Worth checking into Marigold Hotel
Judi Dench’s Marigold Hotel role echoes her own commitment fears
Judi Dench greeted an underling with a smile and a hug in front of London’s lavish Claridge’s Hotel.
As they headed arm-in-arm toward the hotel’s ornate entrance, Dench shared a private thought with him that made him chuckle.
Asked later what she had said, the 81-year-old actress merely shrugged. “Probably some silliness,” she said.
The playful Dench was available to discuss The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a sequel to 2011’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which earned nearly $137 million worldwide on a $10-million budget.
Director John Madden agreed to do another film only if he could get all his original players. They didn’t hesitate, including Dench, who smiled like a schoolgirl recalling the invitation.
“I do what’s offered, more or less, but if you get paid to go to India again, you do it,” she said. “What was wonderful, and a huge compliment, I think, is that 70 per cent of the India crew were back.”
Creature comforts were few in Jaipur, India, which the cast and crew used as a base of operations. It was the same for the nearby village of Khempur, where a former royal palace became the Marigold Hotel.
“I think India is one of the great stars of both films,” Dench said. “You might try to fake it, but we had the sights, sounds and colours. And we really did have to use everything going on because there were crowds and crowds watching us film.”
Reuniting with friends was another plus. Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Dev Patel and the rest of the cast return for the second part of the story profiling senior citizen relationships at a hotel in India.
In the second movie, Sonny (Patel) has plans to open a second hotel, while two new hotel guests (Richard Gere and Tamsin Greig) may be hiding some secrets.
Then there are Nighy’s Douglas and Dench’s Evelyn. They continue to fall for each other, although Evelyn’s hesitant. “Evelyn doesn’t know where she’s going with her life,” Dench said. “It’s a shared worry, the commitment thing.”
Nighy and Dench also shared a worry, another motorbike scene in which Nighy’s Douglas has Evelyn as a passenger riding along a busy street.
Madden needed 12 takes to get what he needed. “And around the sixth take, I am on the back, and John (Madden) says, ‘Now, wave’,” Dench said.
As usual, she was game for anything and remarkably compelling. And Nighy continued to savour performing opposite her.
“(Dench) is very easy and a real democrat in every sense of the word, and classy to do business with,” Nighy said.
Madden was more succinct. “She is a genius,” the filmmaker said.
He would know. He directed
I do what’s offered, more or less, but if you get paid to go to India again, you do it.
Dench to her first of seven Oscar nominations in Mrs. Brown (playing Queen Victoria) and her only Academy Award, as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.
The latest Marigold role “is slightly unusual for (Dench),” Madden said. “She is closer to herself than she would like, but an audience instantly engages with her, whatever she is doing.”
When Dench is informed of Madden’s appraisal, she’s quick to respond.
“He directs through stealth,” she said. “He just makes it a glorious kind of collaboration. He’s fantastically talented and even-tempered.”
She agreed with his assessment that Evelyn is almost too close to her own personality.
“That was the one thing that worried me and was disconcerting,” Dench said.
“Before I would go to set, I would be made up and I would look into the mirror, and I thought, ‘I don’t know who this person is,’ because it was me. So I did find it difficult, indeed.”