Sir Derek Jacobi: Why I loved working with Sally Wainwright on Last Tango in Halifax

Sir Derek Jacobi has had a stellar career on stage and screen but tells Phil Penfold he hates ‘showing off’. At 86 has no plans to stop acting and says he would love to do more Last Tango in Halifax.

Sir Derek Jacobi is one of the most unpretentious people you will meet. In fact, he hates being addressed by that title (the Queen knighted him 30 years ago). Sir Derek is 86, and still working – as his appearance as Senator Gracchus in the new film Gladiator II proves. He reprises the role from the original of 2000.

His motivation is the same today as it was when he started in the business in his late teens.

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“I do it because I do it, to fulfil myself and to enjoy myself – and my life – to the full. In fact, there’s nothing else that I can do…..I have no other training, nothing else to fall back on. I have a craving, an absolute need, to act.”

Anne Reid as Celia and Derek Jacobi in the BBC One drama , Last Tango In HalifaxAnne Reid as Celia and Derek Jacobi in the BBC One drama , Last Tango In Halifax
Anne Reid as Celia and Derek Jacobi in the BBC One drama , Last Tango In Halifax

He is completely unassuming, grand entrances are not his style. When I meet him he’s wearing a beautifully cut suit, in grey and with a slight check to it, a neat tie, and shoes that are highly polished.

Sir Derek has always been a “company man”. He enjoys being “absorbed into the family” of cast and crew.

That is as relevant to being part of hit drama series Last Tango in Halifax as it was to being part of the RSC, The National Theatre (of which he was a founder member, in the days of Sir Laurence Olivier), or Birmingham Rep – where he first made his mark.

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“Theatre has always been my family,” he says, “I hate showing off, and I do not need approval. I have never felt at ease being applauded, taking the solo curtain. I do not relish it. I have always been, and will be, only a cog in the wheel of a production.”

Sir Derek Jacobi. (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images)Sir Derek Jacobi. (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images)
Sir Derek Jacobi. (Photo by Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images)

And yet, he has often been almost the only reason why so many people have packed theatres.

He had triumphs at the Crucible in Sheffield, for example, with productions of Schiller’s notoriously difficult Don Carlos and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where he was a Prospero who was both mesmerising and imposing.

“I loved Sheffield,” he recalls, “the audiences were so welcoming.”

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Other stage performances have included Hamlet, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Bletchley Park mathematician Alan Turing in Breaking the Code, Richard II and Richard III, Kean, Becket, and Uncle Vanya.

And then there’s his television work, which began with I, Claudius, in 1976, Cadfael, The Crown, The Gathering Storm and, of course, Sally Wainwright’s Last Tango in Halifax, where he played Alan to Anne Reid’s Celia.

They were an elderly couple, both widowed, who had fallen in love in their teens, married other partners, and who were re-united when their grandchildren urged them to join Facebook. It was acclaimed as a testament to the power of love – at any age.

There were 24 episodes over five series, and it ended, many thought, rather abruptly in 2020. “That was it,” says Derek a little sadly. “Our wonderful writer Sally Wainwright had other things to develop, and she’s an incredibly busy woman.

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"Is that it, and forever? Well, maybe not, there is still some hope that there could be a little more. Watch this space, as they say – I’d certainly say yes, should an offer come.

"I adored working on Last Tango, another wonderful example of being with ‘family’ in every sense, both the fictional families that Sally created, and the one that we all had on and off screen, both cast and crew. I can’t remember a single cross word. Truly.

"Sally writes with such passion, such truth, and from personal experience – it was such a pleasure, playing Alan. He wasn’t a stereotype, in any way, he was, well, a ordinary bloke.”

Derek was “discovered” in his late teens, in a student production at the Edinburgh Festival, and he was then invited to join The Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He never looked back.

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He vividly remembers the night when, after a performance of Henry VIII (he was playing the title role, padded and wigged and fully facially-haired) he had removed all the make-up and had changed back into his normal clothing, and was just about to leave the dressing room which he shared with the actor playing Cardinal Wolsey, “when the door opened, and a famous face revealed itself. Sir Laurence (Olivier)".

"He was full of praise for Wolsey, telling him how wonderfully he’d played the part. That was it – he said ‘Goodnight,’ and the door closed. Someone must have said something to him on the stairs outside, and suddenly, the door burst open again.

"He just looked at me, pointed, and said ‘You were Henry? Quite amazing’.”

It was the start of a long association between the acting legend and the young performer.

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Sir Derek tells a constant flow of stories in which he puts himself down.

He offers the occasion when he was Laertes to Peter O’Toole’s Hamlet, and had his 25th birthday on the first night. There was a party after that performance, but not for Derek, for the production.

“I was going around, being a bit of a nuisance, thinking that my very special day had been forgotten. Then someone called for a bit of hush, the band struck up the music to Happy Birthday To You, and out came the lady to sing it. Can you believe that it was Shirley Bassey.”

He says that that notorious production (there were nights when O’Toole was drunk on stage) was a classic example of his belief that it has always been luck, “being in the right place at the right time”, that has sustained his career.

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“Olivier had originally offered Laertes to Jeremy Brett, who was then offered the role of Freddie in the movie version of My Fair Lady, in Hollywood. Off he went, and I was next in line.

"Same with I, Claudius. I wasn’t the first choice – they really wanted Ronnie Barker. He turned it down flat. It was then that I got the opportunity. You see – luck. There are plenty of other examples.”

He doesn’t tell you that in the original script, there would be two actors playing Claudius. Charlton Heston was offered the older Emperor, and Barker was to be the younger. More luck for Derek, in that someone changed their mind about the script.

He still marvels that all the 615 minutes of the complete Claudius were filmed in studio, with not a single outdoor shot.

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“The result was that all we actors went for it in an electrifying, theatrical way.”

He is superbly self-deprecating. He calls himself, “A bit of a loner – not in a sad way – but I really don’t mind my own company.”

He believes that his days of live performance in a play are now over, and says that his extraordinary and legendary ability to learn and retain lines is not what it was.

“Movies make you rich,” he says, “TV makes you known, but theatre is what it is all about.”

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The shelves in his London home must be groaning with all the awards he has won, and the walls crammed with the many framed citations and printed plaudits. But his latest, he’s proud to say, “has a practicality and a use.” He’s just become the owner of the prestigious Critic’s Circle rose bowl, given annually for Services to the Arts.

“Wonderful,” he sighs, with evident pleasure. “So very kind. Something at last which I can fill with all the roses from my garden!” Simple pleasures are, obviously, the greatest things of all for Sir Derek Jacobi.

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