you think of Henry Fonda who played Juror Eight, with his cream- coloured suit. That costume wasn't by accident either, he was supposed to be the most heroic, and so wearing the suit and hat showed that, and he has the least baggage out of all of the jurors.
Every performance in that film was Oscar® worthy material: and that's why it is so iconic. The interesting thing is, and I'm not sure a younger audience is as well- versed in that old film genre as maybe people of my particular generation, but I was stunned by that movie. And I didn't see it when it was originally released, as I was only 11 years old when that movie came out. So I saw it as a retrospective and when I was a young fledgling actor, and every single character was phenomenal.
The danger is trying to play your characters like those iconic people, but those iconic people were cast because the characters were written to accommodate. The play was not written for Lee J. Cobb and the Henry Fonda play was written as a play and they were the perfect people to do it. So everybody has the potential to play any of those parts. The danger is to try not to play the role exactly like Henry Fonda.
16
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT TWELVE ANGRY MEN? The play is a really well-crafted, delicate study of human nature and it's so appropriate for the time we're in right now. The subject matter could be taken from America's newspaper articles on a daily basis; it's frightening. It's frightening because we're in the same position that they were portraying in the play in the 1950s, and this play was actually based on the things that went on in the 1860s.
That is going back hundreds of years, so some of the issues in the play must just be ingrained in human nature. Twelve Angry Men is a beautiful study on human nature, though my character, Juror Eight, really doesn't go through much of a transformation compared to the other eleven characters.
HOW DOES THE PLAY OF TWELVE ANGRY MEN COMPARE THE 1957 FILM? I suppose a lot of people are going to be very familiar with the film because it is ubiquitous, it has such a pedigree from being nominated for three Oscars®. What is most incredible is that the subject matter of this script hasn’t changed in the years since the film was released in 1957. And that feels frightening because it’s widely believed that if you don't understand history, and learn from it, that you're doomed to repeat it. But I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think we are doomed to repeat history because of our human nature.
I made the joke that I was cast in this part of Juror Eight because the last actor who did it had the same suit sizes I have! Because when people think of Twelve Angry Men, if you are aware of old movies,
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER, ‘JUROR EIGHT,’ IN THE SHOW... It's so interesting to talk about my character because the characters actually have no names, my character is only known as ‘Juror Eight’. The hardest part for me as an actor, when I’m thinking about how to approach my character from the script, is that even before I arrived on the set for rehearsals, I was wondering who the hell I was about to be playing, because I had no concept about who any of the characters were, including my own ‘Juror Eight’.
CE L EBRIT Y INTERVI EW PATRICK DUF FY
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
