After welcoming Sir Kenneth Branagh to her Surrey home in the first instalment of Tea with Judi Dench, the legendary James Bond actor has another starry houseguest: Sir Ian McKellen.
Dench has shared the stage and screen with the Lord of the Rings star multiple times during their illustrious careers, and they have plenty of awards between them – but in this Sky Arts show, the pair seem like any other regular pals as they sit down to chat over tea and tiffin.
From reminiscing about their early days on stage together, to sharing their honest thoughts on one of their most controversial projects, here are the best bits from the documentary…
Ian reveals how Judi saved him onstage
McKellen and Dench have shared the stage together countless times, and there’s one moment from early on in his career that The Lord of the Rings actor has never forgotten.
In 1975, the pair were starring in George Bernard Shaw’s comedy Too Good to Be True, with Dench playing a nurse masquerading as a countess and McKellen playing a thief who turned out to be a vicar (Dench’s husband, Michael Williams, was also in the cast).
open image in galleryOne night early on in the run, McKellen found himself suffering horrendous, mid-show stage fright after overhearing punters in a pub criticising his performance.
He tells Dench: “I turned my back and gave you a signal, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, Judi,’ and I don’t know what magic empathy you had; you just took over my lines, and your own lines, and you finished the scene as a monologue. Because I couldn’t speak.
“I was in the depths of stage fright. And you came off, and we didn’t make much of it, and you said, ‘Are you alright, Ian?’ I said, ‘I don’t think I am, it’s just I don’t think they think I’m any good’, and you said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, that’ll wear off in time.’ I think that’s all we said. And it did, three months later, I was fine.”
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While many of McKellen and Dench’s collaborations have been lauded by critics, the same sadly can’t be said for all of them. One misstep in particular stands out for the duo: the Cats film.
The pair made brief appearances in Tom Hooper’s catastrophic big-screen adaptation, with McKellen playing Gus the Theatre Cat and Dench appearing as a gender-swapped Old Deuteronomy, who sings the final number.
open image in galleryDench diplomatically says the 2019 film “didn’t quite land with cinema audiences”, before McKellen more bluntly reveals he once “made the mistake” of watching a clip from the movie.
“I didn’t know it was just an extract,” he explains, “and I thought, ‘Oh, well done Ian, that’s really not bad at all.’ And then it said ‘comments’, and I read the comments, but I didn’t get past three; they were all so disapproving. Anyway, there we go.”
“I was frightful in the film,” Dench tells her friend, before adding in a voiceover: “Just so that you know, I had no control over my CGI ears. Maybe the best way to survive success, or failure, is to take neither of them too seriously.”
Ian’s regret over not coming out to his parents
In one of the episode’s numerous emotional moments, McKellen opens up to his friend about the fact he never told his parents he was gay.
The Gandalf actor recalls being aware of his sexuality by the time he was studying at Cambridge University, but adds that he didn’t tell his sister until he was almost 50 years old, by which point their parents had died.
McKellen explains that the night before visiting Dench’s home, he found an old letter from his father. “He was only saying he loved me and I’d done well and he’d always be looking out for me, I think. Of course, looking back now, I knew I was gay at 21; it was the biggest thing in my life, really, the discovery, acceptance of that.”
open image in gallery“And one of the first people I should’ve talked to about it would’ve been dad,” he continues. “But I didn’t. He’s sending me this letter full of love, and I wonder, looking back, was he saying, ‘Is there anything you want to talk to me about?’
“It took me until I was 49 to say to my family, Jean, my sister, that I was gay, and her first reaction was, ‘Oh, Ian, I’ve known that for ages.’ What a waste of time, and my dad was long since dead, and my mother before that.
“I’ve had few regrets in my life, but that’s one of them, that I didn’t talk.”
Golden Globe mishap
Few actors can pull off looking modest as they casually spot their Oscar on a shelf, but the down-to-earth Dench does exactly that as she shows McKellen her extensive awards collection.
Dench, who won the Academy Award in 1999 for just eight minutes of screen time in Shakespeare in Love, jokingly presents McKellen with the statuette. He then reflects on receiving one of his biggest accolades to date, a Golden Globe for the 1997 TV film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny.
open image in gallery“I was intrigued as to how this Golden Globe was put together, and I discovered that on the bottom there was a screw,” he says. “And I undid the screw, and it all fell apart.”
“I couldn’t put it together again. And then they said, ‘Will you please send us back your statue [to add a nameplate] and I had to say, ‘I can’t find it.’” Whoops…
Tea with Judi Dench airs on Sky Arts and NOW on Monday 31 August.