Bill Nighy: ‘I have danced naked in my front room, but you need shoes to really spin’
There’s an argument that you’re the person James Bond matures into: women still want to sleep with you and men want to be you. What’s your secret? Marco Polo Mint I have no idea. I don’t get out much and I don’t identify with whomever they’re talking about. I did used to quip that I could be James Bond’s grandfather and I’ve always wanted to say: “The name’s Nighy. Bill Nighy.” I’m very happy to hear, but it’s a bit of a stretch for me to grasp.
When you were younger, you travelled to Paris to write a book, but never completed it. Will you ever dust down your great unfinished novel to realise your literary ambitions? V er ula mi um Park Ranger I had a very romantic idea – I was a walking cliche in my 20s – of running away to Paris to write the great English short story. The pathetic thing is that I went and stood in the Trocadéro, outside the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and under the Arc de Triomphe, hoping to catch some vibes. I sat down for an hour in front of a blank page and drew a margin, like at school, for the teacher’s remarks, but the doorbell went or the phone rang and that was the end of my literary career.
How do you deliver unspoken dialogue so loudly and more than adequately every time? Twist 27 I’m not sure, because I never watch anything I’m in. I mean, I’m there when it’s happening. I keep acting until somebody says “stop”, whether I’ve got lines or not. I’m flattered to hear that my silence is eloquent, but I’m not really in a position to comment further.
Thank you for Pride. What a wonderful film. One of my favourite scenes involves you and Imelda Staunton making sandwiches. What is your perfect sandwich? pleicetene Decent bread, untoasted, with butter, plenty of Marmite, cheese, cucumber and salt and pepper. That’s what I call a sandwich. I’m not very good at food. I eat lots, but I don’t eat very sophisticatedly. I’ve made whole films on toasted cheese sandwiches and Snickers bars.
I was surprised to read that you come from a family of chimney sweeps. Did you clean many chimneys when you were younger?Catupatree It’s true that I did a lot of chimney work as a boy, but there was a bittersweet moment for all Nighy children when they realised they were too tall. There’s generally a family party at this point, which is a joyous occasion, but it’s also sad, because it’s a farewell to chimney work; those were good times, good years. You can find out a lot about yourself up a chimney.
You’ve sung as Strange Fruit’s Ray Simms in Still Crazy, Billy Mack in Love Actually and Dylan in the Magic Roundabout. Would you welcome the opportunity to sing as yourself? Verulamium Park Ranger I think the days of me being a singer have gone. A couple of films have required me to be in a recording studio and, I have to say, they were some of the happiest times of my life. Watching musicians together is absolutely thrilling. I listen to music all day long: when I get up in the morning; in the car on the way to work; in the hotel room; in the trailer. I dance on my own at home, which is one of the great pleasures of living alone. I have danced naked in the privacy of my front room, but you need shoes to really spin.
Do you get much post addressed to Mr Nighty? Top Tramp I get post directed to – and people approaching me in the street as – Mr Nighly. The first time I was ever reviewed in a newspaper, I was Bill Nickby. People I’ve known for a long time still call me
Nickby. I get Mr Nightly, which is longer and more complicated. Nighty. All sorts of stuff. Somebody sent me a newspaper cutting with six or seven names that are leaving the language, and one of them is mine. So there you go.
Considering all your grumpy old men roles, what makes Bill Nighy grum-py? Turanga Leela 2I don’t think I’ve ever played a grumpy old man. I’ve played some cheerful old men, some sad old men, but not particularly grumpy. But let’s assume that I have. I blush easily. And what makes me grumpy is people telling you that you are blushing. The people who are blushing are never in any doubt about the fact that they’re blushing. No one needs telling that they’re blushing and there’s no attractive reason for pointing it out.
Is there any particular role you have yet to be offered that you would still like to play? Sagarmatha 1953I want my action career to begin. I’m not kidding. I looked at a film of mine on Netflix or Prime the other day. They give you “five other films you might like if you like this one” and they were all about people dying. I thought: “I think I’ve done as much dying as I really want to do.” I’m grateful to be the guy they come to for dying, but from now on, if I’m going to die, I don’t want to die on a drip in my pyjamas – I want to die in a hail of machine gunfire or jumping out of an aeroplane at 30,000ft. When there’s a scene where you are required to wear pyjamas, I always try to get some funky alternative, because I always feel too exposed. It’s a terrible thing for an actor to say, but there we go.
Custard: thick or thin? billy ocean When I was a boy, my Sunday duties were gravy and custard. I never had many complaints. You don’t want it to be too thick. It’s got to have some movement. Thin custard is a depressing thought. So, somewhere between the two – a fluid consistency that can honour the pudding.
I love your work and would watch you read the phone book. How would you approach such a role? Shelley 88I would put in a lot of pauses, gaze into the middle distance to give particular significance to certain names. There would be special graphics when we get to names that are dying out, like Nighy. I would speed up at points and slow down inexplicably with some of my – as you say – trademark unspoken dialogue. I would change costume a few times, into a series of lounge suits. Possibly, I’d have some music playing in the background. Maybe I’d dance – but not naked. And I’ll die in my pyjamas at the end, but only if you insist.
• The First Omen is in UK cinemas from 5 April
said on Tuesday. “Will it be a little bit higher? Will it be the same? Will it be a little bit lower?”
The knock-on consequences are profound, on and off the field. The trial run in the XFL led to some ingenious return strategies and prompted a shift in how teams built their special teams units. Returners will be now at a premium – and the mechanics on how to block and defend the new style will change, meaning the attacking and defensive units will be looking for players with different skill sets.
2024 will be a trial run. The rule was approved on a one-year trial basis and could be shelved if the owners decide it’s a step backward. If it works as intended, though, it will be approved permanently next year, cementing the most sweeping reform to special teams play in generations.
Bringing in the new kickoff is a great change. But the league can – and should – go further. Here are a few other suggestions to consider.
Eliminate conferences in the postseason
Not since the 1980s has there been such a disparity between the two conferences. You can pin that on good fortune, fluky quarterback distribution or incompetence. The potential additions of Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels and JJ McCarthy could help address the imbalance. But for now, the NFC remains the junior varsity conference.
That’s fine during the regular season. Conferences and divisions allow the league to maintain geographical rivalries. But it’s time to switch it up for the postseason, eliminate conference standings, and seed the playoffs irrespective of conference affiliation.
A postseason should be about determining the best team – about forcing a franchise to run through a gauntlet. Given the current quarterback landscape, the AFC meets the mark and the NFC does not. The NBA toyed with the idea of moving to a model that ditched its East-West structure and rewarded the 16 best teams with playoff berths. The NFL should do the same with AFC and NFC. Decouple the playoffs from the conferences. Seed the postseason one-through-14 and give us as many great v great matchups as possible late in January.
Make quarterbacks exempt from the salary cap
There is a perverse incentive structure for quarterbacks under the current salary cap. Players want to maximize their leverage and negotiate the strongest contract possible, but if they take up too high a percentage of the cap it can kneecap their team’s ability to build a championship-caliber roster.
The reputation of quarterbacks (rightly or wrongly) is built on team success. Leaving cash on the table to help build a contender is a strand that runs through all quarterback negotiations. When a quarterback opts to leave money on the table – as Tom Brady did in New England – they’re praised for being team-first, for prioritizing winning over money, all while franchise values continue to soar.
Dak Prescott and the Cowboys are negotiating what will be the fattest contract in league history. Next up will be Brock Purdy and the 49ers. “It’s a good problem when your quarterback is one of the highest-paid guys on your team and in the league,” Niners CEO Jed York said this week when discussing Purdy’s looming contract extension. He’s correct; the Niners hit on the most valuable contract in the sport when they selected Purdy with the final pick in the 2022 draft. But now they’re in a funky situation. Does Purdy try to make up for lost time, grabbing some of the money he missed out on with his rookie deal or does he negotiate a cheaper contract to help his team maintain their star-studded roster?
NFL owners are swimming in money. The cap exists largely to stop a handful of owners indulging their own worst instincts. When the league tried to implement a secret salary cap in 2010 when there was no official number of the books, Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones couldn’t help themselves, splashing the cash behind the backs of the other 30 owners.
Lifting the cap altogether is a nonstarter. And making a carve-out for one position would be tricky to get through the players’ union – a workaround could be that oneplayer, irrespective of position, is exempt. But teams would surely throw their money at the quarterback position because it isdifferent. The visibility is different. Their influence is different. There’s a reason they’re already the highest-paid player on the majority of teams. Carving out a cap-free slot would allow money to be distributed elsewhere across the roster, remove the me-v-team side of negotiating and ensure continuity for players and teams at the most valuable position in the game.
Reform the draft
The draft is inherently unfair. Most regular workers aren’t forced to apply for a job before waiting to find out where they’ll be sent. And in no other workforce are the star applicants sent in descending order from the worst workplace to the best.
This offseason alone, we’ve had Caleb Williams, the presumptive No 1 overall pick in the draft, expressing his disdain for the draft structure. Earlier this week, Deion Sanders said he will encourage Shedeur Sanders, his son and the starting quarterback at Colorado, and two-way phenom Travis Hunter, to “pull an Eli” in next year’s draft, forcing through trades to their preferred destinations.
From the league’s perspective, a draft makes sense. It brings competitive balance. It allows the NFL to enforce a rookie wage scale that limits the financial exposure to busts. But we can make tweaks.
How about this: each team is allocated a rookie salary pool tied to the franchise’s performance in the previous season. Let’s say the team with the worst record in the league get a $25m pool and the Super Bowl champs get $10m. It’s then up to the teams to decide how they want to allocate their resources.
The worst team, in desperate need of a quarterback, could toss as much money as they like at the top college quarterback. But that quarterback may decide to prioritize his landing spot over cash. A star wide receiver might forgo an early payday to play with Patrick Mahomes, Jordan Love or Josh Allen. A rebuilding franchise may prefer to spread the wealth across 15 prospects rather than pouring money into the most coveted draftees.
Such a structure would maintain the Super Bowl-to-draft excitement. The Mock Draft Industrial Complex would stay at full throttle. But it would hand draftees some agency. It would not reward incompetence. It could, perhaps, prompt franchises to clean their sewage water. Just as importantly, draft night would remain compelling in its unpredictability, albeit with a fresh twist: every player would be available to everyteam.
The Larry David Rule
Now that Curb Your Enthusiasm is coming to an end, Larry David has moved on to a new project: eradicating kickers from the NFL. “I’m losing the goalposts,” David told the Rich Eisen Show when asked how he would change the sport. “Why are kickers, who don’t have football skills, who aren’t football players, why are they kicking a ball through goalposts to decide games? Why not just have leaping frogs to decide games?”
Eliminating field-goals – David’s key objection – is one thing. But David goes further. He wants to overhaul the point-after system. David’s idea is to remove kicked conversions. Instead, teams would elect to take the ball from the one, two or six-yard line, as they do on current two-point conversions, with different point values assigned to the distances. Convert from the one-yard line, and they score one point. From the two-yard line, it’s two points. From the six-yard line, it’s three points.
Removing field goals isn’t happening anytime soon. But escalating extra points? That’s pretty, pretty good.
of this one there’s a centrefold”.
Selling the book is “no surprise” given that “making a profit is Trump’s religion” even though buyers would be “spending $60 on public domain writing” with the text of the Bible joined by historic documents like the constitution.
In the video, Trump alleges that he has a great number of Bibles in his house. “He has to have spare Bibles because every time he holds one, it bursts into flames,” he jokes.
Colbert also spoke about Trump’s claim that he won major awards at his own golf club, which has now been debunked. He joked to audience members that he would “give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor”.
The sports writer Rick Reilly, who has golfed with Trump, has said “his wins are as fake as Velveeta cheese”. Colbert responded: “How dare you sir! Velveeta isn’t fake, it’s full of all-natural ingredients like yellow and rectangle.”
Reilly said more talented golfers would pretend that Trump won because they wanted their own stories about him cheating. “The only other way to get a story about Trump cheating is to marry him,” he quipped.
The past week has also seen former the RNC head Ronna McDaniel make the news. “In case you’re unfamiliar with Ronna McDaniel, she’s terrible,” he said.
She was hired by NBC, which caused a backlash both inside and outside of the network given her support of Trump and his election lies, which led to her being quickly ousted. It was the “most recent time she’s been fired” as she was also removed from the RNC and replaced in part by Lara Trump.
Many others have been removed and forced to reapply, the process of which involves them being asked for their thoughts on the “stolen” election. “If you wanna work at the RNC, then you’ve gotta believe Trump’s big lie.”