(LIVIA) What are we going to do about Claudius?
(AUGUSTUS) Quintilius Varus, where are my eagles?!
(LIVIA) Don't touch the figs.
(CALIGULA) There'll be no pain, I promise.
(NERO) What a pretty thing a fire is.
(CALIGULA) Don't go in there.
To me, I was told it was "a classic serial."
The BBC were doing, I think, perhaps three or six a year. It was part of its remit.
Martin Lisemore, the producer, when he offered me I, Claudius,
I was delighted because I loved working with him.
We first of all had to decide who was going to write the series,
and we decided, after some consultation in which a number of writers featured,
that we would use Jack Pulman - whom I also knew because I'd worked with him before.
I knew him to be a wonderful comic writer.
I was very, very lucky in the actors that I managed to get...
to play the major roles.
I thought for Augustus Caesar, Paul Schofield or Alec Guinness.
And so I met Herbie and he'd sent me this big script
and I thought it was probably Tiberius. That's in my range. Tiberius.
And he said, "No. I want you to play Augustus."
I wanted an authoritative person and slightly ludicrous,
because he was written pompously,
and I was looking for an actor who could actually do this.
And, to me, he did it... Brian did it marvellously.
He said, "First and foremost, my main note for you is this, Brian.
"Just be as you are. Full of flannel.
"But do not act being an emperor.
"You must not act being an emperor at all. I want you just to be an ordinary guy.
"Everybody else is going to make you an emperor."
When we began to do this series, we were all very, very shaky
because we didn't know how to approach it.
Our director knew how to approach it,
but we all had our own ideas about how we wanted to play our parts.
What I wanted from Siān was... First, she was very beautiful,
and that was a major consideration in the way I saw the part.
But allied to this beauty was this terrible... I mean, this evil, evil woman.
So you had the contrast of this.
And I love, anyway, the contrast of comedy and horror,
which goes right through Claudius, because the one bolsters the other.
Here we have beauty against evil.
And it was the concept of the evil that Siān found very difficult at first
because she was trying to justify it in modern psychological terms.
In two weeks of rehearsal, we were dreadful.
Siān was all right. Derek was all right.
George... I was the worst.
We just couldn't do it. There's no reality.
And they got Jack Pulman in and he said, "I know exactly what you're going through.
"I couldn't write it until I thought of the Mafia."
Herbie said, "We are in a tremendous hurry here. I know how this should be done.
"I'm going to tell you how it should be done. We don't have time for negotiation."
So for the first week or so we were all floundering about and not being very happy.
And, suddenly... I played one scene in what we called the family drawing room -
that room the family used to sit in -
and for the first time Jack and Herbert looked pleased at the end of the scene.
And suddenly I asked them, "Is this a Jewish family comedy?"
And one of them, I can't remember which one, sort of nodded
and said, "Yes. We didn't want to say that to you, but that's a good thing to think of."
I was as much at sea as everybody else, trying to find the right style.
Both Jack and I had an idea of what we wanted,
but to actually implement this and persuade actors to do this...
Eventually, when I found that Siān was floundering in trying to find the style,
I was able to say to her, "Relish the evilness. Don't justify it. Just be evil."
I realised that one of the main characteristics of the character
was patience and vigilance and, as you say, a hawkishness.
And that was something that emerged in the first few weeks
and Herbie pointed it out to me and said that was something I really needed to hang on to
because it was very, very characteristic of Livia.
The more evil you are, the funnier it is and the more terrifying it is
because it's allied to this wonderful way that you look
and the ease and the softness in which you deliver it all.
She hooked on to that, and once she got that, she was unstoppable.
Mother, I'm a happily-married man. Julia doesn't interest me.
She wouldn't interest me if you hung her naked above my bed.
She might even do that if I asked her!
Aren't you forgetting something? She's still married to Marcellus and he's not dead yet.
When I start to forget things, light my funeral pyre and put me on it - dead or alive.
We had an advisor on the series called Robert Erskine,
who was wonderfully helpful.
Graves in his books has covered the period when Augustus' supreme power -
originally intended as temporary - was becoming an hereditary dynasty of emperors,
both good and bad, but mainly bad.
And I shamelessly used him and turned to him whenever I was in any doubt,
particularly on the detail that was required.
In the way people behaved, dressed, wore jewellery, etcetera.
On the first day, Robert Erskine was there to answer any questions about the period.
He mentioned the fact about servants.
Someone brought it up.
And he likened the servants in Roman times to present-time machines.
How should they behave towards their slaves?
Severely, do you think? With familiarity?
Actually, I should think neither.
I suspect they take no notice of them because they were chattels to be bought or sold at will,
like a dishwasher or a hat stand.
Someone like Nero would probably have 250 servants who would do individual things
like there'd be a slipper servant or a shoe servant,
then there'd be an underwear servant and an outerwear servant.
There'd be someone who did your hair and put the flowers in your hair.
There'd be someone who'd feed you and someone who'd prepare your food.
It just went on and on. Everything we take for granted, there was someone to do it for you.
You didn't say please or thank you to a slave.
You just held out your cup and it's filled.
I found it terribly difficult at first to be so incredibly...
rude, really, to the servants.
We tend to say thank you or we at least look at people when they do things for us.
Oh!
We must get Agrippa back. He's the only one who speaks their language.
In a rage and kicking trays out of the way, slaves and servants all over the place.
Herbie was very exasperated.
He was saying, "No, Siān! Beastly to the servants! Be beastly to the servants!"
Erskine was deeply involved, all the time.
I'm not giving him credit. He was outstanding and brilliant.
I was a handful for him
because I learned from him, I understood the rules, and then slightly abused them.
In those days, there was no such thing as lavatory paper,
so you ate with your... I hope I've got this right.
You ate with your right hand because your left hand was used
for what lavatory paper is used for.
He would get very upset at times if I used the wrong hand for eating my food.
One hand is for wiping your arse and one hand is for eating food, and I'd use both.
I'd say, "I'm Caesar. I'll do what I like!"
Now, that's a very Roman reaction, it really is.
I referred to him all the time. I deeply respected him.
He helped me enormously with Augustus Caesar. He helped us all.
I mean, terrific guy, terrific man.
Herbie Wise absolutely swore by him. "Listen to him. He knows what he's talking about."
And he did, but now and again I had to make certain things my soil. I was right to.
(HERBERT WISE) I'd worked with Derek on a series called Man Of Straw
with Martin Lisemore, the same producer,
and, at that time, he had just left the National Theatre
and his agent was looking for something else and phoned Martin Lisemore.
We were in distress about casting that part
because the actor we'd originally thought of wasn't good enough.
We cast him and he was brilliant.
I remember the phone ringing this time.
I was about to play... We're talking 1976 now. I was about to play Hamlet for the first time.
My agent rang up and said, "They're thinking of you for Claudius."
I thought Claudius in Hamlet.
I said, "I don't want to play Claudius. I thought I was going to play Hamlet."
"No, no," he said, "Claudius in I, Claudius."
We were considering other actors as well, in the nature of things.
Also, we had to satisfy other people, like London Films etcetera.
I was way, way, way down the list before they got to me.
Lots of other actors had been thought of -
Charlton Heston, Ronnie Barker was another one -
to play the older Claudius.
And, I think, they... I came into the frame
at the point they decided to have one actor playing the young and the old.
I was then taken out to supper by the producer, the director,
to meet a representative of London Films.
And I had to charm him and persuade him
that this nonentity he was having dinner with could actually play the role of Claudius.
That was the best part of my performance in playing Claudius. That supper party.
Anyway, next day, they said, we're going to take a chance and we'll go with Derek.
Derek and I worked very, very well together
because I like to think that I am able to get out of Derek
what most other directors can't get out of him,
and he responded wonderfully to the way that I like to work.
Well, Claudius was the arch survivor.
He looked an idiot, but was more brilliant and more intelligent than all the other characters.
A man who faces life with a great deal of disability to start with...
placed in a family and a world which increased those disabilities.
It was a highly dangerous world in which he existed.
Do you think it's safe that Uncle Claudius should be told my secret?
Or are you going to poison him?
Oh, he's quite safe.
And remember this, monster. Your Uncle Claudius here is a phenomenon.
Because he's sworn to protect his brother's children, he will never harm you.
He managed to escape all the ramifications and manipulations of Livia,
and would flatter her when necessary,
would duck and dive when he had to deal with Caligula.
All those dangerous things. A real politician.
I hear you've written a book about religious changes during the reign of Augustus.
- Y-yes, G-Grandmother. - You intend to give a public reading of it?
- Y-yes, Grandmother. - You'll do no such thing.
N-no, G-Grandmother.
It w-wasn't my idea. G-Germanicus suggested it before he left.
I won't have you making a laughing stock of us.
I'm b-b-b...
better when I'm rehearsed.
So is a trained monkey, but he still looks and sounds like a monkey.
Y-yes, Grandmother.
He's clever enough to use his disabilities rather than they used him,
and through that use, manages to survive.
Derek is, to me, one of these magical actors.
Again, I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for this performance.
Claudius, do you bear me any ill will?
Ill will? W-why should I?
Oh, it's funny the way we can be so wrong about people. I was wrong about you.
We judge too much on appearances.
I mean, your appearance is against you. You know that, don't you?
You give everybody the impression you're a fool. No point in mincing matters.
But you're not such a fool, are you?
I h-hope not.
There is a difference between a stutter and a stammer, which I wasn't then aware of.
A stutter is actually what it sounds like - a stutter is an onomatopoeic word.
It's like a machine gun which stutters, and it is a repeat of...
If you say please, it's p-p-p-p-please.
But a stammer - an implosive stammer, like Claudius had -
is a much more difficult thing in that you cannot get...
t-the word out.
You don't repeat, but you can't ...
And sometimes the mouth will form and you look as if you're going to say..."butter",
and you're really trying to say "mother".
So it's very difficult to help a stammerer
because you don't know really what they're trying to get out.
- Livy called you Claudius. - I'm Tiberius Claudius...
D-Drusus Nero Germanicus.
Oh, that Claudius. They told me you were a halfwit.
Well, my f-family's ashamed of me because I st...
stammer.
The art director on I, Claudius, Tim Harvey, had an assistant who had such a stammer,
and I used to pin him against the wall and get him to talk to me and then I'd copy it.
Um, the... The limp,
for the first few episodes, I suppose, was the old stone in the shoe,
so I could remember which foot I was limping with.
But I got rid of that after a while.
Just as the BBC, when I got the first scripts,
the stammer or the stutter was written in.
So if the word "please" was written in the script, it was written with six "ps".
After a time they saved on typewriter ribbon and let me get on with it myself.
The twitch was something that I didn't need help with.
The stammer did stay with me a little bit, yes, it did.
Because the whole series took six months.
It was 13 episodes, two weeks an episode, 26 weeks - stammering all the time.
Yes, it did stay around for a little while afterwards. It did, yes.
I have since then played two other stammering parts on stage.
Word got around, I think, that...
Apparently, an old lady said once, in the interval,
that it was so lovely that there was another part that could accommodate my disability.
The scene that I adored doing
was the scene where I discover that my daughter
has been sleeping around with lots of senators.
(HERBERT WISE) He'd lined up various lords and assistants
and I followed him with the camera as he says, ''Did you sleep with my daughter?''
And they admit it.
In the end, he never asked anything, they just nodded.
Have you slept with my daughter?
- Caesar, I... - Answer the question.
Yes, Caesar...
It's a terrifying scene
because there you do see the power of Caesar.
All these senators - some of them his best friends - have slept with his daughter,
at orgies and all kinds of things.
She's slept with hundreds. That's what it implies.
She's been sleeping with hundreds of men.
Not slept, Caesar.
Not slept?
You mean it happened standing up, or in the street or on a bench? Not slept.
There were about ten or eleven actors amongst them when we rehearsed,
and then on the day we did it, they introduced about seven or eight extras,
and they'd not seen the scene.
And we did this first take,
and I've a sneaky feeling that's not the tape you see.
That's not the take you see, but that's the best take.
I went amongst them saying, "Have you slept...? Standing up?" So and so...
And they started to giggle as I went down the line.
Different ones started to giggle.
And they knew they shouldn't giggle, that they'd bollocks it up if they giggled -
they'd get told off - but they were finding it so funny.
I did a second take,
which is a wonderful take,
and it's beautifully filmed, the cameras pulling back, everybody in unison.
It's a wonderful scene and I suddenly end it by saying...
Is there anyone in Rome who has not slept with my daughter?!
"Take them away!" I mean, they're going to be vaporised.
Take them out! I'll decide what to do with them later!
- Father... - No, no! I'm all right.
Then you see the power of Augustus.
Then Herbie says, "Now you can turn it on. Now you can turn it on, Brian."
I shall banish her. Banish her for life.
Don't tell me where she's gone, don't ever mention her name, but let her be all alone.
All alone until she dies! She's not fit for human company!
(HERBERT WISE) George playing Tiberius had, in many ways, the most difficult task.
He had the least spectacular part,
if you think in terms of what Caligula gets up to.
I was playing at Stratford at the time,
and these scripts arrived and I couldn't believe my eyes,
and, not unnaturally, I accepted.
George was, I think, in his early 40s at the time,
but he had to go from the age of about 24 - I can't remember now -
to about 80 something in the story.
I was then 42, and I went on a very, very serious diet!
No drink, no bread, no potatoes, nothing.
I had a spaniel in those days and, every morning, I would get up at 5.30, six o'clock,
and run round Hyde Park, which is six miles - right round the park and back home -
then I'd get on a bicycle, cycle to the North Kensington baths and swim 12 lengths,
and then arrive at rehearsals!
But I not only got the weight off, but put the muscle back on,
and I was exactly the same weight as I was when I was 24.
I must leave Rome.
You'll stay.
You'll have patience, as I have.
Where has your patience got you?
He was destined by his mother's force to become Emperor,
but he was not Emperor material, nor did he want to be.
(WISE) His mother was determined to make him Emperor,
and he had to follow her machinations in order to get him there.
Tiberius thinks that if he doesn't become Emperor, his life will have been wasted.
He's altered his will.
What's the matter? Cat got your tongue? That took your breath away, didn't it?
He's a weak man
because he actually wants, desperately wants, people to like him.
He wants his mother to love him.
I must have been nodding when I gave birth to you.
He wants the respect from Augustus, and he doesn't have it.
I'm sick of it! The gods know I've done my best!
He never liked me! Never!
30 years I've run his errands for him!
I've fought on his bloody frontiers! Collected his taxes!
He's never put his hand on mine and said, "Thank you. What would I do without you?"
Now he sends me off to Illyricum and doesn't even plan a farewell dinner.
Not even a goodbye. Just "get on your horse and ride!"
Well, damn him!
I retired before and I can retire again!
Let his precious grandson run his empire for him!
I'm sick to death of it!
But he doesn't say ''I want out because you are a wicked old woman. ''
He says he wants out because nobody likes him.
I had terrible trouble, really, keeping my face straight with George Baker all the time.
He was po-faced all the time.
I had trouble keeping my face straight with him and lots of scenes.
Mark Antony was twice the man you are, but when he spat on my sister,
he learned a lesson that he didn't live long enough to profit from. Do you understand?
That wonderful moment when I'm telling George off.
"I don't want you seeing your wife."
Right at the end of the scene when I've been bollocking him for about ten pages
and I'm easing down a bit now and I'm not going to have him killed or anything.
And I say, "I don't want you seeing your wife. I don't like it."
Just a little...
And I could feel him contort his old stomach so he didn't laugh.
But Vipsania, I don't like it. Do you understand? It's not right.
You play fair with me and you'll see, I can be generous too.
Good.
It's a lovely moment, isn't it? "Don't sulk!"
You play fair with me, eh? Don't sulk!
He can't stand him sulking all the time. We're always on the edge of corpsing, of laughing.
You wrote a letter in my name and yours without even using the seal?
You were away and, anyway, you don't let me use the seal.
Who's Emperor here, you or I?
I remember the triumph that he felt...
At last! But he's nearly in his 70s, you know, and at last he's able to say to Livia,
you're a stinking old rotten human being and you've ruined my life!
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
It's your letter. You stick to it.
And if it's read in the House, I'll deny all knowledge of it
and excuse you on the grounds of mental incompetence,
brought on by extreme old age.
I think the whole point of I, Claudius, and why it's lasted so well,
is because there is a tremendous amount of humour.
There's lots of humour in the Graves book and Jack Pulman has kept it there.
And the triumphant humour of being able to score off his mother, at last, is wonderful.
So long as you play it with that joy, you know.
"You've left yourself open for the first time in your life. I can really bang in there. I love it!"
I enjoyed playing him very much indeed. But something very silly... we had to do a retake
because when I did one of the flips,
the Marks and Spencer brand showed very, very high on the underpants!
Not quite Romanesque! So we had to do that one again.
I'll tell you something, Drusus.
Sometimes I so hate myself, I can't bear the thought of me anymore.
I think it was one of the key scenes...
when Tiberius really begins to know
that he can't ever fight his mother...
and that she is wicked.
And he loves his brother and he hates what's happened to him...
and I think he says to his brother that he's the only person that can lead him through.
And Drusus was the only person who knew of his dark nature.
You don't know anything about darkness, do you?
Inside darkness. Blackness.
Stop bragging. I could match you black for black.
Not you. Not you.
They say the tree of the Claudians produces two kinds of apples - sweet and sour.
- That was never more true than you and me. - And which is our mother?
- Livia? - Mmm.
They say a snake bit her once...and died.
Hey, hey. That's no longer funny.
I've only cared for three people in my life. One was our father.
- He was the noblest of us all. - Yes. The other was Vipsania.
I was sorry about that. Why did you divorce her?
Livia insisted on it. Julia wanted it. Augustus insisted on it.
All the same. You were so happy. You might have refused.
Do you think the monarchy will survive Augustus?
No, I don't . Rome will be a republic again, I promise you that.
Perhaps I did it all for nothing.
Tiberius worried about that dark nature.
Herbie gave us all the space in the world.
We did the whole fight and the whole scene in one.
And it was...
Part of that was the lovely thing about working in a studio...
because we did have these long, long scenes - almost like theatre.
Caligula is one of the most bizarre, flamboyant and cruel characters
in the whole piece,
and its realisation by John Hurt was nothing short of miraculous and inspired.
I've just been talking to that river god. He threatened to drown me.
Does he know who you are?
He does now! I've just given him a severe reprimand.
When I first read it, I'd thought,
"I don't believe the known world could possibly have been led by a lunatic of this nature!"
I think it must have been something to do with the puritan upbringing that I had
that would not allow my mind to think this was a possibility, and I passed on it, basically.
But Herbie Wise, who directed it wonderfully - the wonderful Herbie Wise...
who was the first director I ever worked with - in 1961, I think it was.
And he decided, because of the fragmented nature of the piece
and because people weren't going to meet each other,
rather than have a party at the end of the series, he had a party at the beginning of it.
And he invited me.
And the atmosphere was so electric - I can't tell you, it was so extraordinary -
that I went up to Herbie in the middle and said, "Could I change my mind?"
And he said, "I hoped that's what you might say."
Your Emperor is amongst you once again.
All his wars successfully concluded and the victorious armies brought back to Rome.
(WISE) He made me gasp with astonishment and in awe of what he did.
There was one scene with a long speech
and when he'd done it, all the extras in the studio applauded him.
Not as characters, but as performers.
And what did he find?
This conqueror of the Germans, this victor over the mighty Neptune?
The streets empty of crowds and flowers, no triumphs awarded,
no games, no celebrations.
But three miserable old ex-Consuls waiting at the gates to greet him
and a room full of cowardly stay-at-home Senators,
who spent all their time in the theatre and in the baths
while he has spent six months living no better than a private soldier!
There's a scene I was doing with Livia
when I had to say goodbye, as it were, to the wretched old hag.
I hear you're dying, Great-grandmother.
And I suggested that I got into bed with her.
Herbie was not at all sure about this
because then it was almost not allowed to get into bed with your own wife.
You could sit by the bed or on the bed, but you couldn't be in bed.
I think it was just post that, but you had to be very careful on television.
He said to me, "I want to get into bed with her."
And I was at first resisting it and I said, "I don't think..."
He said, "Please let me try it." So we tried it.
You won't forget your promise, will you?
To make you a goddess?
What makes you think a filthy smelly old woman like you could become a goddess?
Anyway, we did it and it was very successful, I think.
Let me tell you something.
Thrasyllus has made another prophecy.
Told Tiberius.
He said, one who is going to die soon
will become the greatest god the world has ever known.
No temples will be dedicated to anyone but him in the whole Roman world.
Not even to Augustus.
Do you know who that one is?
Me.
I shall become the greatest god of all.
And I shall look down on you suffering all the torments of hell, and I shall say...
"Leave her. Leave her there forever and ever and ever."
Goodbye, Great-grandmother.
That scene was another example of the way you're able to quickly achieve something
relatively complex and unusual, maybe, if you know the other person very well.
John and I had been friends for years and years, so we knew each other terribly well.
That wonderful sun dance that he does.
(CYMBALS CLASH)
(JOHN HURT) I did the make-up myself because I said it's got to be...
The BBC make-up girls are wonderful, I have to say,
but they were being too tasteful.
I said, "No. This has got to be absolutely outrageous.
"It's got to hit you immediately." It's image- on-screen time. This is film, not literature.
And um... So I really got the gold out and it's totally outrageous make-up.
(GENTLE MUSIC PLAYS)
# And then she flits across the skies from star to star about
# She lightens darkness where she flies and blows Night's candles out... #
Watching Derek trying to deal with this as Claudius
and trying to be diplomatic and know which way to go...
because he had no idea which way Caligula could turn.
Was he to like it? Was he to say it was ridiculous?
Was he to say it was a little over the top?
But, as always, Claudius chose to virtually worship him,
so therefore got away with it.
But watching that going on was hysterical too.
Oh, god of gods!
Never have I witnessed a dance that gave me such p-profound s-spiritual joy.
On the cruelty side was the thing where he disembowels his half sister.
He's so worried that the child of Zeus might turn out to be greater than Zeus.
And being as he is Zeus - certainly in his mind...
He always favoured the Greek rather than the Roman gods, so he always used Zeus.
In his deeply distorted mind, he couldn't allow that to happen.
- Who am I? - Zeus, Lord of Heaven. My husband.
- Who are you? - The Queen of Heaven! Your wife.
- Do you trust me? - Oh, utterly, my lover, my lord.
- There'll be no pain, I promise. - Pain?
Why, what do you want to do, my angel? You know I can resist you nothing.
(WISE) When you consider now what you can do...
The way I shot all this was from behind.
She was kind of strung up in a bed. She was naked.
But I shot it all from behind, so you didn't see what was happening.
Tell the Queen what her lord and master wants.
I must draw the child from the Queen of Heaven's womb and swallow it whole,
so that a new child may grow out of the head of Zeus.
Yes, darling. Draw it out. Let Zeus take the child and...
Then let's go to bed.
Your queen's very sleepy.
What's that? What are you going to do?
- There'll be no pain, I know it. - Pain? But why should...?
(POUNDING HOOVES)
Caligula?
We are immortal gods.
(BLOODCURDLING SCREAM)
The make-up girls were so busy doing the make-up on her belly
that there was nobody to look after John, so I put the blood on John's mouth
and did John's make-up ready for him to open the door and for me to see him.
You saw some blood on the face of Caligula
and then when Claudius opens the door, I never actually showed what he saw
because the suggestion of what he saw was more powerful
than the thing itself.
But I'm afraid it got - again I use the word - butchered,
by people who ought to have known better, and the scene now is somewhat attenuated.
It is a great regret because I haven't got the original.
Don't go in there.
(CLAUDIUS THEME PLAYS)
There were concerns about it - concerns that it would be too powerful or too strong.
It was shown in England, but not in America -
the scene where he comes out of the room with his false beard,
which he'd put on to be like Zeus for the ritual. He'd made it into a ritual.
May I inquire what is the...c-character of this g-glorious change
which has c-come over you?
Isn't it obvious?
Y-you've become a god!
Oh, my god!
Oh, let me worship you! Oh, how could I have been so blind!
I am still in mortal disguise, that wouldn't help you.
The whole concept is grotesque, but at the same time extremely funny.
Suddenly, this man is in front of him who's discovered that he's a god.
I always knew that this would happen. I always knew that I was divine.
Think. When I was two, I put down a mutiny in my father's army and so saved Rome.
- That was prodigious. - Like the stories they tell of Mercury.
Or Hercules who strangled snakes in his cradle.
Exactly. Only Mercury only stole a few oxen.
Whereas by the age of ten, I'd already killed my father.
- You didn't know that, did you? - N-no.
Divinity...
Even Jove didn't do that. He merely banished the old man.
Why, if you don't mind my asking, d-did you do that?
Well, he stood in my way.
Me, a young god! He tried to discipline me. So I frightened him to death in Antioch.
So it was you who did all that? Quite incredible.
No, not at all. For a god, it was very simple.
At the same time as being extremely funny as a concept...
it's extremely dangerous too and it's a very interesting thing to be able to play with that.
That scene was important. They just pounced on him and knifed him to death.
What's this?
The watchword, butcher, is "Liberty!"
Oh, no! Aaagh!
(POUNDING ON DOOR)
I'm a god! I'm a god! You can't kill me!
Good taste for the BBC was putting all sorts of funny plastic bands down me,
so if I squeezed it a dribble of blood would come out and...
So I said, "No, no. This has got to really happen all at once."
So I got them to put a whole pouch of blood here and played the scene quite carefully
because I had a loose chemise thing on top.
And er... Or was it a toga I was wearing then?
It had to come through that, so you needed a lot of blood.
So that when I did actually go to hold my guts...as it were,
all the blood came out and came through the white
and gave it an immediate impact.
I think we were proved right. It needed that.
Drusilla!
I'm dying!
Drusilla!
- Strong stuff. - There is a very nasty side to me, I think!
All of that comes out in Nero.
I mean, he was a spoilt child
who got everything that he ever wanted, including becoming Emperor,
and he just misused everything that he was given.
If he wanted something, I mean...
One of the big things in the particular episode
was that I couldn't have a girl that I wanted...
and so my mother gives herself to me.
I mean, that is the ultimate sacrifice of any mother, surely!
Her little boy is sexually aroused and the girl doesn't want him, so she gives herself.
My poor baby.
It's not fair, is it? To lock you out of your room.
And you, the Emperor Elect.
But then she's only your wife.
She doesn't feel for you as a mother would.
A mother knows how her baby feels.
Yes.
She wouldn't let him be unhappy.
No.
Never.
Oh...
I'm so sleepy.
When I realised that I was going to play the part,
I then went, in fact, to Greece on a holiday
and I took the books with me and read them on a Greek island.
So I was able to soak up all the atmosphere that I could possibly want to soak up
and when we filmed it, it sort of helped. It was great.
I'm sorry to have been the cause of that.
It's not your fault. Everyone could see that.
Nevertheless, I'll go and see him. Come, Octavia. Let's go and find your brother.
- Perhaps we can pacify him. - I think you're very kind.
There's too little kindness in the world.
I was dressed head to toe in raw silk.
Incredible amounts of it because he's a big character.
It was just wonderful and the wardrobe people really went into everything.
We had these undergarments, then we had the top
and we had then swathes of material going round us.
And they used my own hair, which they curled every day in the studio.
It took hours. They had these special curling tongs.
And then I had fresh flowers put into my hair every day.
They had to, obviously, match them up with the previous day's filming.
During this episode, we had a producer's run. Not only that, but we had a dream sequence
where they had all the stars of the series, who were by this time dead -
like Siān Philips and John Hurt
and Brian Blessed and Maggie Tyzack and George Baker.
They all came back to do this dream sequence.
They came to the producer's run and sat in a line.
Before we started the run, they were laughing and as high as kites
because the series was now a big success.
And they sat there in a line, these five, six really big actors
and I said to Barbara Young, "This is the most terrifying thing."
So we gripped ourselves and did the run and, thankfully, the run was wonderful.
Every time we finished a scene, I glanced over to look at these six, seven actors,
thinking any minute now they'll put their hands up with 4.6 or 5.7
like marking ice skaters. Thankfully, they didn't . They were very complimentary.
I remember when we did, I think, one of the first scenes.
We had to be very, very young.
I don't think Herbie knows this, but he had us in a massage scene, lying on our fronts.
I thought to myself, now...
Both of us - myself and the other girl - were just a fraction too old for the very young bits,
so I said, "If we lie on our backs, everything will fall back and we'll look better."
To tell you the truth, it's crossed my mind that Livia might have had a hand in that.
- Julia! - Well, I might be wrong,
but he was a healthy man who'd never had a serious illness till she got her hands on him.
A particular example of the strength of Antonia
is in the scene where she's decided that her daughter's behaviour is so abhorrent...
that she walls her up - locks her in, walls her up and leaves her in her room to die.
Mother!
Let me out! Let me out!
Let me out!
(BANGING)
Let me out! Let me out!
What are you doing?
What are you going to d-do with her?
But she sits outside the room and hears the cries of the girl inside.
Claudius comes along and says, "Mother, Mother, you've got to let her out."
I say, "No, I won't. That's her punishment."
And then Claudius says to me, "How can you bear it, Mother?"
And she replies, "And that's mine."
My punishment.
For heaven's sake, let her out. How long are you going to leave her in there?
- Until she dies. - Dies?
Dies?
H-have you gone mad? She's your daughter. How can you leave her to die?
- That's her punishment. - How can you bear to sit and listen to her?
And that's mine. Leave me, Claudius.
I shan't move from here until they open that door and find her dead.
Leave me.
Oh, no.
No!
I remember her last scene with Claudius, where she says she's going to kill herself.
But we have to remember that she lived in a time
where no one had said that this was a sin in any way.
I'm joining your father.
- What do you mean? - I'm going to kill myself.
But as a Roman matron, she had decided that she no longer wanted to live
in this hideous state with these murderous, poisonous people.
- But you can't . - Oh, yes, I can.
My life's my own. It'll be a welcome release. I've no wish to go on living in this place.
- You don't have to pretend you'll miss me. - Of course I'll miss you.
And dear Claudius, as usual, was very, very, very upset
that his mother had said, "That's what I'm going to do,
"and you, as my son, will have to remove my hand."
That showed people that you had died by your own hand
when you went to your reward - whatever that might have been.
And, remember, cut off my hand for separate burial for this will be suicide.
It'll be just like you to forget.
And he said, "I can't . I can't bear it."
And she says, "Yes, you can. You'd survive the Flood."
So she was quite prophetic. She actually, in the end, knew his strength, knew his mettle.
You may kiss me.
Oh, Mother.
When the series finished, it was a great success -
though not initially, the critics were, I think, lukewarm,
but then it became a great success.
And then they had a luncheon for all the Caesars - Martin Lisemore.
And Martin Lisemore said, "Well, Brian..." when we'd had this luncheon.
"We've pulled it off. It's a great success. We've beaten that bloody curse!"
It was a great tragedy that Martin, who was...
Martin was killed soon after I, Claudius went on the air.
Martin had wonderful qualities for me, as a director.
He provided the backup and the support...
and the belief in you and the work that you were doing.
And people pointed out to me - because there had been stories of a curse on I, Claudius -
this was one of the things.
But this was compounded, of course, when only about three months further on,
Jack Pulman died of a heart attack, aged 52.
I remember both Derek and I talking on the phone, listening to each other...
looking at each other - not over the phone,
but saying, "Maybe we are number three in line."
And at another party that I didn't go to, I kept away from it...
an extra died at the party, choking on his food.
So there was always something about Claudius, about the whole thing.
I looked upon it, with the writer,
like looking through a keyhole at the events going on in this family.
Part of the thing was that it was a huge flashback.
Claudius was writing his memoirs,
and I kept cutting back to him to remind us that he's actually an old man,
reviewing his life and the events in it, and passing some sort of judgment on it.
I, Tiberius Claudius...
Drusus Nero Germanicus...
this, that and the other...
who was once and not so long ago
better known to my friends and relatives as Claudius the Idiot,
or ''that fool Claudius'', or Claudius the Stammerer -
am now about to write this strange history of my life.
With me, the camera is always an actor. It's very, very rarely an observer.
And I tend to shoot all my stuff like that, but it particularly paid off in I, Claudius
because the camera could tell the story as much as an actor could tell the story.
It contributed as much because you can tell so much more
in a camera movement or in a sudden cut to a close-up than you can do in words.
You used to dance with your cameraman.
You had camera five, for instance, and he had to crab across and you went with him.
It was a wonderful relationship.
I have to pay credit to the camera crew, to Jim Atkinson, who was my senior cameraman,
who did most of the work that I ever did at the BBC over many years, and who was brilliant.
There was a wonderful rapport between yourself and the camera.
The cameras were dancing and so were you.
(WISE) He and his crew did the most wonderful work on this,
and they stayed with me throughout the 13 hours - every single shot.
He supervised it all. And his influence, his insistence...
He was almost a fanatic about the way cameras should be used.
The way he used the pedestal cameras was very, very unusual -
different, I think, from all other cameramen.
He actually got criticism from other cameramen, but I thought he was brilliant.
(JOHN HURT) Because of the way we rehearsed it and shot it.
It was a ten-day turnover, but it was rehearsed like a play. It wasn't shot like a film.
In a studio, it's all make-believe. A great reality took place.
A great concentration, like in here now. I love television sets.
Claudius!
It was a wonderful company.
We had more fun on that. There wasn't any bickering, no backbiting.
Derek was a wonderful leading man.
And Herbie was... Well, a tremendous director. He directed it beautifully.
We had the limitations of the studio for the Senate,
so we had to build sections of it.
Like the Coliseum when they were watching the Christians being put to the lions -
not only Claudius, but they were all watching it -
all I did was the box that they were sitting in and did the rest with sound effects.
(CROWD ROARS)
I don't think you could get away with that now, but you could then,
and that's all I could afford.
I managed to show sections of the Senate, where necessary,
and make it look bigger than it actually was.
We did things like that all the time - 20 people to look like 200 and things like that.
Well done, Claudius. Emperor after all. Who would have thought it, eh?
Fifteen extras. That's all.
And when you look at it, it's looks as if there's about 150 people there.
Herbie knew what he was doing with his camera
and knew how to shoot it so it looked as if you were outside, but you were in the studio.
And Tim Harvey, our designer, was equally brilliant.
The BBC had a wonderful, wonderful make-up department.
The wigs and the old-age make-up took hours and hours and hours to put on.
It took about five hours, I think, to get made up as the old Livia.
So it was quite a process and it made the days very, very long.
But it was immensely helpful, of course, because once all that latex is on your face,
you don't recognise yourself at all.
It was the first time I'd worn these masks
and they were the best that technology could provide at that time. They were very good.
The make-up in I, Claudius I never came to terms with.
On Claudius, for the first time, we had these sort of prosthetics.
These sort of pieces of plastic that sort of stuck all over your face. I never liked them.
They don't use it now. It was something they tried.
I mean, Pam Meager... All the girls...
I remember one moment particularly - it was in episode four - in which I do my nut.
He'll move when he judges the army ready.
He'll move now! And I'll send Postumus with an army to make sure.
I think that wouldn't be wise.
I make the military decisions, not you!
There's no need to lose your temper.
And then I'm blotting things and ink's falling all over the desk and "Oh, god!"
and he's in a terrible mood, racing up and down,
and my make-up was falling off.
The taking-off process was as hazardous
because we took it off sort of gradually with spirit remover.
Because it was all stuck on with spirit gum, which smells...is disgusting stuff
and you have it in every orifice.
Of course, during the day you can only suck soup through a straw, or milk through a straw.
Constantly, during the filming, the make-up girl was rushing at me
because my lips would be cracking or my nose would be coming off,
and it all had to be stuck on again constantly.
And also during the course of the day, your beard starts to grow through it.
So if you put it on at six o'clock in the morning and you take it off at 10:30 at night,
it's anchored not only with the glue, but with your beard.
And then, eventually, we got this idea
of lying in a hot bath full of Badedas bath foam, with a snorkel.
And I would snuggle down under the water, breathe through the snorkel,
and very gradually, gradually, it would lift.
It would lift and it wouldn't break the skin, it wouldn't bleed.
And I've still got at home, all these years later,
a complete, rather squashed, I, Claudius face. Yes.
The make-up supervisor said, "Now, listen, Brian. You must not move.
"You mustn't move. If you move..."
So an edict went out that we weren't meant to make them laugh.
Brian was sitting at a desk, preparing for a scene,
with this thing on his face, writing in charcoal, as they did...
And I took one of these pieces of charcoal
and I said, "You know, Brian. If you put that between the cheeks of your arse
"and kept it there for 2,000 years, you'd have a diamond."
He went, "Don't do it, don't do it..."
Pam Meager was absolutely livid!
Pay up!
What's the matter?
I feel sick.
I mean, there are so many scenes in it that are amazing - by everybody.
On a personal side, the biggest shock for me one day
was Herbie coming in and saying, "This is your death day."
Everyone was miserable. They didn't want me to die. We did have a lot of fun.
The serious side of Augustus, epitomised, for example, in his death scene...
He was wonderful. I remember saying to him,
"What I want from you is to see the light going out of your eyes."
He said, "I'm going to keep a camera on your face for four and a half to five minutes.
"We're going to see Rome die. We're going to see the Empire die on your face."
(AUGUSTUS RETCHES)
I had this long, wonderful speech,
and I thought, "I know how I'll do this," then Herbert said,
"I'm not going to film you at all, actually. It's going to be on Augustus' dying face."
She said, "What? This is the most wonderful speech." And we had quite an argument.
I said, "No." And she was wonderful. She was a very generous woman.
Siān wasn't too happy - but she's a great gal and she'd accepted it within ten minutes -
because she had five minutes of speeches.
Are you feeling better?
There's a delegation here from Rome.
(BRIAN BLESSED) You didn't see her face. Not at all.
So he said, ''I want your eyes open, half open,
''and I want you dead within ten seconds,
''and then I want you for about five minutes to be dead, and we'll just hear her voice. ''
I said, "It can't be done, Herbie." Because when you see people dying in films,
you count it - it's ten, fifteen seconds, usually seven,
or they freeze frame if it's a minute.
But not with me - the eyes are watering and everything.
The eyes are dead and beginning to decompose.
(WISE) If you watch the scene, he did it not once,
but twice, because there was some technical difficulty.
We did one take of it and all the lights in the studio went out.
It was the most extraordinary thing. Everything went dark.
We lost all power when Augustus died. He died silently and all the lights went out!
So the more superstitious people in the cast thought this was the curse of Claudius!
These great cameras above my head and lighting, I thought it'd fall on me.
I actually thought I was going to die in that scene.
The curse came back again. The curse of Claudius, of people dying and being injured.
I felt slightly panicky at the time.
I was most apologetic and terrified to go down to him on the set and say,
''I'm sorry. We will have to do it again'' because of this, that and the other.
He said, ''No problem'', and we did it again,
and he did it as brilliantly the second time as the first time, and I love that.
I think that every actor, at some point in their career,
looks for that part that they become associated with.
Some actors have more than one. Some actors don't get that one.
I was lucky that I got Claudius.
The next part I played after I, Claudius
was an American socialite in a musical by Rogers and Hart.
So that I certainly didn't get from playing Livia!
So it didn't make any difference, but it was the most hugely enjoyable show
and it has been, down the years, the most wonderful visiting card.
Anywhere you go in the world, someone will say, "Weren't you in I, Claudius? I love that."
The fact that it was shown internationally
meant that work would be offered
not only in England, but also abroad.
People in France knew who you were, people in Holland knew you.
It was a significant role for me in many ways.
It followed very closely to a piece I did called The Naked Civil Servant,
which was about Quentin Crisp.
And particularly in America because this was absolutely a huge hit in America.
I was in Israel inaugurating, or starting off, a cabaret tour that I did in 1998.
Not so long ago.
I was sitting in a taxi outside my hotel in Tel Aviv
and my interpreter was standing on the pavement,
and I was waiting to set off for the theatre,
and the driver didn't move off - he was quite a young Israeli.
Finally, he beckoned to the interpreter, who came over,
and in Hebrew, apparently, he said, "Is that Augustus' wife in the back?"
Not even Livia. "Augustus' wife"!
And they'd just been watching it.
It's a thing that is watched all the time all over the world, and that's very nice.
I opened a store in Copenhagen
and it was extraordinary - this was just after Claudius had been shown in Denmark.
They had to get me out over the roof as if I was a Beatle
because of all the people coming to see Claudius.
It did have a major impact on my career - I, Claudius.
In fact, the following day after it had been transmitted,
the producer of a series called Poldark rang the producer of I, Claudius
and said, what was this Biggins like? And he was very complimentary about me.
In fact, I then landed immediately the part of the sex-crazed vicar in Poldark.
I was out of work for six months.
My friend Christopher Plummer said, "Ah, you're there now, boy. You're in."
No. Out of work for six months, and then we started doing other things.
To look back now, to be here and talking to you about it,
it makes you proud to have been associated with one of the great programmes of the BBC,
just as when I did the Forsyte Saga and the first Churchills...
what it meant and what it means now to be associated with those great programmes,
but at the time, it didn't change much about my acting life or what I was asked to do.
Maybe it did in subtle ways, but not in ways I ever realised.
The very first notices were not favourable.
Initially, the critics were a bit pissy about it.
They weren't raves, by any means.
I remember the Guardian critic - whose name I remember, but I won't quote now -
starting his criticism by saying,
"There ought to be a society for the prevention of cruelty to actors."
We knew it was good.
We knew that we were in something very, very classy.
But we were a little bit chary of how it was going to go with the audience.
My then husband, Peter O'T oole, said, "Oh, don't worry about this."
He had asked somebody to research the notices for the novel when that came out,
and they were almost identical with the notices for the series when it came out.
People were shocked that people in togas were talking slang...
and they found it rather odd.
Then within a few weeks, everyone had turned around and changed their minds,
and gave it better notices.
It was not until we were about halfway through the series
that I got an inkling that this was bigger than most other things. It was a gut feeling.
It was halfway through the series and we were filming the last episode
and they said, we've made a terrible mistake. This is great television -
brilliantly written, wonderfully directed and acted. So everybody was on a big, big high.
I just think - not because I'm in it - it's the best series ever.
I've ever seen. I'm too bloody old, man, too long in the tooth for that kind of vanity.
I think the whole standard by everybody and the teamwork, it is on its own.
I'm sure they could show it now. I'm sure there's a generation that would be...
I think it's timeless. It's not something that's going to date that badly.
The critics, initially, hadn't greeted it with open arms,
but right from the beginning, the public seemed to.
If you like Eastenders or Coronation Street or any of those,
then I, Claudius is... You can relate I, Claudius to that.
It was like a sort of Roman Coronation Street.
I think that's where it scored because it was every day life in a way,
and portrayed as such,
and yet the most appalling things happened, like murders and everything,
which, of course, wouldn't happen in a soap of today, but in those days it did.
I think that's where the public really liked it.
The public really took it into its heart and relished it.
If I say I did I, Claudius, people still react to it, still remember it, still say, "Oh, I see."
And I've done a lot of work since then, some of it quite well received,
but that's the one everybody remembers.
The adaptation by Pulman is outstanding. Great work. Great scholarship.
Great work by Erskine. Great direction. Great production, staff, make-up, wardrobe.
Outstanding cast that worked as a team.
And I think it's as near perfection as you can get.
I think we all got it together right.
And I think that God looks down on a great team and smiles with satisfaction
and says, "That is it. That's enough."