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In a new interview, Evanna Lynch discusses her play, Houdini, where she will be playing his wife. This is her first appearance on the stage, unless you count her 10 year old self in a school production. Some snippets from her chat with the Irish Post can be read below with the full story at their website.
“It’s the elements they combine, there’s amazing story, the drama, the tension between the brothers and Houdini’s wife. Plus, they’re doing all of the illusions, you know, they have some vanishing acts so it’s gonna be so visual but also a story.”
It was the story — and particularly the feisty, strong-willed character that is Bess — that attracted Lynch to the role in the first place. “He [Harry] called her his lucky charm and I think it’s so interesting to explore the minds of these people who were in the background, who were supporting these people who become our idols,” she says.
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So no apprehensions about the role then? “I guess I’m apprehensive about the casting of Harry (Jamie Nichols has since been cast in the role) because they [he and Bess] have such a unique relationship. They were inseparable,” says Evanna.
“They were two vagabonds just travelling around and they went to England and they went to Germany and it was just them and so to have that bond was so…” she pauses to look at her phone, which buzzes once more on her armchair. “I think it’s important like, obviously, not that I fall in love with this person, but just to feel [something]. Yeah. So I hope that goes welland I guess I’m nervous of going on tour,” she adds of the play set to tour across Britain from September, before finishing with a set of dates at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in October.What are your thoughts about the first night of the first live show, I ask. “Oh my gosh, yeah. I don’t know,” says Evanna. “I am nervous about that, but hopefully all the rehearsal will help ease those nerves because yesterday, for the auditions, I was watching auditions all day and then I had to get up and I WAS SO NERVOUS. I was freaking out. So I hope I can overcome thatand it won’t get in the way.”
Of one of her smaller roles, she states:
She has worked on a variety of film and television roles, most recently in G.B.F. [Gay Best Friend], a US high-school teen comedy where she played a homophobic evangelical Christian. “I had to kind of become a character who I disagreed with in every way,” she says of the part, “and I felt disgusted by some of the things she was saying, but I had to play her not as a caricature, [but] as someone who was 3D. I had to empathise with her.”
Did you choose that role because you felt a need to break from type? “Yes. I wanted to try something different. It was a chance to do an American accent [too]. And it was a very different genre. I’d never done comedy before.”
When talking about the transition from film to stage:
“Well, first of all, you’ve so much preparation time, which I enjoy. Forfilm, you have a few weeks to prepareand you also don’t get any rehearsal time. Whereas this gives us a chance, especially with acting real people who had existed before, who had who lived 20 years before this will be experienced. It would almost be an injustice to them not to explore, not to give a lot of time and a few intense weeks of thought and exploration to discover their characters.”
She feels the experience gained as a teen actress has put her in good stead to face the world as an actress, without having been through formal drama training. “There are directors, like I remember David Yates [Harry Potter director], I’d ask him, ‘Should I be training?’” she says. “And he’d answer, ‘I want you to keep your sense of wonder and freshness and to not walk in a room and feel like you know everything.’”
Filed Under: Evanna Lynch |
