Rush plays Lionel Logue, a speech therapist entrusted with helping George VI (Colin Firth) overcome a severe speech impediment before addressing England in a radio broadcast in the early days of World War II. Movieline spoke to Rush about the awards-season darling, its controversial R rating, if we can ever expect to see Rush act with Firth again and, 11 years later, his reflections on the cult favorite, Mystery Men.
Thanks for calling in from Australia. What are you working on down there?
Yeah, I'm in rehearsals. It's now lunchtime. We're rehearsing in Melbourne but the show [Diary of a Madman] is playing in the Belvoir Theatre in Sydney, which is where we created Exit the King -- which we took to Broadway last year. Then we go to the Brooklyn Academy [of Music] in February and March.
Do you think people who see The King's Speech will be in for a surprise if they think it's just another film about a royal family?
Absolutely. There's a kind of a royal genre that's emerged over the last couple of decades, with Elizabeth, The Madness of King George, Young Victoria and The Other Boleyn Girl. You know what I mean: There's a certain level of expectation in, I suppose, the strangeness of that kind of privileged lifestyle. And I know that [director] Tom [Hooper], because of the nature of the storyline in The King's Speech, wanted to maybe dig into the idea that maybe the pomp and glamor and the lushness of people's perceptions into that world were sort of foiled by a relatively by a human level story going on within it. I think what happens with this one was a curious phenomenon that both principal protagonists are kind of nobodies. The Duke of York starts out as a very hidden minor royal of no obvious historical significance. And then all of the events conspire against him, including his own disability with what was called a speech defect. And Lionel Logue being a son of a brewer from the Antipodes. And somehow fate conspired to throw them together.
And anytime that a viewer thinks that the film might go down that path, when Bertie starts demanding special treatment, Lionel doesn't allow that.
No. That's what always intrigued me most about the storyline. There was something slightly preposterous and strange about the timelines of these two men coming from not only geographical opposite sides of the planet but there was an imperial, colonial clash. There's a clash of classes and a clash of cultures.
I feel the role of Lionel is one of the biggest stretches that you've done: Playing a bad actor.
[Laughs] Yes. Well, you know, historically I wanted to avoid any sort of internationally perceived cultural stereotypes of Australians -- I don't know what that is. Where the people sort of think in broad strokes; a sort of Crocodile Dundee or a Les Patterson, the Barry Humphries character. That character is probably not so well-known.
Though, Crocodile Dundee is very well-known. That's a good example.
Yeah, there's a brashness or something there. The interesting thing for us is when we discovered through Lionel Logue's grandson, he presented us this treasure trove of papers, diaries, letters and photos which were so beneficial in fleshing out the man -- who was a sort of dilettante. He did start out as an amateur actor. He loved doing recitals. Through that he accidentally got in to speech therapy during World War I with shell-shock victims. I don't know, he probably, earlier on, might have thought he was going to England to see if he could crack into the acting scene.
You and Colin Firth should do at least five more films together, even if it's a buddy cop movie. Do you think another film starring the both of you will happen?
We'll remake The Persuaders [Laughs]. We sort of vaguely were in each other's orbits on a couple of days of shooting for Shakespeare in Love. I really didn't get to know Colin that well then because it was a very big company and we didn't directly have scenes together. But we did go on the press junket in New York in late 1998 for about four days and I hung out with him and Rupert Everett socially. And we laughed and had a lot of fun. I don't think I had actually seen Colin since then but we seemed to have picked up on that rapport in the very early days of the rehearsal -- we had about a three-week rehearsal period. Colin has a very natural, fast sense of humor. And we discovered in the diaries that there was a lot of quick wittedness between Logue and the Duke of York, and we didn't want to deny that being a central part of the relationship.
Has there been a funnier representation of the word "f*ck" ever filmed?
[Laughs] Ultimately it becomes a kind of improvised tongue twister. David Seidler, the author of the screenplay, that's very much echoing his own therapy that he experienced in the '40s as a child. David was born in 1937, and he used to listen to George VI on the radio delivering these very notable, inspirational wartime speeches. And his parents said to him, "There's hope for you, listen to this man." As the film sort of highlights, up against the frantic, almost messianic speeches of Hitler, this man became a major voice to galvanize the psyche of Britain. They were being severely bombed and blitzed and there was even talk at one point of even the King and Queen being shuffled off to Canada. They made a very definite, emblematic choice to stay with the people at home at Buckingham Palace.
The scene that I mentioned in the last question also stuck the film with an R rating. What's your opinion of the rating controversy?
Well, for what I know of whatever the censorship body is called -- the MPAA or something -- but they just have a fundamental rule that once you've said the "F word" more than three times or something it suddenly means that it automatically gets an R rating without any kind of specific analysis or how its language might be being used. Which, in the context of our film, is relatively benign because it's not in any way used in an abusive or sexual context. It's a tongue twister that's got some explosive dynamite. I did a junket in Britain for the London Film Festival and it had been rated 15, which I don't know what that is in the States...
There's also a PG-13.
They moved it down to 12, which meant anyone 12 and up accompanied by a guardian, or whatever the classification is. Because they kind of figured that they really needed to take a look at comparing various violence ratings on different films, what's deemed appropriate. And a lot of people felt, without it being a wordy history lesson, there's something in the context of this film and the nature of families structures -- whether they're royal or whether they're from Australia or wherever -- the role of the family plays a terribly important part that's passed from one generation to the next. Lionel kind of does it with a great sense of play and improvisation; doing a bit of Shakespeare with his kids.
Are you familiar with the American television show 30 Rock?
No. But I have heard of the EGOT, or something...
You are one Grammy win away from an EGOT.
Yes, I know. I thought they should have made the acronym GOTE. [Laughs] I don't know, it's one of those things. It was a great honor last year getting the Tony in New York. On lots of levels, we were one of the first Australian theater companies to take a show directly into the commercial arena on Broadway. That in itself is a triumph for us in terms of artistic expansion and development.
With the proliferation of superhero movies today, do you think Mystery Men came out about 10 years too soon?
Yes, you know, there was something curious about that film. I mean, for me, it was just the ideal project to come along at a point where I'd been in two Elizabethan films and I played Javert in Les Misérables -- and I really felt the itch to get out of tights. And there were a number of summer blockbusters just prior to that like, I think, Deep Impact or Armageddon. The whole idea of a kind of superhero story that was very, very domestic and very suburban really tickled me as an Australian. It felt very much like an Australian sense of comedy. And it had the most amazing cast; every name on that poster is like a curious combination of great comedic talent in a way. Ben Stiller, Paul Reubens and Tom Waits is in there... Bill Macy. Just a hybrid of stuff. Yeah, it kind of came and went but I know a lot of people who come up to me and say, "Hey, I'm Pencilhead." Or they open their coat and go, "I'm Ballerina Man." I thought it was great to see a very funny superhero story.
It does seem to have reached that cult favorite status. It may have been a little bit before its time.
Well, it's always there on DVD!