Rupert Everett hopes his acclaimed stage turn as Oscar Wilde will help him secure funding for the film he has written, in which he would again play the brilliant but self-destructive writer.
As it was announced today that David Hare’s The Judas Kiss will transfer to the West End after its stint at Hampstead Theatre and a regional tour, the actor, 53, said he will never tire of Wilde. “He’s an amazing mixture of brilliance and foolishness and wealth and poverty. Everyone can relate to him. He’s so clever but he makes such mistakes. He’s flawed like all of us.”
Everett was already writing his own script, which he also intends to direct, when he was asked to take the lead in the revival of the play which premiered in 1998 with Liam Neeson. “It’s a part I really understand,” said Everett. “As a gay person, Wilde is rather like a Christ figure. It can only help with financing the film.” While Hare’s play focuses on Wilde’s arrest and a night in Naples two years after his release from imprisonment for homosexuality, Everett’s script covers the month before he died at 46, penniless, in Paris in 1900.
Stars including Edward Fox —father of Everett’s Judas Kiss co-star Freddie — and Colin Firth, are attached to the project, which he hopes to film next autumn. But he said funding was proving tricky. “One piece falls off and the whole thing falls off.”
In the meantime, he is thrilled to be transferring. “I love being in the West End. I live in Holborn, so it gives me an excuse to stay in bed.”
There is, however, a downside to playing the Victorian literary giant, Everett confessed. The padding he has to wear on stage makes him sweat. “I wanted to be a bit more elephant-like but it’s very sweaty. Sometimes if I move my neck there’s this waft. I hope it doesn’t waft over to the audience.”
The Judas Kiss will run at the Duke of York’s Theatre from January 9 until April 6.
