Sample
clip
In 1988 werd Linda
Thorson
geïnterviewd door Andrew Stock voor de tweede TellyCon
bijeenkomst
in Birmingham. Linda kon niet aanwezig zijn op de conventie aangezien
ze op dat ogenblik repeteerde voor een toneelstuk in Chichester. Het
interview
werd opgenomen in de tuin van het Chichester theater op een
zonnige dag.
Hieronder vindt u de Engelse tekst.
Andrew:
“Hello,
this is Andrew Stock, the guest coordinator from TellyCon, the British
telly fantasy convention. It’s a great pleasure and privilege
today to be at the Chichester Theatre talking to the lovely Linda
Thorson. Linda hello.”
Linda
Thorson: “Hello,
Andrew.”
Andrew:
“Right,
you are currently rehearsing the 'Ring
Around the Moon’ for the Chichester festival, could
you tell us something about the play?”
Linda
Thorson: “Yes,
what can I tell you about the play? Well, the first thing I can tell
you about the play is that I did the play 20 years ago and
I’m
doing it now and I’m playing the same part. So we have a
director
who wants it to be terribly French and the part is described as a
22-year old and so as we doing it in the terribly French way
I’m
not a 22-year old so the younger man falls in love with the older
woman, as the French do. I mean as lot of nations do, hopefully. And we
have a wonderful cast, I’m sure you recognise some of the
names. José
Ferrer has come
from America and he plays my father, Googie Withers, Matt Ryan, June Whitfield a young actress Holly Aird
who I’m sure
you will hear a lot of, Michael
Siberry and the play is, it all takes places in a chateau in
France. It was written by Jean Anouilh and translated by Christopher Fry
who is a resident of Chichester and he has been at the rehearsals.
He’s 80 years old, well he was 80 at the first day, which is
why
I think John Gielgud,
the director of the theatre choose to do this particular play. And
he’s been at the rehearsals and it’s just magical
to have
him there. I mean he has written some of the …
he’s
probably our greatest living play writer. He called it ‘Ring
Around the Moon’ because he was doing a crossword puzzle
during
the time he was translating it and he couldn’t, he
didn’t
like calling it ‘The Invitation to the Chateau’. So
he, he
didn’t know what to call it and so he was doing this
crossword
puzzle and he looked up the clue was ‘ring around the
Moon’
and there’s a word for that and so he thought I just call it
‘Ring Around the Moon’. I could tell you the whole
story of
the play but better yet you could all come and see it."
Andrew:
“Off
course, I’m sure a lot of people will do.”
Linda
Thorson: “That
would be great.”
Andrew:
“Right,
you seem to work mostly in the United States, what was it that
attracted you back to this lovely country again?”
Linda
Thorson: “Back
here, well, what attracted me was doing some theatre, doing a good
play. Well, in fact I have done a lot of theatre in America and I did
two well-known British plays, that have been done in the West End ‘Steaming’ by Nell
Dunn and ‘Noises
Off’ by Michael Frayn
and I did both those plays on Broadway. I had quite long runs in both
of them but it has been a long time since I’ve been here so I
did
a series last year for Paramount and NBC called ‘Marblehead Manor’
which was a bit of a take off on ‘Upstairs
Downstairs’ and John
Cleese’s series.”
Andrew:
“Fawlty
Towers.”
Linda
Thorson: “Fawlty
Towers. And so I did that last year and at the end of that time we had
a sort of (?) and I was of for a film in Greece. I went to Greece and
did the movie, January February March, it was a very extended
proposition and then I came back through London where I
haven’t
been for a long time. And I had my son and the nanny with me and we
stayed for six weeks and I ran into Duncan Weldon who is a great
impresario here and he said why don’t you stay here and do
something. So then the part came up at Chichester and I went to see
them about the part and they offered it to me and I went back to Los
Angeles for six weeks too. Arranged my life there and came back so I
was attracted by simply by the fact that I wanted to do a play and also
persuaded by the fact that there’s a writers strike in
America
and it has been going on since the end of February and looks as if it
will go on until September and it’s just not
everyone’s
sideways, there’s no work so I’m very pleased to be
here."
Andrew:
“You’re
Canadian by birth, how did you begin your acting career here?”
Linda
Thorson: “I
came here at the age of sixteen and auditioned, in all my naivety, for RADA,
thinking that I just get in I had always heard about the Royal Academy
and thought that that would be a great place to study. So I came when I
was sixteen and I auditioned and, probably because I had no idea how
difficult it was to get in, I was accepted. After I left the Academy I
did one play with Susannah York and Ian McShane called ‘A Month
in the Country’
and they filmed it for American television and during that time I met a
director called John
Huston who is now dead. And John Huston was making
a film called ‘Sinful
Davey’ and I auditioned for the part and he liked
me very much for the part. And then he cast John Hurt
and John is quite a small man and I’m quite a tall girl. John
Hurt had to take me out to dinner and tell me that I wasn’t
going
to play the part; Pamela
Franklin in fact played the part. He took me to ‘Rules’
for dinner and I remember I had been a vegetarian whole through drama
school because I didn’t have any money. It was so expensive
to go
to the butcher’s. He took me to ‘Rules’
and I had
this great steak and he said he wasn’t going to be able to
let me
play the part but he has a good friend Robert
Lennard who was casting the takeover for Diana
Rigg in ‘The Avengers’
series. So he said I send you to see him, so I went home and rang my
friends and said oh I’m going to get this part in a series,
John
Huston arranged the whole thing. And I went to the audition there were
200 other girls sitting there. So that’s how I started in
this
country because then I did get the part and I stayed on.”
Andrew:
“Is
it true that you created the name of the character?”
Linda
Thorson: “I
did, because first of all I wanted her to be Miss as they’d
always had Mrs. because in their opinion it was not the done thing for
the idea to be perhaps she stayed overnight perhaps she
didn’t
but at least she was a married woman so that made her ... and I thought
that was a dreadful idea for a married woman to be staying all night. I
thought it is much better if she’s a single girl. And so I
liked
that idea and I also thought that the character would fall in love with
John Steed because he was, if you worked closely with a man like John
Steed you would fall in love with him if you were a young girl, he just
be irresistible. And then Tara
was from ‘Gone
with the
Wind’, which is my favourite movie and the estate
was called Tara
and so I liked that name and then King I suppose the idea
‘for
King and Country’, so I did get to choose the name and I
think
it’s a great name. I still do.”
Andrew: “By this time John Bryce had taken over as
the new
producer was there a conscious decision to change the direction of the
program do you think?”
Linda
Thorson: “John
Bryce was the producer when I was taken into
the series. Yes, because I think I remember that it was between Mary
Peach, Tracy
Reed and myself. It went from 200 to 50 then they
screen-tested 25 and then there were 8 of us. And then I went to a
health farm and tried to lose weight and then there were three of us
and
then they came and told me that I gotten the part and I think we were
the last three. Now we’re very, very different age wise and
type
wise. I think John wanted to persuade them to go for someone younger
and there was great uproar because I was Canadian and I think every
British actress thought that they should ..., I mean it was a wonderful
opportunity.”
Andrew:
“But
your accent didn’t come across, it’s
beautiful.”
Linda
Thorson: “Well,
that’s all thanks to Kate Fleming
who’s now dead who was my voice and speech coach at RADA and
she
worked very hard with me. Because when I arrived the kids said I
sounded like Donald Duck and I had a lot of nasal tone, which is
Canadian. But anyway that is … hmm, what was the
question?”
Andrew:
“About
John Bryce taken over.”
Linda
Thorson: “Oh,
well yes, he was a conscious decision but as
you know John Bryce was short-lived and part of that was due to the
fact that I think that Brian
Clemens and Albert
Fennell had not really
been pleased with their decision to leave and they did want to come
back and Patrick
wanted them back. I was John Bryce’s girl, you
know, he brought me in and I was very sad to see him leave and I think
that it was difficult for me and for Brian and Albert because they came
back and I had not been their choice, they were lumbered with me as to
were because there was a contract and there had been all the publicity.
But we did work things out and Albert in particular I was able to get
close to and I think Brian is a brilliant man.”
Andrew:
“Yeah,
very clever writer.”
Linda
Thorson: “Very,
very clever man, brilliant man. So there we
are, the direction changed and then they tried to change it back I mean
they bleached my hair blond for instance because I think after I was
cast then I think Brian and Albert were afraid I was too like Diana. I
don’t think that we are particularly alike; I mean
we’re
very different as personalities even though we might sometimes look a
bit similar. But anyway then they came back in and put it back the way
they wanted it.”
Andrew:
“Did
it create any problems following in the footsteps of Diana
Rigg?”
Linda
Thorson: “I
think the main problem was that we filmed it
for a year before it was on television. So, I was extremely
trepidatious about how the public would receive me. I mean, I got
letters that said ‘how dare you, take over, who do you think
you
are, we’ll never love you’. And then after it had
been on
the air for about a month I had letters some apologising and others
saying you know you’re great, you’re different and
you're
fine and we like you. But, Diana is an extremely accomplished, very
much loved actress. Off course when you’re twenty
you’ve
got a lot of guts and a lot of audacity and I, I thought I’d
won
the part through enthusiasm and I wasn’t going to be knocked
out
by anyone else, I was going to go and capture my own audience. As you
get older you know, you learn more and more that you know less and
less. But at the age of twenty I think it was, I was fortunate to not
have those, you know, to still have that fearlessness of a young person
and just go in. Fortunately people did accept me and I did play it very
differently as well."
Andrew:
“So
was the karate chop, you used to pick up anything.”
Linda Thorson: “Yes,
anything at all and it was sort of more
feminine and being in love with Steed and showing affection and asking
him for help and be terribly glad to see him when something had gone
wrong or I’d been captured or missing. Anyway, the truth of
it is
that the public do get over, they do forget you and you have to
remember when you’re a big star that as soon as you're not
there
they forget you. Actually the English public I think are wonderful
because they are terribly loyal and they do remember. As I come back
now I feel very welcome. I think as it is a less disposable society. In
America if you have done a series you don’t get asked to
dinner
parties anymore. I think the English people are much nicer about all
those things. They forget, and after accepting a new person, but they
don’t forget the other person.”
Andrew:
“Was
it intended that there should be a crossover episode
between Diana Rigg and yourself? Or was it decided later in
production?”
Linda
Thorson: “To
my memory it was planned, it wasn’t
planned to do it first and it wasn’t done first. It was about
the
third episode. But yes they wanted her to, and I think from the idea
that her husband turned up and came back from the jungle and that there
would be a line it would be very brief. But we would …
I
… as far as I know, yes that it was planned.”
Andrew:
“It
is difficult to see how you could have topped the
series at that time. Do you think that it would have ended
anyway?”
Linda
Thorson: “I
mean, to my knowledge the reason that the
series ended was because we were slaughtered in America, where most
… ninety percent of the finance came from, opposite a series
called ‘The
Laugh-In’. It was a great backhanded compliment
because we were the best competition that ABC had to put next to them.
But
our ratings just took a nosedive because, I don’t know if
you
know what ‘Laugh-In’ is, but it was a very amusing
program.
Sort of like ‘Saturday
night Live’, it was a very funny
show which was one of those shows if you hadn’t watched it
the
night before there was nothing to talk about at the office. So
everybody watched it because they compared notes and it was an
extremely successful show and our ratings went down and
that’s
really why I think they called the plug on ‘The
Avengers’.
I also think that the spy-vogue was dying, was seeing its final days
and I think when they did ‘The
New Avengers’ it was never
the same. Because it wasn’t … I mean the world
…we
had spies in Russia … I mean it was … what was
actually
happening in the world that incredibly subtle send up of the
establishment in England and then things changed here. So it just
wasn’t as apposite anymore.”
Andrew:
“In
this country, as we just talked about, in particular
the art of making a filmed series such as ‘The
Avengers’
(?) Do you think that we shall ever see anything like it
again?”
Linda
Thorson: “The
thing about ‘The Avengers’ is
that it actually grew from a live show where Patrick and Honor would
doing, doing it live to 26 episodes, no, yes 26 episodes in black and
white with Diana and then another 30 in colour and then all of mine in
colour…"
(het interview moet onderbroken worden door een luidruchtige
aankondiging voor een toneelstuk dat gaat beginnen)
Linda
Thorson: “I
think, the fact that ‘The Avengers’
grew from being a taped series live and then a taped series and then a
black and white series and then in colour. I think that its evolution
we won’t see anything like that again because nothing will
start,
everything will start the way it is. I think that a series that sold as
it was to 79 countries with that unique fascination of the first time
that you saw a man and a woman in a relationship that was not defined,
you didn’t know what went on between them but you knew there
was
a lot of affection, they were working partners, it was the first time
you saw a woman in that kind of role where she was looking after
herself…"
(opnieuw moet het interview onderbroken worden voor een aankondiging “will you kindly take
your seats, the performance will begin in
three minutes”)
Andrew:
“Which
do you prefer film, television or theatre?”
Linda
Thorson: “Easy,
I prefer theatre. However if you get a
wonderful part in a movie that’s, you know I mean,
it’s
very rare. That’s great to do. I also, the series I mentioned
before, ‘Marblehead Manor’ that I did last year,
was a very
good experience because we rehearsed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday and then we performed and taped it for camera tape in front of
a live audience. So, it was sort of like rehearsing for a movie and
doing it on camera for a television but a live audience for a play so I
thought it kind of covered everything. I thought it was the best. And
it was really a nine-to-five job as well, which I thought was great.
Sometimes the theatre is a bit tough if you are trying to have a
relationship when you’re never home till eleven at night, you
know.”
Andrew:
“You
also got yourself in some sort of self-defence
program for women. Could you tell us something about that?”
Linda Thorson: “Well,
it emerged because of this film that I did
in Greece and I met a man called Kostas (?) who is a master of
self-defence techniques and he was doing the stunts on the movie and
ended up playing a part in the movie. We started talking about it and I
began reading the English newspapers again and I was amazed, they
always say it so safe in England, you know, you can go out and jog at
night and things. And you don’t have to have 15 locks on your
door and I started reading and I couldn’t believe how many
incidents of women being attacked and murdered and raped and all this.
So I started talking about this and talking to him he’d been
putting together these techniques over a long time so we just said
let’s put a video together. We should have it made so that it
is
on the market by Christmas, hopefully. I mean, I hope that, I hope
women will be interested in buying it because it has nothing to do with
being strong or knowing judo or karate these are simply techniques
which help you understand where a man is vulnerable, where you
shouldn’t be when, how to be aware of the possibility
of
… that 90 percent of the time you are in a position this
might
happen to you and that really everything around you is a weapon,
virtually everything you wear and that you have about your person or in
your home is a weapon. It’s … I mean self-defence
techniques what they mean is, these are techniques for weaker people
and that the video is called ‘Mind over Muscle’ and
it is,
it’s not showing people that they have to be, you know,
gorilla’s. It’s showing you that you are weaker
than a man
and when a man attacks you that there are techniques that might help
you. And I figure if it could save us one woman from dying, you know
what I mean. So that’s what I’m working
on.”
Andrew:
“Tara
was very resourceful and used anything to hand.”
Linda
Thorson: “The
brick in the handbag.”
Andrew:
“Although
she actually became more physical, who was
responsible for the stunts and how many did you do yourself?”
Linda
Thorson: “I
did a lot of the stunts myself, the man
responsible was Ray
Austin to begin with and … no that’s
not true. The man responsible to begin with was, for me, was Joe Dunne.
But Ray Austin had done all the stunts with Diana and then he started
directing, he directed his first episode and he went on to direct all
of the Magnum
PI’s Tom
Selleck series and many, many other things
in America and he’s hugely rich and successful and lives in
Los
Angeles with his wife Wendy. I think that they found that I could do
these things. Cyd Child was my double on the series and she did some,
you know, a lot of the really difficult stuff and throws but I was
very, very enthusiastic and it was only the insurance company who
actually said no you can’t do those things but I did things
like
jumping from 16 ft into boxes and … Romo
Gorarra drove the Lotus
for me and the AC. He was
this really good-looking guy, still is
somewhere, who used to put on my wigs and clothes and get in the car
and do fantastic stunts. But I think as they felt more confident about
me they let me do more and more. They realised that that was the key to
the series that the girl did do physical action.”
Andrew:
“Which
of the two cars did you prefer? The original AC
Cobra was a very aggressive car, they changed to a Lotus Europa design
to soften Tara’s image you think?”
Linda
Thorson: “Oh,
the AC Cobra was the car, I mean I was mad
about it. I don’t know why though I really don’t
know why
they changed it. I guess because Diana had a Lotus or they had a deal
with Lotus it was probably all to do with money. But that Cobra was a
beautiful car, I loved driving it, it was automatic it was
great.”
Andrew:
“She
was very much a more flamboyant and feminine character Tara
wasn’t she?”
Linda
Thorson: “Well,
yes and that was by design I mean it was ...
she was softer, she wore wigs, she liked to dress up and there were
other episodes where I wore a towel around my head and one time I was
in a bathing suit with glasses, I mean I know Diana had a lot of
different, but it was me that was more me. That’s more the
way I
am, you know.”
Andrew:
“Did
you have a say in the costumes you wore?”
Linda
Thorson: “Not
really, Alun Hughes did the costumes and he
was wonderful he was brilliant, I don’t know where he is now
I
haven’t seen him for a long time. I liked wearing the mini
stuff
and the boots, some of the stuff I found rather uncomfortable and I
wasn’t so crazy about it. But, no I mean I don’t
really
have a say in it, no, I was told wear that. You look good in
that.”
Andrew:
“Out
of all the episodes you made, you have a favourite episode?”
Linda
Thorson: “I
have, yes, Pandora.
Pandora was my favourite
episode by a long shot because I did get to play a different character
and really required … I mean more acting I thought. It was
playing a part. And I thought it was an enchanting episode and the
wedding dress was so beautiful that they made for me it was on
…
we had a photograph on the cover of TV-Times in that. And one of my
favourite people, Julian
Glover, was in that episode as well. So, yes
that’s definitely my favourite.”
Andrew:
“You
spent quite a lot of time in France after the series, did
you?”
Linda
Thorson: “Yes
I did. Well Patrick and I received the
‘Prix Triomphe’ at the
‘Théâtre
Marinier’ and we went there to receive this was the best
actor
and actress award in France. God only knows they didn’t have
anything else on French television so no wonder we won at the time. Now
they have all sorts of things but we went there and we met this
incredible woman Yanna Culla (?) who came to us and said you have
agents in
France and we both said no. I ended up moving in and sharing her flat
doing a movie in Paris staying there for about a year and I think every
single girl ought to spend a year in Paris. It’s
great.”
Andrew:
“Did
you and Patrick (?) ever outlive scenes? There seem to be a very warm
relationship between you both.”
Linda
Thorson: “Yes,
but no, we did get to change things before
we shot them and we … especially do you mean Patrick Newell or
Patrick Macnee?”
Andrew:
“Both.”
Linda
Thorson: “Well,
Patrick Macnee and I did get to do things
with the tag scene, the final little scene. We got to put (?) in there
and Pat Macnee was good at throwing the odd thing in but most of the
time it was set before. No not direct from the script but directly from
what we worked on before we actually shot the scene. I mean it
wasn’t, it wasn’t shot that way it was on one
camera you
know the old Aeroflex movie camera and it was all filmed, you
couldn’t suddenly say something from over there because the
person wasn’t on camera. It was set but we were free to
inject
our personalities more and more, I was anyway, Patrick off course was
been doing it for years."
Andrew:
“You
still keep in touch?”
Linda Thorson: “Patrick
and I have become much closer since I
moved to Los Angeles because he has a home in Palm
Springs and in La Jolla. And in fact we had lunch
in the Polo launch. Patrick’s
favourite thing is to have a couple of girlfriends to the Polo launch
for lunch and even now that he has married Baba four months ago,
she’s wonderful, she’s a contemporary of his
they’re
the same age. Best thing he’s ever done marrying her,
she’s
a wonderful Hungarian ZsaZsa kind of figure. Patrick has always the
funniest stories to tell and he always has clips from newspapers and
all little bits of gossip and things to tell us. He still just this
incredible character as he was in the beginning. Because when I came on
he, you know Honor and Diana and he had been doing the series for years
and I was a young girl, inexperienced. And he could have just said, you
know he could have not been bothered but he took me under his wing, he
taught me, he coached me, he put up with me, he was kind to me, he
championed me, he was chivalrous, he was good and I’m so
grateful
for that because it gave me a lot of confidence that I
wouldn’t
have had otherwise.”
Andrew:
“A
lovely man.”
Linda
Thorson: “Yes,
a lovely man.”
Andrew:
“Is
there anything else you like to add?”
Linda
Thorson: “Well
I would like to add that I wish I was there
right now and a brief explanation and I know nobody wants to know, you
just want to know why isn’t she here, is that I am working as
you
see at Chichester
and I rented a house in Bognor
Regis you people up
there would probably not know where that is it just begins with the
same letter B. But it’s very near Chichester and is between
Chichester and Brighton
and when my agent rang me and asked me if I
would like to do this with Andrew I said I would love to, especially
because it’s for a charity. So, I thought that I could just
nip
over to Brighton because she said it’s on Saturday in
Brighton
and then I got the letter from Andrew and it said we’re
looking
forward to see you in Birmingham
and I just could never have gotten
there because we are rehearsing Friday night and for some of the time
on Saturday morning so that’s my excuse, I’m
sticking to
it, it’s the truth and I do hope that you all enjoying
yourselves
and I do wish I was there. And have a lot of fun. I hope this
hasn’t been boring. I hope you did enjoy hearing about
this.”
Andrew:
“Linda
Thorson, thank you very much. I’m sure a lot
of people will come to Chichester and support you in ‘Ring
around
the Moon’.”
Linda
Thorson: “I
hope they will, and maybe to the West
End and that is even closer
you can come to London.”
Andrew:
“Yes,
thank you.”
Linda
Thorson: “Thanks
Andrew.”
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