I recently read that it took Jim Carrey more than eight hours in hair and make-up to transform into the title role for . In order to cope, he was taught special mind techniques by a former CIA operative on how to withstand torture. It’s led me to wonder what Zen training Sir Kenneth Branagh went through to become in , the new Sky drama about the early stage of the government’s Covid response.
I’ve been astonished by the photos of him on set: the posture, the hair, the beaky nose and the basset-hound-like cheeks are uncanny. Boris, meanwhile, is looking all the more hangdog now. I always thought it would come to this: people would realise who he really is.
He’s never exactly been the commitment type – except in this case, his reluctance to leave did seem a bit ‘let’s storm the Capitol, chaps’. I’ll confess I’ve also been thinking about what the rest of the cast have gone through in order to look the part, particularly Greta Bellamacina, the actress playing the prime minister’s deputy chief of staff: me, as I then was. When news of the production was announced, breathlessly included the detail that Greta, 31, is a model as well as an actress.
Imagine finding out that a muse for fashion brand The Vampire’s Wife is going to play you on screen. Extremely satisfactory. , meanwhile, has described her as a ‘cultural Trojan horse’.
That’s all very well, but can she be an ‘elegant gazelle’? That is how I was described by the press in my final year at N.