Work Text:
The following is a transcript from an unshown part of Scott Thompson's Post Mortem interview with Hugh Dancy.
Hugh: I mean, we've been joking that I was the reason this is so good.
Scott: How d'you mean?
Hugh: I got Mads hired.
Scott: So you're the reason we've been having the living daylights scared out of us?
[They laugh]
Hugh: Bryan auditioned a lot of guys, then handed me the list and went "Who do you want to work with?"
Scott: Seriously?
Hugh: Yeah. So he gives me this list, and I looked through, full of good names. David Tennant was on there, we would have had more Brits than we already do.
Scott: You turned down Doctor Who?
Hugh: I saw Mads' name and kinda felt it. Have you interviewed him yet?
Scott: No, he's up last.
Hugh: Well, we worked together ten years ago, in this film called King Arthur. I was credited in the trailer, he wasn't, mostly because by that point I'd done some period stuff, and Ella Enchanted, and Young Blades, and most of his back catalogue was in Danish. It was great, but a lot of it hadn't made it to America, so he wasn't well-known. Anyway, I was Galahad, short skirt, stubble, though at twenty-nine I still looked about twelve and it was mostly bum-fluff, he was Tristan. Long hair, braids, facial tattoos. He had a hawk, Isolde, of course.
Scott: Of course!
Hugh: The hawk would start a fight with his horse at least every other shoot, pull him in different directions. I learnt a lot of Danish swearwords that way. He's been in stuff with some of our costars since. Ray Stevenson in Musketeers in 2011, Til Schweiger in Charlie Countryman, last year. I have not been in stuff with them, more's the pity. We also reckon we predicted the current situation with Will.
Scott: Really?
Hugh: Conversation between Galahad and Tristan. I said something about not killing for pleasure, he said "you should, might get a taste for it".
Scott: Very Hannigram.
Hugh: Exactly! And the thing is, it goes deeper than that. I'm tolerably certain that our characters had some form of sexual tension. I mean, it's Mads, there is going to be some somewhere, but it seemed to be pretty... there, you know?
Scott: I think I need to watch this film.
Hugh: There's not much acting, just loads of riding about and fighting. And at least one of us dies at the end.
Scott: No!
Hugh: Yes! But the best scene for the purposes of us being a couple was this scene in a pub. There was a knife-throwing contest going on, so I throw first, hit a bullseye. In real life I was a bit rubbish at this, but the magic of cinema made it look great. And then Mads, who is way better at it- that's where he learnt to do that, by the way- chucks his knife and lands it right in the middle of the hilt of my knife.
Scott: Wow, that is.. an innuendo there, isn't it?
Hugh: [giggling] And the thing is, we have been playing up this stage gay stuff for a very long time, it's stopped fazing us. If Bryan told us tomorrow that we'd be doing a sex scene, I don't think we'd bat an eyelid.
Scott: I'd want to see that.
Hugh: So filming on King Arthur ends and me and Mads end up in someone's trailer, probably mine, it was bigger, with all the booze we can find and he proceeds to get me entirely hammered. I didn't drink that much, even then, which is rare in the British culture of getting so drunk on WKD at fourteen that you need medical intervention, so it was pretty easy for him.
Scott: Wait, what's legal there?
Hugh: Eighteen. We tend to get older friends to get us booze. Not me, I was a bit goody-goody, but a lot of kids I grew up with. Anyway, he got me drunk and I misinterpreted some signals and I kissed him. He was already married by then, I knew that but I was too intoxicated to care at that point. We laughed it off, he made jokes about his innate magnetism, we're fine. I'm happily married now with a son.
Scott: Did he kiss back?
Hugh: That is confidential! And this whole thing is off the record, right? I'd rather not put this out on the internet, I don't think either of us need to be outed.
Scott: Either of us?
Hugh: Bugger.
-interview ends-