THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PATIENT
Rupert Everett’s decade-long, all-consuming Oscar Wilde project has finally come to fruition
Rupert Everett’s long-awaited Oscar Wilde film comes to the silver screen at last
‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’ When Oscar Wilde wrote those words, he could hardly have imagined that five years later, he would be one of the most infamous men in England, following the scandalous court case that had him imprisoned for his homosexuality and forced him to spend the remainder of his days in exile in Paris and Naples.
This final, tragic chapter of Wilde’s history is the subject of Rupert Everett’s new film The Happy Prince. Perhaps more than any other actor, Everett has a natural affinity for Wilde – he is similarly charming, erudite and with a wicked eye for observation, and has played the writer in the theatre numerous times over the decades, as well as taking on starring roles in An Ideal Husband (1999) and The Importance of Being Earnest (2002).
‘I started thinking of writing a film in 2008, little knowing that over the years it would come to be the most challenging thing of my life,’ he says, as he sits in the leafy courtyard of a hotel in Rome, where he is currently filming another upcoming project. Everett masterminded the entire venture – writing the script, raising capital, then directing it while assuming the lead role. Many of the characters are played by his industry friends, including Colin Firth, Anna Chancellor and Emily Watson. ‘They were amazing to work with,’ he recalls. ‘I enjoyed directing it and I certainly enjoyed directing me. I thought me as an actor got better with me as a director.’
The film chronicles a version of Oscar Wilde that is unfamiliar – gone is the flamboyant dandy and the society wag, and in his place is a broken man, struggling to reconcile himself to his new status as an outcast. Everett cites this forgotten side to Wilde as a result of Richard Ellmann’s influential 1987 biography – the book that inspired the 1997 film featuring Stephen Fry. Ellmann became ill midway through the volume and wrote a very short epilogue that glossed over the final epoch of Wilde’s journey. ‘Even in that book, the epilogue was always the thing that fascinated me,’ says Everett. ‘There’s something so tragic and wonderful about a huge star about to fall. He was a gigantic celebrity – the life and soul of the Café Royal, friends with the Royal Family, so the comedown to being a kind of toothless vagabond living with no money on the boulevards of Paris, cadging drinks, is one of the great romantic images of the 19th century.’
Everett is almost unrecognisable in the film – his face and body padded to better evoke Wilde, his skin lined, his eyes haunted. The final deathbed scenes show a framed photograph of Queen Victoria propped up on the bedside table, a subtle statement that Wilde was a victim of his era, convicted for his sexuality. ‘For me, he’s a great role model, almost a Christ figure in a way,’ says Everett. ‘When I came to London in the mid1970s, homosexuality had only been legal for eight years. It was still like a secret society. Wilde was at the forefront of the gayliberation movement – it all started with him. He actually realised that – he said in one letter that the road was going to be long and covered with the blood of martyrs.’
Catholicism looms large in the film, as it did in Wilde’s own life – he converted shortly before his death. ‘His decline reminded me of a passion story or a calvary,’ says Everett, who was raised in the same faith. ‘Protestantism doesn’t have that obsession with sin and retribution and guilt that we have in the Catholic church.’ Despite coming from a staunchly AngloIrish background, Wilde was fascinated by the symbolism and ceremony of Catholicism, although this, like everything in the author’s sphere, provided a rich seam for witticisms, many of which made it into Everett’s script. ‘I’m like Saint Francis,’ Wilde wryly observes at one point. ‘I’m wedded to poverty, only in my case the marriage is not a success.’
This continual veering between comedy and tragedy, of bacchanalian celebration and abject poverty is what makes his latterday incarnation of Oscar Wilde so gripping, and has earned him considerable critical acclaim. It’s a tale of light and shadows, merriment and despair. Everett has long worn the laurels of a great comic actor, but his film shows a nuance and depth that leaves you seeing both director and subject in an entirely new way.
‘The Happy Prince’ is released on 22 June.