Silly Billy: the Horrible Histories team take Shakespeare to the movies
By Jenny McCartney for The Guardian, 13 September 2015
“When you’re pitching stuff,” says Ben Willbond, pulling a narrow, inquisitorial face, “they ask, ‘Who is it for?’ They tell you, ‘We’re looking for comedies that are for people between 16 and 18.’” He relaxes his expression. “Well, good luck with that! We’ve gone for stuff that makes us laugh.”
Willbond is talking about Bill, the film caper he has co-written about the “lost years” of William Shakespeare. “In the back of my mind,” he adds, “I’m also going, ‘Would my nephew laugh at that? Would my grandad?’”
Bill, I suggest , feels like that increasingly rare thing, a “family comedy”, packed as it is with cheeky quips, enjoyable grotesques and countless historical liberties, all tied up in a merrily improbable plot. “I’m so glad you said that,” replies Willbond, who also stars in the film, playing a power-hungry King Philip II of Spain, on a flamboyant mission to murder Elizabeth I.
Mathew Baynton interview: The Yonderland star on becoming a young Shakespeare – and why his clowning career was almost over before it began
By Holly Williams for the Independent, 13 September 2015
To be or not to be William Shakespeare? It wasn’t a hard question for actor Mathew Baynton to answer – especially as his take on the Bard is rather, well, irreverent. Bill is a new film made by and starring the Horrible Histories gang, who give the early life of Shakespeare their surreally comic signature treatment. Just don’t call it a kids’ film…
“I did start looking at the absolute mountain of possible research you could do on Shakespeare, and then I thought it was ridiculous for so many reasons,” laughs the 34-year-old. “It’s a farcical comedy! It starts with Shakespeare in a band called Mortal Coil, so I had to check my actor’s pretensions.” For a man best known for writing and starring in comedy-drama The Wrong Mans with James Corden, as well as the children’s show Horrible Histories, pretension isn’t what comes to mind when you think of Baynton – and his latest projects see him continue to walk that line between daftness and pathos: as well as Bill, he’s soon to be seen in Sky’s comic end-of-the-world drama You, Me and the Apocalypse.
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