talk show craziness

I have been in London for a few days doing press for The Runaway on Sky 1. I had forgotten how random and eclectic British Tv shows can be. For example I found myself on The One Show doing my interview between a piece about a bride with lots of warts on her hands and a man who can engrave words on tiny surfaces like pin heads and paper clips! Seriously! Then on Fern on Channel 4, in addition to chatting with the lovely hostess, I judged a cake contest for the Royal Wedding and then had to guess which of the five strangers that were paraded in front of me were obsessed with George Formby (rather surpirsingly a little girl), who had changed their name to Manilow after their hero Barry (a lady who had not only done that but also had the man himself tattooed on both of her arms) and finally who had a large collection of truncheons, as in the things PC Plod would bop you on the head with in a riot!! I mean, really!

Here I am chatting to Phillip and Holly on This Morning. Seconds later the cast of Mamma Miaperformed Money Money Money as part of the show's twelfth anniversary celebrations, mere feet from the sofa on which I am sat. Crazy!

Crazzee

I have had a crazy week, and here below is some visual proof. I also went to see the opening of Once, the new musical at the New York Theatre Workshop, directed by my friend John Tiffany who is going to be working with me on Macbeth next year.  Once is amazing, just so beautiful and heart wrenching and open. See it in this intimate space before it gets snapped up by Broadway!!

Right now I am in the mountains sitting watching the snow fall. It seems a very long way from all the crazy stuff below. And it is. How lucky I am to have such contrasts in mylife.

Here I am with my Good Wife ex wife Parker Posey, with Lance Horne peeping over our shoulders. Lance played for me at the Cyndi Lauper Home for the Holidays event for LGBT youth on Sunday evening

on the topic of wardrobe malfunctions....

Fashion is not style. Nay, we can say more: Fashion is instead of style. Style is an idiom springing spontaneously from the personality but deliberately maintained. If you have no personality, you may be able to save your face and, possibly, your entire anatomy by following the current fashion, but all we shall know about you, when we see you coming down the street, is that you had enough money to buy a glossy magazine and were sufficiently cunning to work out the cut of the garments shown therein.

QUENTIN CRISP, New York Magazine, Nov. 20, 1978

the book of mormon is the total bomb

Last night I saw the best show I have ever seen on Broadway, The Book of Mormon!!  It somehow manages to be dirty, satirical, offensive yettraditional and quaint at the same time.  It mocks faith but at the same time states a very good case for it.  It is touching, hilarious and endlessly inventive and beautifully performed and totally brilliant and I can't wait to go back!

Here's a behind the scenes from the latest batch of Masterpiece Mystery...

Audie do dee

I have been nominated for a 2011 Audie Award in the Solo Narration - Male category for my reading of Robert Paul Weston's Zorgamazoo. You can hear a clip of it here.

Today I shot some more scenes with the lovely America Ferrera onThe Good Wife and then was a guest on Rocco Di Spirito's new dinner party show for Bravo.  It was a lovely group including my old chums Liza Minnelli, Sandra Bernhard and Kenneth Cole.

How great that Hawaii is now allowing civil unions, and gay people have basically the same rights and protections as their straight friends.  Hooray! And the Obama administration will no longer be defending the Defense of Marriage Act (a gift from former President Clinton which defines marriage as between a man and a woman) in court.  The walls are tumbling down, people.

Happy Friday.  I am going to shoot and dance with bears. 

back from Boston

I just got back from a fun few days in Boston where I was doing my yearlyMasterpiece Mysteryhosting duties.  I donned the suits, my hair was slicked back and I emerged from the shadows spouting pithy remarks.  I like being a host, and I like going to Boston and catching up with the Masterpiece peeps. I was doing an interview whilst in Boston and talking about the fact that it is quite a dying trend to have someone set up what you areabout to see on TV.  I think it is probably only Masterpiece and maybe AMC or one of those film channels that still does it.  And I think that is sad. Because actually people really like to know what they are about to watch.  Maybe it is something to do with our crazy, scheduled to the max lifestyle nowadays, but every time I am with a group of friends and we have a pile of DVDs in front of us and are trying to decide which to watch, 'What's it about?' is the most common cry. 

I used to find that rather annoying.  Why not just watch the thing and then find out, I thought? Why do we always have to be told of what to expect, or worse, what to think?  If only there was someone like me giving a short and precise precis before every movie, perhaps even in the same style and aesthetic as the movie itself? Wouldn't that be good?  And also save people trying in vain to encaptulate a story and a style of something that is over 2 hours long and potentially very dense and complicated?

Although I do enjoy hearing how people condense things when you play games like Taboo and they try to use as few words as possible to get their team-mates to understand them.

This picture is one I took on the train, leaving Manhattan behind ernoute for Boston.  And here is a clip I found online from The L Word, with me being spunky with the lovely Pam Grier.

And here is a Broadway.com first night report of The Threepenny Opera in 2006

ass

Happy Valentine's Day!!  Whilst I personally feel that Valentine's Day is a crock of commercialised shit, I hope you all have a lovely loved-up time with your loved one or ones.

I have been having a fun time at Fashion Week. It gets a little scary because of all the microphones stuffed in your face and the random and potentially libellous questions that are asked of you.  But I try to have fun with it.

I would like to say here that I have nothing more to say about Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark. I feel I have said all that I have to say about both the show and my experience of having once been involved with it.  It isn't fun to see (mis)quotes of mine taken from eavesdropped-on conversations with friends being spewed around the internet so here's the scoop: I am indeed happy to be doing The Good Wife and not Spiderman, and I wish Julie, Bono, The Edge and everyone else involved all the very best.

 

Also I came to work today and everyone was ribbing me about a story in the NY Post about me taking a picture of a young lady's behind .  You see, I have become obsessed with my ShakeIt Photo app on my IPhone.  Indeed on Saturday at the G star Raw show I tried to take a picture of one of the model's (fantasstic) derrieres but alas I slipped and only got a shot of the tips of my blue suede boots and a lot of carpet.  Ah well. Maybe the universe is telling me not to be an ass man. I don't know. Here I am having a laugh about it with the lovely Jared Leto.