Rowan Atkinson talks Johnny English, the right to offend and the future of Blackadder
MR BEAN actor Rowan Atkinson plays an old-school analogue agent in Johnny English, and is no fan of the damage done to free speech and comedy thanks to social media.
NO ONE could ever accuse Rowan Atkinson of the quick cash-in.
Although the veteran British comedian has said he’ll never retire any of his most famous and best loved characters, their appearances have been few and far between in recent years. The acerbic, Machiavellian schemer Edmund Blackadder hasn’t been seen on TV for nearly 20 years and, despite sporadic rumours of a reunion, was last briefly revived as a greedy banker for a charity special six years ago.
Similarly, after achieving global fame from years on TV and two huge Hollywood hits, the rubber-faced, self-obsessed misfit Mr Bean’s last outings have been limited to an animated series, a cameo in a Chinese film and an appearance at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.
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And his affectionate James Bond spoof, Johnny English, has managed just three movies in 15 years. As he prepares for the release of the third instalment in the ongoing adventures of the bumbling British secret agent with delusions of adequacy, Atkinson ponders the reason for seven-year delay since the last chapter.
“I wish I could say that’s the reason why we leave such big gaps, to build expectation, when in fact it’s just a kind of laziness,” he says, dryly. “If we were Mission: Impossible or Fast & Furious, we’d have made 15 in the time we’ve taken to make three. But anyway, here’s another one.”
Not usually a fan of his own work, Atkinson says he’s particularly pleased with Johnny English Strikes Again, which also stars former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko and long-time acquaintance and fellow Oxbridge alumnus, Oscar-winner Emma Thompson, whom Atkinson first saw perform in a Cambridge revue nearly 40 years ago when she was best known as comic actor.
He says Johnny English Strikes Again not only has “an energy to it that maybe the previous two movies had less of”, but it also depicts the title character as an analog hero in a digital world, something that appeals to the old-school sensibilities of the very British Atkinson.
“Johnny English’s basic agenda is to tackle the villain at the centre of our piece, who is a digital billionaire-entrepreneur, so he uses analog weapons against a digital enemy. And that’s quite fun — it means the whole movie has a slightly nostalgic side to it, setting the old world against the new.”
The 63-year-old is no fan of social media and doesn’t have Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. He says he mostly uses the internet to “send emails and buy shirts”. He likens the unedited and unregulated online environment to a medieval mob and laments that “an unguarded comment or a rude joke you cracked 25 years ago can be brought to the fore and used as a mechanism to attack you”.
“When reputations are destroyed and careers are ended merely because of what is essentially ‘the mob’ turning on you, that is very harsh and it’s something we are only beginning to realise.
“We haven’t really found an answer to the cruelty of what should in theory be an organ for free expression — the good thing about Twitter is that you can say what you like and the whole world has the potential to see and listen. But unfortunately the whole world can then turn on you, because that’s the nature of a two-way street.”
Atkinson courted controversy in his homeland last month when he wrote a letter to The Times defending former UK foreign minister Boris Johnson’s comments about women wearing burkas, which were attacked by many as mocking religion and stoking Islamophobia. While the comedian is at pains to say he is in no way a supporter of Johnson, he says the whole episode illustrates a broader danger of comedy becoming a sanitised through a fear of giving offence to anyone. Free speech, he says, is without meaning unless it has the right to offend.
“An awful lot of people these days, particularly, I find, younger people, which is mighty depressing, believe that they should have the right not to be offended and that they should have the right to seal their ears to what is going on and not hear anything bad or critical or questioning about what they do or what their beliefs are.
“The right not to be offended is to me a tricky concept and I don’t applaud it at all. I feel yet again that it’s a retrograde step and to me that’s what the argument is about. And yet again it’s social media that is a big part of this and a big problem because of the ability of people to crucify you, basically, on the web.”
Surely in these troubled times, with faith in politicians and institutions at an all-time low, the time is right for a long-overdue return of the master manipulator Blackadder, perhaps as a shadowy figure concocting cunning plans in Trump’s White House or Brexit Britain.
Atkinson laughs at the thought, but swiftly dashes the hopes of fans eager to see the comedian once again collaborate with writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, not to mention Tony Robinson’s dazzlingly dim dogsbody Baldrick.
“Blackadder in the modern era I can absolutely see a role for him, but I think it highly unlikely that anything would ever happen,” he says. “I feel like Blackadder represented a rather happy comedy consensus between a number of creative individuals at a certain time in their lives and trying to repeat that chemistry and formula 30 years later is not straightforward. So on a practical level it’s unlikely.
“We have had a lot of ideas of him in environments like the Russian Revolution where he is the pawn in some high political game and of course we live in politically very unstable and destabilising times, so I can absolutely see a role for him somewhere.”
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