Judi Dench "wants to carry on" amid sight issues as British acting legend investigates her family history with Shakespeare

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

When Dame Judi Dench tries to teach her recalcitrant African grey parrot, Sweetie, the name of her literary hero, she’s met with stony silence. “Shakespeare!” the Oscar-winning actress coos, before sighing. “It would be wonderful if you said it!”

The parrot has other ideas. “I was with my nephew and suddenly she said, ‘Drop your trousers. You’re a slag’. It’s very rude! She didn’t get that from me!” she laughs. However, while Dench has no luck with her pet bird, she hopes to reap more rewards in an intimate documentary on her passion for Britain’s famous man of letters and the possibility of uncovering an ancient family connection.

During Channel 4’s Shakespeare, My Family and Me, she examines new evidence about the life of her eight times great-grandfather, the nobleman Anders Bille, who was a member of the Danish royal court in the 17th century and whom she first discovered during a 2021 episode of the BBC series, Who Do You Think You Are?

Ideally, Dame Judi would like to find out whether Bille ever met the Bard, which – if true – would be an incredible discovery given the profound influence he has had on her own life, both professionally and personally. Her late husband, Michael Williams, who performed at the Royal Shakespeare Company himself, famously called the wordsmith “the man who pays the rent” and Dench even has a tree in her garden dedicated to him.

Dame Judi’s passion for the writer began in childhood and today, she says, the rhythm of his language is in her blood. She has played most of his female roles, from Ophelia in Hamlet to Lady Macbeth and ruefully admits: “I can’t remember what I’m doing the day after tomorrow or the day after that, but I can remember reams of Shakespeare”. Indeed, in the documentary, there are spine-tingling moments when she fluently recites passages from his plays.

“She’s in the library in Denmark and does a soliloquy from Antony and Cleopatra,” exclaims director Harvey Lilley. “It’s spontaneous, unrehearsed. She hasn’t been in Antony and Cleopatra since 1987! We had no idea that was coming. She has this love of Shakespeare. It’s the language, the rhythm. For her, it’s not an ancient language. It’s something completely natural.”

Dame Judi searches through the Danish archives to find out whether her ancestor may have met the playwright in 1606, just a year after the Gunpowder Plot and as plague returned to England – but also, adds Lilley, the year “Macbeth and King Lear may have been performed for the first time and possibly when Antony and Cleopatra was being written.”

Lilley, who directed the episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in which Dame Judi’s Danish roots were first discovered, continues: “You have this detective story, which is astonishing in itself – did her ancestor actually meet her hero? But this also allowed her to talk about her life and her relationship with Shakespeare.”

The director has a long history of working with Dame Judi, including on My Passion for Trees in 2017 and Wild Borneo Adventure in 2019. “We hoisted her up a tree twice the size of Nelson’s Column. She’s just up for it!” he says. But clearly there’s also a level of trust between them.

In the documentary she touches on the deterioration of her vision due to age-related macular degeneration. “As you see in the film, she’s determined,” says Lilley. “She has a fear of boredom. Yes, her eyesight is an issue, but moving forward she wants to do stuff, and she wants to carry on. She makes it easy because she’s such an enthusiast.”

The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here.

Shakespeare, My Family & Me will be available to watch on Channel 4.

Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.