PASADENA, Calif. _ Every newly minted actor dreams of playing Shakespeare. But Laurie Davidson realized that dream in spades. No, he's not playing Romeo or Berowne or even Puck. Davidson is actually playing Shakespeare in TNT's new series, "Will," premiering next Monday.
As envisioned by writer Craig Pearce and director Shekhar Kapur, this is a jazzy version of the 20-something Shakespeare as he pounces on London and prepares to take on the town.
Davidson was still in drama school when he landed the part after six auditions. But he says he performed several roles from the Bard as a student. "I've grown up with it, and I have seen, living in London, a lot of his plays. So having that love for Shakespeare, when this job came along, it was, like, incredible," he says.
"And as a first job, it's been brilliant. I've been so looked after. And just getting that screen time it's been amazing. And to get to play someone like William Shakespeare, someone I've grown up reading, doing his plays in my training, that's been amazing."
This is not your father's Shakespeare, says Davidson. "We have to remember we are seeing him before everything we know about this guy. We've had 400 years in our minds to go, 'He was this great, this person, this literary genius.' But we are seeing him right at the beginning of that story where he doesn't even know himself or where it's going to end up. So I think, in that way, it has to be a very different person from the history books."
In fact, the history books are lacking says Pearce, a longtime writing partner with fellow Australian Baz Luhrmann. "So little is known about this most famous person, He's the most famous person in the world that no one really knows anything about except for a few facts. And then beyond that, there's a lot of speculation," says Pearce.
"There's not one letter, not one personal diary entry written by him that survived. So all we have is his vast body of work. And it's a little bit like the Bible. You read into that work what you want to read into it because, really, he wrote about everything. In the beginning ... he was just struggling to find who he was and to find his voice like so many of us today."
Pearce has been developing this undertaking for 10 years. "And I did an enormous amount of research," he says. "And we all did as we joined the project. And I don't think there's anything in terms of what happens to Shakespeare in the show that an historian could point to and say, 'That absolutely DIDN'T happen.' So we've stuck within the broad parameters of the history and then made imaginative leaps from what we do know."
"History is always interpretation," adds Kapur, known best for his two films about the first Queen Elizabeth. "If you cannot take history and interpret it to our modern times, it has no relevance," he says.
"So you have to each time history is created, it's interpreted for that generation, for that moment. So we've taken Shakespeare, whatever we know, and interpreted it for us, for this generation and now."
The series is punctuated by a clamorous display of modern music. That's on purpose, says Pearce. "Theater back then, it was like rock 'n' roll or punk rock. It was a completely revolutionary form of popular entertainment. It wasn't something for the intellectuals. It wasn't something up on a pedestal. It was something for the masses, and it was being created really, really rapidly and evolving.
"So you went to a theater. You were eating. You were drinking. Some people were fornicating. And if they loved it, if the audience loved it, they would cheer and be so passionate about it. If they didn't like it, they would burn the place down, and they would riot," he says.
"So it's much closer to our perception of rock 'n' roll, to what rock 'n' roll is today and _especially what it was when it burst on the scene 50 years ago _ than what our conception is of theater today. In theater today, you go, and you are polite, and you sit down. And if you don't like it, you just b_ at interval."
Davidson sees Shakespeare and his playwright rival Christopher Marlowe as the rock stars of their era. " ... If you look at the rock icons of the '70s punk world, people like Mick Jagger, people like David Bowie ... (Marlowe and Shakespeare) were the rock stars that girls would queue for blocks to see these iconic figures."
ACTOR SIDESTEPS THE PIGEONHOLE
From Mozart to Musketeer to a tech mogul, actor Santiago Cabrera doesn't need to worry about typecasting. In his latest role he plays a tech superstar who discovers an asteroid is on a collision course with the Earth in CBS' "Salvation," premiering July 12. Portraying diverse characters is nothing new to him, Cabrera says.
"I went to drama school thinking I wanted to do comedy and you come out wanting to be Marlon Brando. They put something else into you. It was a great discovery, a whole new world, so it made sense from the get-go. I felt very lucky to have found something at such a young age."
HOME SHOW SEEKING VOLUNTEERS
Are you dying to update your den? Do you wish you could do more living in your living room? Is there no room for the bed in the bedroom? Here's your chance to change that. TLC's "Trading Spaces" is returning to the air and looking for candidates who long to have a room in their home spruced up by the pros. The hitch is you have to do this in consort with a neighbor. Each of you hands over your house keys and you have no say in how they re-do your room. You like farmhouse frills? They may give you Pennsylvania Dutch. To apply, slip on over to tlc.com/casting for a chance to be part of the show set to air sometime next year.
MEDICAL DRAMA JOINS THE MILITIA
NBC's "Night Shift," is back in its ward and this season it's definitely got a red, white, and blue streak. "We're sort of just doubling down on what we do and what we like," says one of the show's executive producers, Jeff Judah.
"We like the military. We like the V.A. We're bringing in more military stories. Our hospital is going to merge a little bit with the V.A., so we're going to be able to tell veteran stories every week, in every episode. We're going to do an episode this year that will later in the season _ it will be written by a veteran, directed by a veteran, and all of the guest roles _ every speaking role besides the regular cast will be played by a veteran, Army or Navy, or military veteran."
