Actors/writers Ian Hallard and Mark Gatiss by Felix Clay
‘We met online – back when that was odd’ … Mark Gatiss and his husband, Ian Hallard, star in a play about a gay party that turns toxic. They spoke about new threats to equal rights, the Sherlock backlash – and their dog-sitting issues.
“He believes a Sherlock backlash was inevitable – a “familiar pattern” with anything so successful. “We toyed with calling one of the episodes Backlash, because it’s time.” He points out that the third series of The League of Gentlemen, “though now regarded as a classic, was very controversial. A lot of people hated it.”
There hadn’t been any intention to go off piste with Sherlock, he insists. “It goes for any artistic endeavour – all you can do is your best. Sometimes you have to have an unpleasant amount of attention. But I’m stopped in the street two or three times a day by people saying how much they’ve enjoyed it. What more could you want?””
“The film stars Ewan McGregor as Christopher Robin, who has grown to adulthood and plays the “grown up without a sense of fun” for the film. The film also stars Hayley Atwell as McGregor’s wife and Bronte Carmichael as his daughter with Mark Gatiss as his boss who keeps him “away” from his family. They’ll be joined by Jim Cummings who will reprise his role as Winnie the Pooh along with three-time Emmy award winner Brad Garrett as Eeyore. The studio is still searching for their Tigger. It is unknown if Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, or Owl will make an appearance.
…
Just how the series will take shape and if Gatiss or another figure will be a villain remains to be seen since the original classic stories didn’t feature traditional villains.“
Sherlock and John are now‘sort of comfortable in their skins’,says Mark.
“There’s still a lot to do. (…) There’s lots we can do potentially. We left the last series literally in Rathbone place –that’s the last shot. Um, sort of saying, we could pick this up or we could leave it. What I think we’ve realized, completely retrospectively –and it wasn’t our intention, is what we’ve done over the four seasons, is do their backstory. And that wasn’t the plan. But funnily enough, the whole idea of Sherlock and Mycroft having a more conversative relationship is from the Billy Wilder film, Private Life of Sherlock Holmes –which is our favourite version. Um… and all those other bits and pieces, with Sherlock being much more troubled… we realized that actually, we’ve got them to a place now where –if we did another one, they’d be sort of like the Rathbone and Bruce versions, as it were. They’re sort of comfortable in their skins, they’re a little bit older. They’ve now become the two men on the side of the fireplace, that we usually see them being. And we’ve kind of accidentally done how they got there.”
And this statement about being “sort of comfortable” makes me very much question what “comfortable” means to you, seeing as Sherlock and John are, at the end, absolutely devastated and nowhere near comfortable in any conceivable way! You completely ruined them and made them unhappy and broken for the rest of their lives, beyond repair.
That’s what you did.
All because Benedict (rightfully) asked for a backstory so that he could play the character better. And then, once you started really thinking about that, after initially just giving him a bogus answer, you couldn’t stop yourself from writing the entire series into that direction, because “wow! backstory! brilliant!”. That was *not* what Ben asked or what anybody wanted. At least not in the way you did, murdering the characters we all loved.
And it is rather disturbing that you still don’t see the mess that you’ve made and the lack of intelligence you have shown.
Even fans write better.
I want to see Martin play John like Nigel Bruce played Watson. 😀
You mean, like he actually LIKES Sherlock??
As soon as you strip [the trappings] away, its exactly the same, except it’s now. Then the focus immediately falls onto the eternal brilliance of Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes and their characters and their friendship.
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