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Emma Thompson on Smartless

58:26 recording · EN · 4 speakers

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Brief overview

Emma Thompson talks fame, craft and a theatre childhood in a loose, funny SmartLess conversation.

  1. Comedy came first, Jane Austen came laterFootlights revue and one filthy sketch led straight to the Sense and Sensibility screenplay.
  2. Children are the sacred audienceFilms made for young people have to be the best work, she says, because children don't lie.
  3. Managing boredom is a lost skillThompson and the hosts agree boredom feeds imagination, and that a whole generation never sits with it.
Executive Summary AI
  • The hosts introduce Emma Thompson as a winner of two Golden Globes and two Academy Awards from five nominations, and the only artist so far to have won an Academy Award for both acting and screenwriting.5:00
  • She joins from her North London office in a 35-degree heatwave, with no air conditioning in British homes or theatres, and jokes that the national method for coping is to lie face down on the pavement.8:38
  • On fame she says nobody notices her on the tube, she would never refuse a child a photograph, and she recalls a woman in Harry's Bar in Venice who was delighted to see her because she believed Thompson had sold her shoes on the fifth floor at Barney's.17:08
  • She did years of Footlights revue at Cambridge with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and intended to be a comedian, admiring Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner.20:53
  • A feminist sketch she wrote about a bride's sexual ignorance prompted producer Lindsay Duran to ask whether she fancied adapting a Jane Austen novel, which became her Sense and Sensibility screenplay.46:09
Key Quote
“The Oscars are in the lavatory because that just keeps them in their place.”
— Emma Thompson6:58
Key Quote
“You just lie face down on the pavement, panting.”
— Emma Thompson10:24
Key Quote
“You go first and hope that your instincts are right.”
— Emma Thompson23:42