Does the pressure get worse with age? “No, but it’s just as bad. Just thinking that whatever you’re doing, you could do better, that’s the problem.”
once. You might be bending down to do something and do it 10 times.” So a physical therapist was on set. Atkinson is 67 now, but a dozen years ago tore a calf muscle having failed to warm up between takes of a running scene in Johnny English Reborn. “When I look at the footage now of me running around in Hong Kong, I can see I’ve got a bit of a limp.
“But the real stress is not physical stress; it’s the mental stress. That I do nd hard when shooting. I nd it very hard. I nd the writing bit is fun. We had our rst script meeting just over three years ago for this and started shooting a year ago. And I’m always involved a lot in the post-production and all that stu . It’s the meat in the sandwich that I don’t like. The bits of bread are ne.”
Performance is where, of course, typically the pressure falls on him alone. He recalls Blackadder in the 80s with Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and company. There were con icts between writers, producers and, sometimes, the cast. “So it was slightly tricky at times. I mean, not awful. People weren’t coming to blows. It wasn’t like Oasis towards the end of the 1990s or whenever it was.” But a lot of singular talents up there? “Yes, exactly, but for me that was fantastic because I knew that when Stephen Fry walked on set I could hand him the baton and say, ‘Right, it’s your job to be funny for the next three minutes.’”
Does the pressure get worse with age? “No, but it’s just as bad. Just thinking that whatever you’re doing, you could do better, that’s the problem. You think it was OK, but surely there’s something better there somewhere? It’s the perfectionist feeling, I suppose. And perfectionism is all very well, but it is a kind of disease.”
When he sees the nal product, can he laugh? “I can, but I rarely laugh, physically, out loud at anything. I can just see when it works.”
Rarely totally satis ed, Atkinson says he is at least good at getting in a car and driving away and forgetting.
Is that why he drives nice cars? “To drive away from my inner torment? No, I just enjoy them, but they happen to be a very good, therapeutic outlet.”
Our interview never becomes Man vs Interviewee, but around this point our journey together does hit a few bumps, starting with when I ask if his daughter, born to his partner, actress Louise Ford, in 2017 (a er the end of his marriage), had found Man vs Bee funny. “I don’t talk about my family or their attitude,” he says.
A bit later, I mention that the amazing home wrecked by man and bee looks very much like Atkinson’s house in Oxfordshire. “I can’t talk about that either … It sounds as though you’re … No, I can’t.”
I explain that when I saw pictures of the house initially I thought he had lmed there during lockdown. “It’s not really accurate to describe it as my house,” he says.
Is it not his house? “No, I’m sorry, I can’t talk about that.” I see this fact-checking moment as an opportunity to explore other misunderstandings. Is it true, for instance, that he has an IQ of more than 170?
“No idea. I’ve never had my IQ tested as far as I’m aware. So I don’t know.”
It’s stated as fact on certain websites. “Well, what’s also there as a fact is that I’m dead.”
That is true. How does that make him feel? “It’s very funny. My accountant rings me up every six months and says, ‘I know this is a silly question to ask, but I’ve read it again that you’re dead and I just want to check that you’re not.’ I say, ‘No, I’m not, I’m ne.’ It’s very odd. It’s because something on the net never goes away and it’s completely immune to denial or truth.”
Is Mr Bean an extraterrestrial (a popular theory extrapolated from the sitcom’s opening that has Bean fall to Earth down a beam of light)? “He’s a ctional character.”
But did he play him as an extraterrestrial? “I didn’t play him as an extraterrestrial, no.”
Here’s another: Was he in discussions to play Adolf Hitler in Peaky Blinders? “Gracious me!” He has not heard that one? “I haven’t. And the answer is a de nite no.”
While undoubtedly he is irritated by the press, one of the very good things about Rowan Atkinson is his stout defence of free speech. Opposed to making attacks on religion a hate crime, in a letter to The Times in 2018 he even defended Boris Johnson’s joke about burqawearers and letterboxes.
“There has been manifestly a lot of successful lobbying from religious groups to make a religion a protected characteristic, akin to race or gender,” he says. “I don’t think religion is a characteristic. It’s an allegiance. It’s a choice. “It’s just this perennial problem that comedy is bound to have in the atmosphere that we have now, which is to be kind. The culture is to be nice to people, which sounds great and in principle is something I would support, but in practice, every joke has a victim. That’s what a joke is.”
Has he ever been o ended by a joke? “Probably. I remember in relation to my stammer, I once rang a BBC producer. I can’t remember his name. John? Anyway, his second name began with B, like yours. Say his name was John Billen.
I o en stammer on a B and it was him on the end of the phone, but I wasn’t sure it was. And I said, ‘Is that John B-B-B-Billen?’ and he said, ‘S-S-SSpeaking.’ And I thought … That’s the rst time that had happened to me.
“Then I said, ‘Oh, this is Rowan Atkinson here.’ And there was a terrible silence.”
Revenge served piping hot! But a rare retaliation. Over Zoom, Davies explains what the private Atkinson is really like. For example, to say goodbye before ying back to LA, Davies dropped in on him at an indeterminate hour – neither teatime nor evening drinks. Atkinson had prepared not only tea and cake, but also alcohol, nuts and olives. “He’s a lovely, lovely chap.”
“There are some movie stars that you work with who can be di cult to be close to, but Rowan is a fundamentally really nice guy. Seeing somebody like that in pain is a di cult thing. He has no choice but to listen to the perfectionism that tortures him, but in the end, when you get to the cutting room, you’re so relieved that he’s gone through all that pain and misery because what you end up with is the thing that everybody wanted at the beginning.”
Charlie Chaplin once made a co-star retake a scene 342 times. It is one of history’s mercies that he and Atkinson never made a lm together. On the other hand – what a masterpiece that would have been.