Helen Mirren is this week’s Radio Times cover star
To play Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, Helen Mirren had to ditch the glamour – but how does she feel about the reaction to her casting?
Dame Helen Mirren is without question one of the greatest actors this country has ever produced.
Even at a still-youthful 78, the parts she is offered seem to get better and better. Following the success of the film Barbie, which she narrated, we talk to her about her latest movie, Golda, playing Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister during the Yom Kippur War.
It’s a role that she said yes to immediately because, as she explains, she had fallen in love with the country as a young woman, when she lived and worked on a kibbutz.
There have, of course, been many questions raised about why Mirren is playing such a high-profile Jewish woman as Golda Meir; questions that she and Meir’s grandson answer in an interview in this issue.
The subject of controversy brings us to The Reckoning, which for many reasons is possibly the most challenging drama ever to be shown on the BBC. Its subject is the downfall of serial sex abuser Jimmy Savile, which isn’t a name we expected to be printing in RT again.
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We talk to Jeff Pope and Neil McKay, the drama’s producer and writer respectively, to find out from them how and why they have brought this story to our screens.
The Reckoning will doubtless raise many questions among viewers and the press – read what they have to say and make up your own minds.
Also in this week’s Radio Times:
- Julian Clary discusses viewing the news as entertainment, why cancel culture is nothing new and communicating with Paul O’Grady from beyond the grave
- Stephen Mangan chats about the "daunting" experience of replacing Richard Osman on Pointless, celebrity portrait subjects and Joan Bakewell’s inside track on House of Lords gossip
- Morven Christie on her decision to join the cast of tartan-noir Payback being influenced by the participation of Peter Mullan and Jed Mercurio
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