Test Match Special - View from the Boundary: Rory Kinnear

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Actor Rory Kinnear joins Jonathan Agnew to give his View from the Boundary at The Oval. They discuss how living close to The Oval has fuelled Rory's love of cricket, why Robin Smith was his favourite cricketer growing up, and the parallels between acting and cricket.

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you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Be smart. Join the 15 million customers who choose Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. T's and C's and C's Apply. from BBC Radio 5 Live. View from The Boundary, well, this week we've got one of this country's leading stage and screen actors. He's a multiple Olivia Award winner with acclaimed performances and plays like Othello and Hamlet on television. Well, he's betrayed Dennis Thatcher, Lord Lucan and Frankenstein's Monster. He's played the British Prime Minister and the diplomat, the campaigning lawyer in Toxic Town, as well as appearing in hit shows like Black Mirror and Count Arthur Strong in film.

Well, imitation game. Bank of Davis played Winston Churchill and the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. And you've no doubt seen him as the Rye MI6 Chief of Staff Bill Tanner in the last four James Bond films, Quantum of Solis, Skyfall Specter, and no time to die. I'd say welcome to the Oval. I think you spend more time here than I do, Rory Kaneer. It's lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you. One of those people who I just feel that I know from just years of watching telly and films. Well, it's also so lovely to be interviewed here at the Oval, which. Yeah, has definitely over the last 10 or 15 years become, if not my first home, then definitely a second home. Yeah, yeah, because you live very local, don't you? Very locally, and it's the kind of sport that gets its grips into you.

I mean, I've always loved Cricken, I've always watched it, but I guess I never had access to a local ground growing up. So moving here about 12 years ago and coming here for the first time and feeling there was just something in me that just sort of quietened down. And I think walking into the members' pavilion for the first time, it just felt oddly, because I was probably about 40 years younger than everyone else, that I found home. And so now, whenever I'm at home and Surrey are playing, I find it difficult to concentrate or do anything. I sort of feel I have to be there. So inevitably, and I'll check the score, and if I see, oh, goodness me, Will Jackson is about to get a 50, I'll run down, give them applause, and then go home and do the washing out.

But that's a lovely thing to be able to do, isn't it, to treat it just as easily. Yes, I think the first time was when Ponting's his last match here, and he was about to get a century. And I thought, I could just go. And I could be part of history. Yes. And so I remember coming down and I just thought, I think this is going to be the rest of my life. I'm just, I never want to live anywhere too far from the Oval. And obviously, you know, a lot of it is the peace that you get during a county championship match,

a stadium that holds 30,000 people where you might have two to three thousand. if you're lucky. Don't mind that. Well, I quite enjoy it actually. Sometimes with the louder games, I don't find it a little bit obtrusive. But no, I learned my lines. Oh, no. A lot of actors do that.

Yeah. I'll read books or whatever it is. But to live in the centre of London and to have this space and this peace and this quiet, I remember one chap, one of the older gentleman, one of my first years coming here, every time a plane flew over, he flicked at the V's, and I thought, Cool, it must have been busy every five minutes. I know, yeah, exactly. You thought, crikey, you've still not adjusted to air flight.

Do you think it's a pretty ground, the Oval? I mean, you think of some cricket grounds, and aesthetically they're beautiful. Yes, you've got brick buildings surround, you've got terrace seating. The pavilion, clearly, is a lovely history. Yeah, you obviously, you sit this end, I sit the other one. So I see the sort of the majesty of the arch. and actually as the skyscrapers have evolved from Vauxhall as well there's been something quite metropolis-like about it growing up

I obviously sit in the pavilion and look out this way it's hard to say something that you love isn't beautiful so I'm afraid I'd have to say that I do think it'd be a beautiful but it's quite a brutal place to play I think there are so many photos of its history as well and the more you sort of dig around in its history and it's seemingly it's not that changed from

those early years and obviously it has but you can still see the carcass that once stood here that originally stood here so there's something about it that just feels the sort of the heartbeat of where I live and also at the time... And you bring your kids to it do? Absolutely yes

from a young age too yes and you forget after you've been watching cricket for a long time just how many rules there are until you bring a three-year-old and then it was probably about the age of eight when they first stopped asking who's winning. Because it is a difficult question to answer. It's not necessarily one you want.

But they'll come to a championship game, not as a T20 or 100. My daughter used to do four days of a county championship game when she was about two or three. Most of the time was counting chairs or naming chairs. Well, that's kind of babysitting, though, isn't it? I mean, you can bring them here if there's only a couple thousand people. And that, Jonathan, is no bad thing.

If you're able to say to your partner, don't worry, I'll take the kids for the whole day. Yes. You don't need to worry. And they can run around. You're not disturbing anyone. No. You're lucky to disturb someone at some of the country.

You could just sit and watch the cricket. And I've noticed quite a few sort of new or younger parents doing that over the last few years. And I've always thought it was a trick that had been missed by that generation. But they seem to be coming back of it with the buggies and the bottles. And it's a lovely way to spend a day. Because my daughter now is a slightly less keen. My son, I don't need to push. He's a very, very keen point to herself.

He's sitting behind, I know. And my daughter, though, she likes to play the pigeon game. And I guess it's a game that you can only probably play at the Oval rather than any other of the international grounds, where you bifocate the pitch and you choose a half. And at the end of each over, who's got the most pigeons on each side gets a point. Right. And I think she probably has made the rules of the pigeon game slightly more complicated

than cricket itself. But it's certainly a way for her to I've never thought of that, but you're right. I mean, it can, well, you could play the Seagull game in Adelaide. Yes. That'd be quite fun. Yes. But here, presumably, but here, yes, the pigeons.

What a great way to keep a young girl. But they also seem to clear off a little bit. One, I remember, popped down yesterday, yesterday evening, a pigeon, just as someone was about to bowl. But so they tend to clear off for the test. matches. Well, I think they let the hawk out, don't they? I think there's a hawk that lives in one of those

towers on top of the top of the building. I've always wondered if that's a myth. I think, well, it might be a blow-up hawk, but they bring something out up there because it happened yesterday. There was a lot of them, suddenly they vanish, and I think they get the hawk out. It's something it looks like a hawk. It was just the noise and the people, which keeps

off several of the older Surrey members themselves from coming to the test matches. So who are your favourite players then, Rory? So growing up, it was Robin Smith for me. So many of your I know. Yeah, I know. I think that test match where he just got repeatedly hit in the face, I think, made us all love him. And so I did have a sort of a hankering for Hampshire during that time, and obviously with Warn. So, and then I used to play the fantasy cricket league. So it was one where you got delivered your scores by post. And you would watch on C-Fax to see how your players were doing it. beginning of every season, I would always choose either Mark Islet or Peter Such. Peter Such. I played with Peter Such. Did you? There you go. Lesterth is he played for

Leicestershire. Well, he went Nottingham, sure. I knew you were good, but I didn't know you were that good. Lestershire. And then he went to Essex after after us. Because he obviously now a match official. Yes, he is. And there is still a grill, a thrill that goes very viscerally through me. When I hear Peter Such is the match official at a county game here. Wow. I'll tell him when I next see him. And the other one, my ride or die, was Andre van truest. The fastest bowler that I had ever heard of. That sounds a bit of a chill through the spine, actually. And so those were my three bowlers.

In terms of watching England and bowling, Gus Fraser, was probably the one that I had the most fondness for. And I guess being a purveyor of the in-swinging right-arm dobbler myself, that something about the medium-paced. trundler, not to dismiss Angus Reiser as a medium-paced trundler, apologies. You wouldn't like that. But there is something about the medium pacer that I've always had a great fondness for, yeah. I have a huge admiration for people who come and watch test cricket because they'll usually

come for a day. And I don't know how they select which day they're going to come and they pay a lot of money. And so if they come save on the Saturday, they've got to have known what's happened on the Thursday and the Friday, got right up to speed with it. Off they go on the Saturday, it might be a terrific day, it might be a very dull day, it might rain all day, and then off they go again, and that's their experience of that match. I know, and what happened on that, yeah, what happened on the day? I went to day, I went to day two at Lords, forgive me, forgive me, father, but I went to day, saw, you know, saw Root Sentry on the Central, whatever it was, and that incredibly electric moment when Joffra took his first wicket back, and you felt you had been part of something you were lucky to have been there that day, to have seen that moment, that in completely. completely galvanized a crowd. But I then got the tube back with my son and we came to watch Surrey against Sclamorgan, where Dan Lawrence got about a hundred, it was 12 hours of watching life cricket, where Dan Lawrence got a century to win a game that we had no right to

watch. It was, it was almost, for obviously, I'm a huge fan of the longer form of the game, as you say, because each day, each session is a different chapter in a novel. But there was something about going to a T20 game where the miraculous happens as well where you think there is merit in all these formats yes well there is and we're lucky with cricket aren't we because we do have all these formats and they're not necessarily heavily artificial that's what I like about the T20 format it's a different format but you're not fundamentally changing the game to a ridiculous extent that T20 has got a life of its own without really bastardizing if you

like the the real format the tactical now so it's required is entirely different from and what i also find interesting about international cricket compared to watching county championship cricket it's obviously something that england have have pursued very very forthrightly in the last couple of years is it's almost a completely different game and it's just one more day and obviously the players are a bit you know in a higher league but um it feels like it's a completely different game they don't seem to have any belief that what you can do in county county championship cricket has any relation to what you can do in international cricket and they sort of have been proved right over the last couple.

Yes, yes. Did you like Bazball when it first started? Did you think this is something that's going to last forever or do you think, hmm, okay, because I think they have tightened up this year. Certainly this series they have, yeah. Until yesterday and then there was almost a nostalgia when Duckett and Crawley went about their business yesterday for how fun it was. and as much as this has been an extraordinary slug fest this series and each half hour seems to reveal a different direction that the match can be turning. Those early days of Basbo, you know,

when Beirsto was blasting it everywhere, you realised, I realised at the time, I wasn't sniffy about it, I realised we'd never have it this good again. Yes, yes, there was that feeling. And it cleared minds, didn't it? I mean, those same players who had been lost virtually every test match of the last 17 or ever it was, they were the same players

and yet somehow Brendan McCullough and Ben Stokes had sort of pressed the reset button in their minds and psychologically they were I think the psychological for me particularly probably as an actor the psychological aspect of cricket

is just so captivating and how someone at the top can just make the game so simple or at least strip away the anxieties that you can see crippled cricketers like you can see crippled performers and to be able to do that

within seemingly a matter of weeks to free people, to make them feel it's not so important. It's not so important that you don't want to do your best, whereas seemingly previously over the last few years it had been, it is so important that you do your best. Yes. Different minds. Yeah. It's being here for, I think, it was day three of the Yashis in 23. And it was the morning where, so I've been on the day one and, you know, Duckett and Crawley had gone about their business again. and it was maddening as quite a lot of

early basball was but then that day three the morning session and it was almost like they were doing it deliberately Labrashane and Coadra I don't know if you remember just they scored about 40 runs in the morning session and it really was a clash of cultures and you thought I'm not now sure

and with the genie out of the bottle with Basball I'm not sure I can go back to watching test again that is quite as nullifying I think it was like in the 70s watching boycott and Edrich the rest of it

no luckily I didn't it was Robin Smith and onwards well actually I think my first test match that I watched sort of every day of was that was that India series

the you know the Goochum oh the Ten Dilka at 16 I think Ten Dulkas catch in that test match was the one where I sort of sat up and thought

it was a bit like watching Boris Becker when Wimbled at 17 when someone's so young but also so close to your own 80 there's only three or four years older than I was. I didn't think

that I was necessarily going to challenge him within his privacy, but there was something about making it seem so accessible. What was your playing like? Do you still play? Do you play now? How much did you play? I used to. So the beginning of every

season, they would have a sort of a match of your year group to see who the players were. And I used to always have my best match of the season in that sort of warm-up match who's going to be. And everyone knew that I wasn't good enough to be in the first team. But I was always made the captain of the seconds or the bees. I had no tactical insight whatsoever.

But I liked batting and I liked bowling, but I particularly liked fielding at Silly Midoff. And that I made my own specialty. Why is that? You didn't? I don't know. I guess there was something about the threat of it, which I quite liked.

I mean, you're talking silly. You're talking really silly, you're talking just yards from the back. We're also talking 13-year-olds, so not necessarily they're going to take your head off. But I like catching. I will still, when I come here with my kids, I will still, we're allowed to go on the pitch at lunch and tea. I will spend all that time just catching. I just love it. Tennis ball.

With one of those sort of rubber-rised. Yeah, yeah. And I used to spend every sort of summer holiday where I had a neighbour, one of my best friends growing up, and we would just spend the whole time catching. It was just fun. And it's also quite a good way. And I think what's quite good about sport and particularly the longer form of sport like cricket

is giving that opportunity for people to talk and to catch up with something to occupy their mind. And I think maybe I'm making generalisations, but I think with chaps generally, we maybe just need something to take our eye off what we're actually talking about, to be able to open up. And I think cricket does that very well.

I mean, some of the most memorable chats and sort of insights I've had with friends have been watching cricket, where you're just able to do the first two hours of, you know, catching up, then you're doing another two hours of jokes, and then the last three hours you're actually sort of doing your heart to heart. We were talking about this only yesterday. Oh, is that right, the whole question of Graham thought. With the Grand The Court, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think cricket, as a spectator, particularly, obviously, gives you that options.

I mean, I think it is quite a lonely sport to play. play, but there is something about watching it that you can choose how you enjoy it. I mean, I've had just as much pleasure watching it by myself as I have coming with people, but I wouldn't get the depths of friendships or the depths of insight, the depth of openness to my friendships that I've managed to achieve by being at the cricket for the day. It would take you a year to have that amount of time. You're not filling up with beer or anything. I actually weirdly don't drink at the cricket, I think probably because I'm here

too much. So you'd have to be watchful about it. But it's also, I mean, it has been sort of the last 10, 12 years of my life where the claws have got into me more and more. And I find it incredibly rewarding. And sometimes you, I guess it is a level of mania or addiction that you find yourself, you know, you shouldn't be necessarily excited that, I don't know, that can steel is taking his first five four so you've got you've got to get down to the oval to give him a round of applause as a 47-year-old man that's wonderful there's something in elegant about it to be honest it's great it's it's genuine enthusiasm isn't it genuine in love for yeah and to have something or I saw I got

into opera when I was in my 30s and I realized like oh and sometimes when you're in your 30s you think you've you've discovered all the things that you're going to like yes and I always liked sport but I think I've never sort of gave much time to, I think it was also having a child who liked sport as well, gave me permission. My dad did, I mean, he would not, he would try and not work for the two weeks of Wimbledon, but other than that, sport didn't play that larger part in his mind, despite the fact that his own father was a very celebrated rugby player, and we're still looking for the gene to resellers, but his, my grandfather played for, it's one of the first people to do the double

of playing for British Lions and for Scotland in Rugby Union, and then played Wigan and Great Britain for Rugby League. It schooled in the first ever challenge cup final at Wembley in 1929. Your dad, Roy, was such a part of my, that sort of generation of putting on the telly, and there he was, and I was just looking up, researching this. The list of films that he performed in, obviously, it was unbelievable. Did you ever see him? Well, yes, we did. He was a very present and active and loving,

big dad. And it just looked like you've never been at home. It must be on... But it was, I think also if you're a character actor, occasionally you do a couple of days on something and you've got a credit on IMDB. Whereas someone might have spent six months on it and they still have the same line on IMDB.

But he was very, very pragmatic about work. He was very good at work and I think maybe growing up after he had died, I was a little annoyed that people saw him as this sort of comic actor that made them. laugh because I knew just actually what a skilled actor he was and what a genuinely great actor he was. But he didn't care. I mean, he didn't care how people perceived him. He cared about us. He loved the fact that he was able to do something that he loved. But by the time we came

along, I think he'd been so successful so young. He'd been famous by 27, 28, with that was the week that was. He made so many films. He'd done so much TV. But it was a sort of a Sunday to Friday, I'll go to work and I'll come home and do the rest of the time I'll do what I love, which is being with my family. Yeah. It's easy watching him. I mean, so much of what he did must be easily accessible on gold and all these other things now. At least days, yeah. I mean, after his death, I did go through a long period and sort of into my 20s and 30s of trying to search out everything that he had done, which was, you know, there are so many things that were, that I've got the listings for but can't find.

Oh, really? That's frustrating. BBC archives will wipe at a certain point. But there is something, yeah, quite addictive about trying to find a certain play for today that I've never been able to get hold of. And I still, you know, still people are putting things up on YouTube or on social media of clips that I haven't seen. A chap who puts up clips of various snarl-ups from the Dick Emery show of outtakes

and seeing that and seeing... His son lives in my village, by the way. Is that right? There you are. You'll be listening. Hello, Nick. Seeing my dad being my dad rather than being someone else. Yes.

And then, of course, getting to show my kids his work. And, you know, some nearly 40 years after his death, there was his grandchildren that he never met, being able to be made laugh. Oh, that's lovely. Yeah, yeah. Was it hard following him? I mean, I don't know quite how, time-wise, how it all worked out. But, I mean, he was so well known. Yeah.

And you get the question of sport of, you know, sons following him. famous fathers and everything and was that an issue or not no i didn't i never really considered it um i i i was 10 when he died so uh in some ways i discovered i hadn't thought about acting i didn't really know what acting was i'd been to the occasional set and i'd liked what they provided on the food tray but other than that i didn't really know what acting meant it's in the genes then was it your mom's that's right yeah yeah i i guess so i mean i guess like sport there's a uh there's a psychological aspect to it but there's also a sort of a physical aspect of having a loud enough voice or you know being able to stand on stage and be

someone else or even be yourself and not minding so I guess there is a genetic predisposition and you see that in a lot of acting families but I found out acting for myself at that school and then went on and did an English degree at university but carried on acting and then I thought well if I'm going to make something of this I should probably go to drama school and see what it's all about and see if there's more to it than I'm currently thinking which is I largely in those years enjoyed being the sense of attention. I had the wherewithal to think that might not be the best way to spend the rest of your life. So going to drama

school was where it was for me where I began to ask enough questions about it and what it meant to me and how rewarding it was going to be and if it was going to be challenging enough for me and pretty soon I realised that it's as rewarding as you make it and the more questions that you ask about the character or the play that you're doing or the script that you're working on the more it reveals its rewards and its depths and how elusive and frustrating and I guess there is a similarity to sport in that sense the deeper you get into it the harder it ever it is to think that you've done something well you've done so much so Rory I mean you know you're cricketing cliche terms I mean you're genuinely an all-rounder aren't you but but I mean I've got to start

with James Bond only because it's just so much part of all of our lives and and it's in the news at the moment too isn't it with a new writer for the next that's right yeah yeah well there's obviously a lot of change going on around the franchise and it would be really really I mean I always know I'm almost the last person in the world to hear anything about what's actually happening so I've got no insights to provide it

I was actually sat when you were doing your tease earlier about who your guest was going to be I was sat in front of a family who were arguing furiously whether it was going to be Timothy Dalton or Daniel Craig and I thought as if this morning hasn't been disappointing enough

cricket wise I'm going to have to sheepishly sidle in once. I think one of them was... Did they recognise you? I don't think so. My sorry cap in, obviously. One of them was furiously arguing that it was going to be Roger Moore and I really didn't have the heart to get into that. Well, I'm glad it's you but I just looking at

a clip. I mean, you know, it's such a massive thing, isn't it? The whole Bond business and you know, to see you there in the clip I just saw us now with Daniel Craig and Julie Dench and there's you there, Bill Tanner pointing out some baddies who Bond's got to go and kill. I mean, but

Is it sort of pinch yourself stuff or not? Is it just a job? And, you know, you know, it's definitely something more than that, just in terms of the scale of operations. There just aren't films made like that anymore. Even in the sort of the big sort of Marvel stuff, it's not done, you know, everything that you see on screen, they are paying for.

It's so little of CGI. I mean, they've really put their, you know, they really back the fact that these are films that people go to see in the cinema. and the extraordinary stunts that they managed to achieve, as well as the cinematography, and working with really, really high-end directors with high-end visions, and obviously Denny Villeneuve coming in for the new one as well.

A massive amount of money to throw it, presumably. Yeah, and it all goes on screen. And that's what their ambition is, the money that they spend, and it is a lot. But it goes on screen, and an audience can enjoy it. But I do remember my first ever one. And I wasn't a huge bond of aficionado before I was asked to do it. And I had auditioned for, you get these various dummy scenes so you don't actually know what your involvement is going to be.

So they said, you've got the part. And I said, what is the part? I don't know. And until I've seen a script, what's it going to be? And then they did send the script. And I thought, oh, he's actually in it. Oh, right. This is actually a proper part.

I should probably go away and watch some of the films. but I was quite straight old Bill isn't he I mean Bill's there He doesn't do the stunts Services to exposition He would win an award for But I had just finished a At the time BBC 4 were doing various dramas

And I just done a BBC 4 drama Where the same supporting artist Had played four different parts in the same day And she was the only extra we had available And at the very next day I started On the Bond film in the Barbican with about 400 extras only there for the afternoon

just to fill in and I remember oh this is a different zone I've entered here and quickly I did have to have a word with myself just to try and forget that and to try and treat it like any other job

because I remember one day just about to go for a take and again sort of hadn't really necessarily computed what this all was and I remember thinking oh this is the kind of thing oh everyone's going to see this and usually when you're acting in something

you hope someone might see us but the inbuilt affection that Bond has and I just thought everyone's going to see this and I literally tripped over my shoes and forgot my lines I mean it was amazing what nerves can do to your psychology You walk out playing Shakespeare

well the thing is to remember that you're someone else and actually and I do think about that with how sports stars try and juggle their nerves or how they try and control them but we have the very we're very lucky

in that our job is to be someone else we're asked to be someone else so it's not about us and in some ways I don't want to get in the way I want to think like this other person and the reason I guess for being an actor is to have those moments or at least that period of time

when you aren't yourself where you can forget your own life and to explore the psychology and life of someone else and I think sometimes for let's say an international cricketer if they think that it's themselves going out to bat or it's themselves

bowling must be the pressure must be so daunting so they must create this other persona for themselves but it's interesting because I'm gonna say this because I'm very lucky I interview lots of people doing this actors are usually the most nervous in my experience you're not playing cricket or at once it's sitting doing an interview yeah we're not because they are themselves and and it's quite a strange place to be I mean you're not like that at all but a lot of the most nervous about this interview absolutely are actors no because that's not our job. And we're sort of quite often thrust into it because, you know, the needs to add

I think also I'm delighted to be here when I'm not having to publicise anything. Nothing. I've done nothing. I've done nothing. But, you know, the thrill of our job and the desire to do our job is to not be ourselves. Talk to about Shakespeare because it's a great contrast, isn't it? And you have done so much in so many different areas. Does that actually, does a Macbeth, Hamlet, whatever it is, for which you've won these awards, obviously. I mean, do you get more satisfaction out of that? And are they transferable skills from one minute? The T20.

You're playing Bill 10 of James Bond. And the next minute you're out there on the National Theory. There's a match of Shakespeare. I mean, I think there's probably something in that. What those parts do is ask something of every bit of you as an actor. And obviously, that is physically, and I guess that is similarity maybe to the test match game. you having to play hamlet every night for eight shows a week particularly when your son has been just born

and you're having to do that for the first six months of his life that tests you physically intellectually it tests you in terms of working out what he's talking about working out the relationships with other people and then emotionally it tests you and the cycle you're the need to be psychologically acute about what he's going through as well but emotionally you don't know what it's what you're going to experience every night

and you want to make sure that you don't know what you're experiencing every night you want to be as open as possible to change why I found interesting about playing Hamlet is that you spend six weeks, seven weeks in a rehearsal room and you have these incredible soliloquies of the greatest language

that's ever been put down on vellum and you're saying it to a brick wall six feet in front of you and you're getting nothing back understandably from the wall's perspective and then you go on your first preview in front of 1100 people at the Olivier theatre and each one is responding each one is a living breathing receptor to what

you're talking about and I found unbelievably emotionally overwhelming that first performance not only the fact that you were playing this part but you know that everyone for the last year had been saying to you oh god I hear you playing Hamlet bad luck I did that school and all that stuff but you realize the privilege of being able to share this language with an audience same with Iago same with Macbeth, those parts that have those soliloquies in which you are able to basically have this intimate relationship with 1,100 people who change every night, who have a different response every night, but who you are implicating in the story, who you are implicating them. The reason Othello is such a tragedy is because no one in the audience stops it, and they've known from the beginning that it's exactly what's going to happen. The reason why I think Hamlet is meant to move people, because he dies at the end. Sorry if you haven't seen it.

He dies at the end and he is shared, he is the only person on that stage, well, you as the audience member are the only person on that stage that he has been open with. He has closed himself off with everyone else on stage other than you, the audience member. Do you feel he had to be better than the last person that did it and the whole production has to be better than the last one to do it? No, I mean, what's really fantastic about the elasticity of those plays is obviously the fact that were I to do it six months later, it would be a time. totally different production. You sort of pick up what's in the air. There's something about the culture around you seems to seep into those shows. Even if you're doing a, you know, we have done most of those shows, but have been contemporary productions. But even if you're, if you're

not doing contemporary production, something about your contemporary life will, will have changed within one year, two years. So they're all the reflections of today as they are reflections of the early 17th century. And I think that's why we're able to keep on doing them. I mean, it's interesting when you get to when you get offered one of those parts and it's announced that you're doing it how some people do sort of feel sorry for you that you're having to you know put yourself up against these you know these greats these titans and I my response was always I've been asked to do this this is why I want to be an actor to be able to play parts like this and I get a chance I might not be the best but this is my chance and the privilege is to say these words to share them

with an audience to understand them to to unpick them to see what about me they resonate with And that those are all privileges that I don't have to worry about how I am in relation to others. When we did Hamlet, there was an NT live, so they're live broadcast into cinemas across the world. And it was one of the first, it was the first one I'd ever done. And they were quite new in technology at the time. And I remember just about to go on stage, and they did a sort of VT beforehand, that was sort of introduced by a presenter. And then there was a VT beforehand with a bit of the soliloquy by every goddamn famous Hamlet

for the last 60 years, just as I was about to go. And again, that thing of put your mind, put your mind at ease, this is what you're doing, this is who you're being, this is who you're playing, and forget about the rest. What's it like playing someone who's recognisable? I'm talking Dennis Thatter, I'm talking, Lord Lucan. I mean, when we click it on, you think, oh, well, okay, I think as a view, he sort of get used to. I mean, not quite being like. I think it's funny, because it is for the audience.

And obviously, there's so much about being an audience member, whether it be in watching TV or in the theatre, which is not real. The fact that you're sitting on your sofa watching a small square or the fact that there's someone eating crisps next to you. There's so much that requires an audience to transcend the circumstances

in which they're engaging with the art and yet when it's real people, people find it really, really difficult. So in some ways you have to just sort of trust that once you set out your stall as that character, hopefully the audience will come along with you. And I've been lucky enough in some of the

And few of the parts that I've played, they haven't been necessarily the most recognizable or famous people so that I didn't feel necessarily I was having to overlap exactly with another person's idea. I gather playing a game of cricket affected your performance in a James Bond film one time, is that right? I net almost once every two years, and I play probably twice a year.

But I decided to have a net and I had not thought that the next day I was filming a scene in which I was having to walk down an endless corridor with Daniel Craig and I don't know if you as a fastbole you might have some memory of the first time you net after a break you probably didn't have that many breaks in your career but stiff the board yeah and so there is an imperceptible I'd like to think imperceptible limp as I trudge down that corridor as I'm all I'm thinking about is my burning thigh I'll try and find that scene Rory he's been really lovely to imagine it's been a great guest thanks for coming in

And your enthusiasm and love for cricket is really infectious. Rory Keneer, lovely guest. A genuine, genuine cricket lover. No doubt about that. This is the TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. We are back with the Fantasy 606 podcast. Whoa, well, Chris, I've got to stop you there. We have changed our name this season to the FPL podcast from BBC Sports.

All you need to do is search for FPL. And if you already subscribe to our podcast, you don't need to. to do anything at all. Chris, have a guess what the code to join. The BBC Sport League is. Is it 5E? It's BBC FPL. Oh, yeah. Come and play the game with us as we continue to teach Chris about fantasy Premier League. The FPL podcast from BBC Sports. Listen on BBC Sounds. The following advertisement feature is presented by GoTurkia. Most travellers only scratch the surface of Turkey. The real Turkey is found on a detour.

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