A tentative smile spreads across Eddie Redmayne’s face. “Anxiety is something that drives me,” he says quietly. “It has for a long time. Ultimately, I think, you only live once. If it’s a catastrophe, I got to play a part that always felt unfinished in me. If I don’t do it, then perhaps I will just live with regret.”

We are sitting in the gilded splendor of Fischer’s, a restaurant specializing in Austrian food in the Marylebone area of London, discussing Redmayne’s bold decision to return to the stage as the charismatic and mysterious Emcee in Cabaret. (Redmayne was last seen onstage 10 years ago, as Shakespeare’s Richard II; before that he starred in Red, as the fictional assistant of Mark Rothko, winning a Tony.) He’s chosen the restaurant because he likes the area—only when we order schnitzel and cucumber salad does he realize what an appropriate setting it is to talk about Berlin in 1929.

When Cabaret opens in London in November, it will be the second time Redmayne has played this part. He first gave it a go at 19, in a student production at the Edinburgh Fringe festival just after he left Eton. It was staged in a grotty, run-down venue called Underbelly. “I didn’t really see daylight, and became quite skeletal, and I remember finding it thrilling.” Fast-forward 20 years and that excitement is still there. So is Underbelly, which, under the guidance of its founders, Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood, has morphed into an influential producing company that hosts festivals in London and Edinburgh and has produced hit shows. It was Bartlam who approached Redmayne to play the part again; Redmayne then asked Jessie Buckley, star of Wild Rose and Judy, whether she’d like to take on Sally Bowles, the singer whose story gives Cabaret its heart. “Jessie has this extraordinary spirit and an anarchic quality,” he says.

“It was a kind of no-brainer,” explains Buckley over Zoom from Toronto, where she has been filming Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. “I feel it’s like a blank canvas, a chance to go back to the theater and fall in love, which I haven’t done since my first job”—when she was cast in Trevor Nunn’s production of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Playing Sally, Buckley will be able to draw on her own experience as a young singer, fresh from Kerry in Ireland, when she worked in London’s Annabel’s nightclub. “It was so far away from where I grew up,” she says, “a world of secrets.” Buckley is an enthusiast, full of energy and commitment. “For Eddie it’s a passion project, and I was delighted he thought of me,” she says, smiling broadly.

Eddie Redmayne attends the after show party for the Alexander McQueen SS22 Womenswear Show at The Standard on October 12, 2021 in London. You can go to the gallery and enjoy the photos.

Strictly Come Dancing judge Motsi Mabuse is leading the line-up for the Friday, October 22 edition of The Graham Norton Show.

Motsi will be joining Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne and Chernobyl actress Jessie Buckley, who will be on the sofa promoting their new West End musical Cabaret.

The new production of Cabaret, which opens next month at the Playhouse Theatre in London, is described as an “immersive” experience where the play is performed in the round for guests, with the theatre transformed into the Kit Kat Club. [Source]

Eddie Redmayne attends the ATG Summer Party hosted by Ambassador Theatre Group CEO Mark Cornell and Sienna Miller in support of Sir Sam Mendes and his Theatre Artists Fund at Kensington Palace on September 6, 2021 in London. You can go to the gallery to take a look to the photos.

Eddie Redmayne attended day 9 of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 07, 2021 in London. You can go to the gallery and enjoy the photos!

The prestige project represents an edgy departure for the Russos’ company AGBO Films.

Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne is attached to star in the untitled Cambridge Analytica movie for Joe and Anthony Russo’s company AGBO Films, which is in talks with two-time Oscar winner Peter Farrelly to direct, Collider has exclusively learned.

A representative for AGBO had no comment.

Avengers: Endgame scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote the script, and the project is financed and ready to go into production, though just like last year when we reported that Matt Shakman was in talks to direct, it’s still anyone’s guess as to when that will actually be. The project was initially slated to be directed by David Gordon Green.

Redmayne is poised to play Christopher Wylie, the pink-haired data consultant who hatched the idea of Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that illegally harvested the personal data of 87 million Facebook users in order to influence Donald Trump’s presidential victory and the Brexit vote. Wylie’s guilty conscience led him to become a whistleblower and tell his story, both in court and in the press, and it was an article in The Guardian by Carole Cadwalladr that was acquired by AGBO and serves as the catalyst for this project.

Eddie Redmayne will return to London theatre, for his first West End role in 10 years, to play the Emcee in Cabaret opposite Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles. An intimate revival of the classic musical is set to recreate the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club for an audience capped at 550 from this November.

The show will be designed by Tom Scutt, choreographed by Julia Cheng and directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose acclaimed Almeida production of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke transferred to the West End in 2018.

Frecknall said Cabaret had always been “dear to my heart”, and that she was in awe of her creative team, “who have come together to create a bold new production as well as a new Kit Kat Club, a bespoke home where we can truly embrace and unlock the world of Cabaret for a new audience”.

The show – which charts the friendship between Sally, an American performer at the riotous Kit Kat, and a shy Brit, Brian – is set against the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Berlin and unflinchingly depicts antisemitism and persecution. Frecknall said it was an important musical and that its revival comes “at a time when its themes and atmosphere feel so contemporary and resonant”.

With music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Joe Masteroff, Cabaret is based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood. It opened on Broadway in 1966 and won eight Tony awards; the 1972 film version picked up the same number of Oscars. Joel Grey played the lascivious Emcee both on stage and screen, performing in the musical numbers that interlink the drama. Grey told the Guardian last year that Cabaret took on a “heinous and terrifying subject: the Holocaust” at a time when “there were a lot of people who just wanted to forget about it. They tried to write it out of textbooks.”

Redmayne first played the Emcee 20 years ago in an Edinburgh fringe production. His last West End roles were in Red (in 2009), as the assistant of painter Mark Rothko (played by Alfred Molina), and as Shakespeare’s Richard II (in 2011), both of which were staged at the Donmar Warehouse. Buckley was recently acclaimed for her performance in a film version of Romeo and Juliet shot at the National Theatre. [Source]

The production is expected to begin performances at Playhouse Theatre in November 2021.

According to Baz Bamigboye of The Daily Mail, Kander and Ebb’s classic musical Cabaret is headed back to the West End stage in an all-new production.

According to the report, Academy Award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne and BAFTA nominee Jessie Buckley are currently in final talks to portray the Emcee and Sally Bowles, respectively.

The production is expected to begin performances at Playhouse Theatre in November 2021.

Two-time BAFTA nominee Jessie Buckley was most recently seen in the National Theatre film production of Romeo and Juliet. Buckley first rose to recognition as a finalist on the Oliver! reality competition series, I’d Do Anything. She has been seen on the West End in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Her notable screen credits include Chernobyl, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and Fargo. Her film roles include Beast and Wild Rose.

On Broadway, Redmayne co-starred with Alfred Molina in the award-winning John Logan play RED for which he took home a Tony Award for Featured Actor in a Play in 2010. He originated the role at the Donmar Warehouse in London where he won the coveted Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor. His film work includes the Les Miserables, Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Danish Girl, and The Theory of Everything, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Cabaret features some of the best-known songs in musical theatre, including “Willkommen,” “Maybe This Time” and “Cabaret.”

The musical premiered on Broadway in 1966 and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in addition to the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Outer Critics’ Circle Award, the Variety Poll of New York Critics, and London’s Evening Standard Award. [Source]

Instead of congregating on the stage of Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium for their best-ensemble win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the cast of “The Trial of the Chicago 7” called in on Zoom.

For a video conference, they make a starry bunch. Logging in from around the world were Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance, John Carroll Lynch, Ben Shankman and other members of Aaron Sorkin’s historical courtroom drama.

After winning the guild’s top honor, the cast spoke briefly with The Associated Press in an interview recorded Thursday before Sunday’s broadcast of the pre-taped awards. Here, slightly edited for clarity, are their remarks.

AP: You’re an especially varied group of actors with quite different styles and approaches. How did you coalesce as an ensemble?

EDDIE REDMAYNE: A lot of credit has to be given to Francine Maisler, who was our casting director. All of the characters represented in the film were so unique and so specific. I think she collected a group of actors who had completely different styles and completely different outlooks on the way to approach work. For me, what I loved when I got to see a cut of the movie was that you saw that. It was like a clash of different types of music, whether it was jazz or rock or classical — but all of that coming together under Aaron. He was the conductor, almost. So I give Aaron and Francine a huge amount of credit. It was a joy day-and-day-out to watch these great and different and varied actors slugging it out.

FRANK LANGELLA: There is something very powerful about working toward the greater good. Actors have a tendency to think about themselves a lot. How’s my lighting? Am I going to get my close-in my scene? But as I said in my speech, Aaron rose above that and caused all of us to do that.

JOHN CARROLL LYNCH: When you take a job in a movie called “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” there’s an assumption that it’s going to be an ensemble picture. It’s a self-selecting group of people who want to work with others so intimately and being willing to risk their own process in such quarters. It is a tribute to the casting and to Aaron’s script but also to the actors who said “yes.”

I have added 2 new photoshoots from 2021 of Eddie Redmayne to the gallery so, you can go there to take a look to the photos and enjoy!