; you can see some of Shakespeare’s early writing in the character, comedy and great philosophical tragedy). Macbeth feels like a more refined and experienced man, as if Shakespeare, too, has grown with the experience of writing. Carry on, Graham!
GRAHAM
Macbeth was played by a wonderful Scottish actor called Hilton McRae (married to Lindsay Duncan). His is still the best Macbeth I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. Hilton is a wee guy, wiry, and febrile. The director had the inspired idea to surround him with big guys in all the other main roles. Me as Banquo, Kenneth Bryans as Macduff and Liam Brennan as Malcolm. Both of those guys went on to have distinguished careers in Scottish theatre. I remember the ghost scene in particular where Macbeth is visited by Banquo’s ghost. A piece of ‘scrim’ or cloth was stretched across the back of the set. Whenever I appeared as the ghost, I pressed my face against the cloth, stretching and distorting it. With a lighting change it was very creepy indeed. As if the room itself was rising up against him. The witches were played by local children. Terrifying. It’s been much imitated since, but this was the first time I remember it. The curse of Macbeth struck when one of the kids was tragically killed in a car crash on the way to do the show.
The second show, where I played Macduff, was by the same director. His view of the tragedy seemed to have changed along with his lifestyle. He had taken to driving around in an old VW camper van with a giant face of Buddha painted on the front. The show was set in a psychiatric hospital where the therapy was to ‘act out’ the play. A clever idea and with a better overall cast it could have worked. But with the exception of a handful of us, including Liam Brennan again as Macbeth, it was a depressing experience. Liam was so riled by the actress playing Lady Macbeth, it was all he could do to stop the banquet scene turning into a full-on brawl. Liam sat in the van that night driving home drinking a bottle of gin. [Sam: I played Malcolm in a production at the Lyceum Edinburgh with Liam in the title role. He’s a terrific and intense actor who doesn’t go anywhere without a copy of David Mamet’s book True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor in his pocket, and a wry smile.]
I worked with that director one more time, in Twelfth Night, a production so riven with acrimony and hatred that Orsino actually knocked Feste out in the climactic reconciliation scene in front of an audience of 400. The actor used to stand next to me at the curtain call bowing, while muttering the words, ‘Only fifteen more performances to go!’ – happy days!
My third Macbeth incarnation was again as Banquo. This was a film version with Jason Connery as Macbeth. Jason is a wonderful guy, and a very fine actor and director. In Macbeth he had the second worst case of forgetting his lines I’ve ever seen (Billy Connolly in The Hobbit beat him for that!). It was tough to witness but he triumphed in the end.
It was a pretty good film though. I learned a lot about film acting on it. It was directed by a lovely fella called Jeremy Freeston for a film producer called Bob Carruthers. Bob had made his name making films in Scotland using ‘investors’ to help finance the making of them. This was in 1994 and he got these ‘investors’ to put in £1,000 to be an extra in the film. In return they got a credit, and minimal screen time. They even had to bring their own lunch and costume. These guys couldn’t give him their money quick enough! They were queuing up!!
This was where I first met Charlie Allen and his gang. He didn’t have the storm trooper head gear and hog back then, but in every other way he was just as formidable. Everything was directed by Jeremy apart from the witches scenes. Hildegarde Neil was one of the witches so these scenes were directed by that colossal legend, Brian Blessed.
I’ve worked with him three times. He doesn’t drink, but is incapable of constructing a sentence without swearing. He’d just returned from an ascent of Everest (at sixty!), without oxygen wearing the same clothes as George Mallory in the 1920s (bas
ically hobnailed boots and tweeds – he clearly used the same costume designer we had on Clanlands). He was directing us in a scene when he suddenly started to stare into the distance, muttering, ‘Hmmm, ahhh, ohhh.’ After several moments of this alarming behaviour his attention snapped back to the gathering of appalled actors in front of him: ‘Ah, so sorry. I was back on the mountain for a minute. It’s the altitude you know, thickens the blood. I have visions.’
All of my experiences with Brian have been similar. I’ve seldom laughed so much as I have with the stories he has regaled me with. Laughing so much I nearly wet myself (similar to experiences with the Ginger Nut, but for different reasons). Brian once turned on a particularly annoying ‘amateur dramatics’ performer who was his stand-in. He had been pestering Brian for about fifteen minutes at 5am during make-up. His patience finally exhausted, Brian was then calmly heard to utter the words, ‘You’re a lovely bloke, John, but you were born a c*nt and you’ll die a c*nt. Now fuck off.’ As I say, a legend. Read his autobiography immediately, going by the wonderful title of Absolute Pandemonium.
Sam: Is that Cawdor Castle I see before me?
Graham: Indeed it is. And quite beautiful, but does it have a drawbridge?
Drawbridges always make me think of films like Robin Hood (multiple versions), Warlord (a great Charlton Heston flick if you’ve not seen it) and Ironclad (very good too). Bad shit always happens on the wrong side of a drawbridge and I could sense this would prove to be no exception.
We reach the entrance to Cawdor Castle grounds, whereupon Sam stalls. When the stone gate was built in the fifteenth century I don’t think the Thane of Cawdor had accounted for a Fiat Arsepiece passing through it. I can clearly see that it will never fit from 100 yards out. It’s wide enough for a couple of horses abreast, at best.
Graham: We’re never going to get through that gate.
Sam: Nonsense, loads of space.
Graham: No, really. We won’t.
Sam: Stop being such an old woman.
We accelerate towards the opening. Sam’s invariable response to any doubt on my part as to the wisdom of a given course of action is to compare me to an elderly female. Sam continues to smile, certain we will shrink to fit at the last moment. And then he rams on the anchors inches from the sides of the stone gate. The laws of physics having finally penetrated his brain cells.
Sam: What if we fold the wing mirrors back?
Graham: What if I just blow up the gate? Or perhaps the camper?
He doesn’t laugh.
Sam: I don’t think I should reverse.
It is the first thing he has said with which I wholeheartedly agree. To reverse would be madness. The Fiat Colon doesn’t handle well in reverse. So instead we sit and stare at the gate, as if our collective gaze might force it to widen. ‘Where are you?’ crackles line producer Michelle over the walkie-talkie.
Sam: Erm, we can’t get through.
I hold my head in my hands. The fatigue and exasperation is too much. Neither of my daughters, Hope, and Honor, are this difficult to manage and they have tested me to the limit. As has become customary, I enjoyed the delights of late-night whisky at the hotel before being unceremoniously dumped in the countryside to sleep it off under canvas in the Highland heather. Why do I do it to myself? Sam is showing zero evidence of a hangover as usual. For a fleeting moment I wonder whether he is fully human (I’ve been watching Westworld). No one could drink as much as he puts away with no visible effect. Not even an eye bag. But then he does have Wendy’s magic make-up. I bet (hope) first thing he looked like he’d been laid out on Eilean Munde. It’s all panstick and Polyfilla . . .
I suddenly notice a sign sticking out of the ground in front of us. Right before our very eyes.
MARATHON, CAWDOR CASTLE, SEPTEMBER 14th 2019
Graham: What’s the date, Sam?
Sam: I’m wedged in a gateway and you want to know what day it is . . .
I point at the sign as three men in vests and very short shorts, wearing numbers, literally squeeze past us in the gateway.
I’ve never run a marathon, citing the fact that the original marathon runner who came from the battle of the same name in 490 BC to deliver news of the victory, dropped dead immediately on arrival. Sam, of course, has run many marathons. He’s probably running one as you read this book. Or possibly climbing a Munro carrying a bottle of Sassenach, just in case he can flog it to someone at the top.
Sam speaks ‘marathon’. I speak ‘latte’. And Sauvignon Blanc and comfy slippers . . .
But even untutored as I am in the world of running ridiculous distances, I am fully cognisant that marathon runners don’t appreciate cretinous camper vans blocking their route. I imagine they are a few miles in, settling into their pace, not wanting to push too hard too soon when, lo and behold, some pair of arses have parked their camper van at the only entrance point to the castle grounds. We go neither forward nor back, remaining in stasis as Sam waves encouragingly to the runners who wear expressions ranging from quiet disbelief to naked rage.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people go in for this sort of self-flagellation. Now, I’m all for exercise. I enjoy a hike, cycling (on a modern bike), the gym (sort of), but there are literally hundreds of these marathon people. [Sam: It’s called ‘exercise’, Graham, you’re meant to sweat.] Some look fit enough, lithe and effortless like Maasai warriors as they run towards us; others look like they are ten strides away from a massive coronary.
And all their hard work is making me hungry. I unwrap a chocolate bar, take a bite and look out of the window just as two runners give me the finger. This is beyond excruciating but I am too tired, hung-over and Heughaned-out to care.
I wonder if King Duncan’s arrival was like this?
SAM
Bang! The RV bounces over a kerb. Merlin, the sound guy, launches into the air, somehow never losing control of his fluffy microphone. I’ve taken a corner too sharply and we are on three wheels for a split second. I strangely hope McT hasn’t noticed, but of course he has. He is grinning at me, which is more unnerving than the eye-rolling or the handbag-clutching titters. Yep, he’s at it again. Smiling away. All right, Gray? He’s not the full ticket today.
And when he’s not gurning like a stoner, Graham has been reciting the works of Shakespeare for the entire journey. And I mean the entire journey. I have been desperate to answer a call of nature since we set off but we are running late and not stopping for anything. If he does ‘Is this a dagger I see before me’ I might jump in the back with Merlin and break into the emergency ‘daytime whisky’.
Our directions (Graham again) have taken us up a narrow road towards the dramatic castle of Cawdor. It also appears we are on the route of a running race, though I don’t let Graham know that. We slalom past various runners of all shapes and sizes on the private drive. As we near a gate in the castle walls I realise (too late) the camper won’t fit. Graham is flapping like a popinjay as I wedge the camper in the castle walls, blocking the only entrance, with the runners gaining on us. I look in the wing mirror: the runners are now upon us, bunching behind, squeezing past the camper one at a time. The ones who make it through look seriously pissed off.
There is a break in the flow so I jam the RV into reverse and start to edge back out. The gears crunch and the engine conks out and now I’m in an even worse position than I was before. The sweaty athletes shout at us through our open windows: ‘Bloody idiots!’ and ‘Great timing, lads!’
I wish for the ground to swallow me up and try to slip down beneath the steering wheel, out of sight from the angry horde. Yes, we are ‘those guys’. Driving an oversized camper van, disrupting everyone’s day, in the most ridiculous way possible. And, to top it all, we are dressed head to toe in tweed. We are tweedy wankers, not the dashing and refined fellows we had thought.
I want to shout, ‘I’m one of you!’ because running is a passion of mine. I’ve run marathons in Paris, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, Stirling and I hope to run the New Y
ork marathon in November 2020, fingers crossed.
Paris (not Hilton) was my first. It was so exciting and nerve-wracking. Twelve weeks of prep, carb-loading the day before, eating all the French bread, pasta and croissants. I celebrated afterwards (on my own) with a slap-up meal, bottle of red, steak-frites and yet more bread. I like to do these runs on my own. I enjoy the personal challenge but also the peace when you get to be by yourself. Running somehow is a good way to relax, re-energise and work out problems. The rhythm and tempo enable self-reflection. And the support at marathons is so uplifting, you feel for a day that you are a real athlete. My personal best time was three hours eleven minutes at the Edinburgh Marathon. I did a half marathon in London in one hour twenty-four minutes.
Running is a super way to explore cities and the surrounding area; there’s nothing quite like seeing the sights of Paris as you run along the Champs-Elysees, past Notre Dame and finish at the Eiffel Tower. In 2014 whilst playing Batman in the immense DC Comics and Universal live stadium production (featuring wire-work, fighting, acrobatics and pyrotechnics) I challenged the cast to run 5km every day for a month. We ran in each city: Berlin, Frankfurt, Prague, Cologne, and on Christmas day we ran together along the Seine in Paris.
After Batman, despite three months of auditioning for TV and film roles in LA, I returned to the UK penniless. I was thirty-four and forced to sign on to pay my rent. Two weeks later, I couldn’t face the process – the Job Centre not seeing acting as a legitimate profession – so I gave up and tried to find full-time work as a barman. I had done a variety of jobs to support myself over the years: delivered sandwiches by bicycle, sold perfume in Harrods, drawn up contracts for mental health doctors in the NHS and various other bar/restaurant jobs around London. Moving there after drama school, I had been working as a ‘jobbing actor’ for almost twelve years and it had been a real roller coaster, some years with great success and others with only a couple of credits to add to my CV. I had just returned from the US, after spending another pilot season there (a busy period in the spring when US networks would commission a large number of pilot TV shows). I had been testing on a number of shows and films (Agents of Shield, Tron, King Arthur, Beauty and the Beast, Aquaman, the list of near misses goes on!) that would potentially change my life and I had signed the contracts – spending the money and living the fame – in my head! However, once again I found myself penniless, depressed and back in the UK. I was really beginning to question if I could keep going with no real long-term opportunities in sight. In the past I had had trouble with the Inland Revenue and even seen bailiffs at my front door. Several loans and credit cards were drowning me and I couldn’t see a way out. I thought I’d give it another year to see if anything changed and, if not, I knew I was going to have to make drastic changes to my life.