Friday 11 January 2013

James fucking Bond, part two

When I wrote about Judi Dench, as M, swearing in Skyfall, I had no idea she had previous in this field. Considerable previous. 



Thanks to Chris Coates, I can now share some of Dame Judi's extensive contributions to the UK swearing corpus.

One Both Mathew MacFadyen and Keira Knightley have watched her on set, embroidering swear words on cushions. You Are a Fucking Shit. You Are A Cunt. That kind of (fucking) thing.

Two She played the mother in David Hare's Amy's View at the National in 1997. Knowing the playwright was notoriously touchy about critics etc, she embroidered him a cushion. (Embroidery clearly photo-finishes with swearing in the Dench psyche.) It read: Fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em.

So . . . 

One JD is clearly something of an unrepentent JD.

Two Given that when JD swears in Skyfall, she's in a dark room looking down, my guess is she's now using her own embroidered cushions as secret cue-cards.