Its one of the fantastic stories from Shakespere Re Told - It is of course the wonderful and funny Much a Do about Nothing from 2005, where Damian plays the arrogant and sometimes not very nice Benadict, alongside the beautiful Sarah Parish.
Tensions mount in the TV studio when a take-charge anchor (Sarah Parish) is reunited with a man she has a "history” with (Damian Lewis)
Below is a fabulous interview with Damian Lewis about the short film
Damian regards Much Ado About Nothing as the most modern of the Bard's comedies.
"There's no conjuring of ghosts or spirits, no one goes into a metaphorical wood to be transformed," he explains.
"It's about two people living on their wits who have blocked off the idea of love in their lives, without knowing that the perfect person for them is each other – there's a rich comic vein in it."
The 34-year-old star of, among others, Band Of Brothers, Colditz, The Forsyte Saga, Hearts And Bones (in which he also worked with Sarah Parish) and the recent Chromophobia, adds: "In Benedick, I enjoy his childishness and his immaturity; the unreconstructed nature of him and then his transformation just through love – through the strength of his feelings for this woman, once he understands what's going on in his heart and mind.
"The conceit in Benedick is terrific because his vanity never leaves him fully," smiles the softly-spoken Old Etonian.
"Once he is led to believe that [Beatrice] loves him, only at that point is it possible for him to love, so he needs a little prodding.
think there are wonderful parallels with modern living – the way people have become. In the pursuit of careers, men and women, nowadays particularly, have often blocked themselves off to committed relationships in pursuit of their careers or in pursuit of some spurious notion of independence and, in doing so, can harden themselves unwittingly; harden themselves more than they think they are to the idea of love and a relationship with someone else.
"Often it's very typical that it happens in the mid-thirties, and I'm coming into my mid-thirties and so it felt relevant."
He was enchanted by what he describes as writer David Nicholls' "lovely wit and sense of comedy timing" and his appetite for research took him to the BBC's regional newsroom in London.
"What struck me was that nothing seems to happen until three or four minutes before you actually go on air," he muses.
"Then suddenly everyone is there – the presenters, the make-up artists – and it's a flurry of activity. It all comes together very quickly at the last minute."
Even though this version of Much Ado sets Shakespeare in the modern day, Damian believes there still remains a fairytale element.
"It's just the transforming power of love, so that what we see in Benedick and Beatrice are these two hard-bitten, rather cynical, self-involved, thirty-something news presenters, whose lives haven't quite gone the way they both anticipated," he declares.
"With a simple dramatic conceit, which is simply a bunch of friends duping our two heroes - fooling them into believing that the other person absolutely loves them – they just accept that.
"If you allow the fairytale elements of the story to work at that point, it's absolutely delightful to see their faces soften and open, and allow the possibility of this other person loving them into their world."
He continues: "Where a huge amount of the comedy comes from is that Benedick, at that point, resolves to love Beatrice without any reservations because she loves him.
Once under Beatrice's spell, "he behaves in a charmingly childish way, in a totally endearing way, because he becomes like a giddy teenager in love... I think there's nothing more lovely than seeing friends of yours just become gooey with love and I think that's what happens to Benedick.
"He scampers around after her trying to do the right thing; he changes his hair, he gets better clothes - all that sort of stuff, because he wants to please her."
"I love working with Sarah Parish; I think she's a fantastic actress," he declares. "We had a great cast around us and there was a lot of laughter.
"There's a particular scene where I try to get in shape once I think that Beatrice loves me and Benedick gets a rubber ball into his dressing room and tries to do sit-ups on it.
"We found it very difficult to get through that scene without laughing, and Sarah kept opening the door to see me sweating there on the rubber ball!"
.jpg)
