A&E goes behind the scenes
with Rowan Atkinson,
star of the critically acclaimed series
The Black Adder on A&E's Britwit.
Rowan Atkinson is a
household name in England,
a celebrated star of
television and the theatre.
The New York Times has called him...
"A gifted mime and an expert
in debunking pretension.".
Rowan received an international Emmy
for his role in The Black Adder,
and the series has twice
swept the ace awards
as best comedy series
on cable television.
One element that has earned
the series this distinction,
is that it changes
with each season.
The first series is set
in the middle ages.
Atkinson plays Edmund,
duke of Edinburgh,
the bungling nephew of the
fictitious king Richard III.
Blackadder jumps ahead
to Elizabethan times,
to the comic misadventures of
Blackadder's great-great grandson,
lord Edmund Blackadder.
Blackadder the third features E.
Blackadder esquire,
descendant of both Blackadders,
who suffered the loss of
his family's fortune,
and now serves as the assertive
butler to be idiotic prince regent.
When A&E met up with Rowan,
he explained the premise behind
basing the series
in medieval times,
and the motivation for changing
the series with each season.
Also Rowan reflected
on the success...
of his brand of British humour
with American audiences.
Well there is said to be a great gulf
between American and British comedy,
which I suppose there is, but
there is one level certainly
on which American and British
comedy seem to meet rather well,
and that is basically in the
kind of youthful market,
you know, college
level of humour,
which tends to be kind of youngish sort
of humour and rudish sort of humour.
And of course The Black Adder
is kind of young orientated,
and, occasionally, quite rude, and
I think that is a level on which,
on which Americans can
accept comedy very easily.
They do say mrs. M., that verbal
insults hurt more than physical pain.
They are of course wrong,
as you will soon discover...
when I stick this toasting
fork in your head.
At the same time there is something
about The Black Adder, certainly
from series onwards, whereby
the hero is quite a cool character.
And most English comics,
or comic heroes...
...are not cool at all, though,
though, their kind of, you know,
gimpy middle class suburban put upon
husbands and putting upon wives,
tend to be fairly middle-aged,
fairly uncool characters.
Whereas Americans I think like
their comedians to be quite cool,
I mean theolcove, y'know, Eddie Murphy
and Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin and
and all these kind of guys they've,
that, they're cool, you know,
they're in charge, and I mean, they
are in, they get in sticky situations
but they get out of them
in a fairly cool way,
and The Black Adder of course is a
pretty cool hard and cynical character
and I think maybe
that is another level
on which it-it operates successfully
for an American audience.
You look smart, mr. Blackadder.
Going somewhere nice?
- No, I'm off to the theatre.
- Don't you like it, then?
No, I don't! A lot of stupid
actors strutting around shouting,
with their chests
thrust out so far,
you'd think their nipples were attached
to a pair of charging elephants!
And the worst thing about it is
having to go with prince Mini-Brain!
- Doesn't he like it, either?
- He loves it.
The problem is
that he doesn't realise it's made up.
Last year, when Brutus was
about to k*ll Julius Caesar,
the prince yelled out, "Look
behind you, mr. Caesar!"
I can't see the point
in the theatre.
All that sex and v*olence - I
get enough of that at home.
Except for the sex, of course.
And while we're out, Baldrick, I want
you to give this palace a good clean.
It's so dirty, it'd be
unacceptable to a dung-beetle
that had lost interest in its career
and really let itself go.
Come on, Blackadder,
or we'll miss the first act!
Coming, sir, as fast as I can!
Stick the kettle on, Baldrick.
It was risky, I suppose, trying
to base a comedy series...
...in medieval times, in-in
any kind of period setting.
Because most sitcoms are set in,
you know, modern-day households.
But the inspiration f-for
doing it was just that,
was that we felt as though, you
know, when we started to think
about doing a sitcom of our own, after
doing sketch shows on TV for years,
that we felt as though we
didn't want to be compared
to any contemporary, or
current situation comedy.
And one sure way of not being compared
to John Cleese or Fawlty Towers...
...was to go back
years and set it then.
Of course actually all your characters
and you situations and your jokes
are very identifiable to a modern day
audience otherwise it wouldn't be funny.
So to a certain extent, y'know, it's,
it's a cheat really, it's the same
jokes in different clothes.
Occasionally you can make jokes
about cutting people's heads off,
which you generally can't
in this day and age.
There.
That will teach you.
I didn't think the character in the
first series was very well rounded,
he was bit of a mess, I mean
he looked quite funny, y'know,
he had a strange kind
of aspect to him,
which was very amusing and
he spoke in quite a funny way,
but he wasn't what I would
call a well-written,
a particularly well-written for or
particularly few well-rounded character.
And when Richard Curtis and Ben Elton
started to think about the second series
that they thought that a major change
of gear would probably be a good idea
and they just came up
with this guy who was,
y'know, who was really
rather cool and competent.
And it is quite rare really to home
in, as I say in British terms,
on a comic character who has a kind
of a certain p-p-panache to his life.
And, and that seemed
to work quite well.
Of course having set the precedent for
changing the character every series...
we're kind of stuck with it now,
and it would seem extremely dull
if we made series on the trot in the
same period or with the same character,
Of course increasingly the character
is staying actually very similar.
His clothes change and he has a
beard or he doesn't have a beard,
but generally he's staying pretty
cool and calm and cynical, and
and it's the Baldrick character, his
sidekick, who who gets p-put upon,
and he's the silly gimp.
Why have you got a piece of cheese
tied to the end of your nose?
To catch mice, my lord.
I lie on the floor with my mouth
open and hope they scurry in.
- And do they?
- Not yet, my lord.
I'm not surprised. Your breath comes
straight from satan's bottom Baldrick.
The only sort of mouse you're going
to catch is one without a nose.
That's a pity, 'cause the nose
is the best bit on a mouse.
Get the door, Baldrick, get the door.
Well my lord, If things go as planned
tonight, congratulations are in order.
Nice try, Percy. But forget it,
you're not getting a penny.
Baldrick, I would advise you to make the
explanation you were about to give...
...phenomenally good.
- You said: "Get the door."
- Not good enough, you're fired.
But, my lord, I've been
in your family since !
So has syphilis. Now get out!
A present-day blackadder is probably
what our producer John Lloyd
is most keen to exploit, which
is some kind of, you know,
media hack who drives
around in in an Aston Martin,
and has his mechanic, who
would probably be a mr. Baldrick
in the greasy overalls who
would service his motor cars.
And he would undoubtedly be something
and somewhere around the royal family.
Probably some minor aristocrat.
And then you can get all
the contemporary problems
of being a member of the royal
family in the present day and age,
and what an anachronism it is,
and the press, and television,
and uh... you know, the
archbishop of Canterbury,
and all the characters that you
can have from the present day.
And I think it would be
an interesting series to do,
but I think it'd be quite different
from virtually anything else
that we've done in the Black Adder
so we'd have to change gear,
we'd not only have to change
our clothing, our clothing gear,
but I think that we'd
have to change
a lot of the basic jokes that
are inherent in the series.
Sir, I fear you have
been too long a soldier.
We no longer treat servants
that way in London society.
- Why, I hardly touched the man!
- I think you hit him very hard.
Nonsense! That would have been a hard hit.
I just hit him like that.
No, sir, a soft hit would be like this.
Whereas you hit him like this.
The future of the Black Adder
is unclear,
because it's extremely
difficult to get our writers
to actually sit down and
actually do anything.
And they only make a series
about every two years.
So in between times I have to
go off and do other things.
But we are hoping to do this to
Dickensian series of a Black Adder,
which w'd Blackadder ,
Blackadder , I suppose, will
logically be in a...
...in the twentieth century.
And we are already projecting
actually, we've already...
We're doing a christmas special
soon of the Black Adder,
in which we do momentarily look
into the future of the Black Adder,
and we see Frondo,
Frondo Blackadder,
who, who'se dressed like
some kind of ice warrior,
with lots of muscles and long
glowing black singlets of hair,
who has basically k*lled everyone
else off in the universe,
and is having a very
good time in , AD.
I think there is a major
future for the Black Adder,
the only question is you know
getting the writers to write things.
But at least changing the character
and changing the situation
and the period every series,
it does inspire us,
it does inspire the writers and
inspire myself to carry on.
Rowan Atkinson can be seen in
The Black Adder on A&E's Britwit.
Britwit is a collection of
the best of British comedy,
featuring the outrageous Rising Damp,
the truly tasteless French & Saunders,
and the award-winning
Yes Prime Minister.
A&E's Britwit, Tuesday and Thursday
nights at : Eastern, : Pacific.
Hello. I'm Rowan Atkinson.
Watch my show, "The Black Adder",
on A&E's Britwit,
for a half hour of grubby comedy.
Or I'll cut your head off or something.
Whose was this?