WHAT HAPPENED NEXT GARY OLDMAN

February 2018

Unexpectedly, Gary Oldman arrives at the Bafta Awards in full Churchillian costume and prosthetics. As he stumbles down the aisle with his cane and cigar, an astonished hush descends over the Royal Albert Hall. Eventually, Jacob Rees-mogg and Nigel Farage – invited as part of a BBC pro-brexit quota – break the silence by rushing forward and falling at Oldman’s feet. ‘The second coming!’ a puce Farage wails, while Rees-mogg faints dramatically. ‘Jacob, pull yourself together, we practised for this at séance club!’ says Oldman, batting them away. Recognising the comic opportunity, he recites Churchill’s 1946 speech calling for the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’. The crowd roars.

October 2019

Noticing how successful he was at playing a Conservative leader he looked nothing like, filmmakers approach Oldman to play Theresa May in Darkest Hour 2: Fifty Shades Darker, a dramatic retelling of the Prime Minister’s 2016 party conference speech. Oldman is enticed by the challenge of bringing humanity to an otherwise entirely unsympathetic character. Co-starring Tilda Swinton as Philip Hammond and Gérard Depardieu as Boris Johnson, the project is so successful at evoking compassion for its subjects that the 1922 committee successfully crowdfunds an attempt to have them replace the real people full time.

May 2022

Gary Oldman has now been dressing up, Mrs Doubtfire-style, as Theresa May every day for three years. Articles such as ‘Is the Prime Minister growing a moustache?’ and ‘Is it just us or is Philip May looking physically scared of his wife these days?, appear online, yet nobody suspects anything until leaked emails suggest that the real Mrs May has been bribed to stay away with the gift of ‘300 acres of prime, roamable wheat fields in Nevada’. — Guy Kelly