MY DEAR WATSON: Martin Freeman recently starred in BBC One's Sherlock Photo: Rex
It must be tiring being Martin Freeman. As we speak, he’s lining up a trip to Spain. “I’m backwards and forwards from Barcelona,” he says, with a contented sort of sigh. It’s for a feature film called Animals, he says; a half-English, half-Spanish fantasy with a mostly unknown cast, made by a young Catalan director whose best-known work is a BBC Three pilot that never became a series (The Things I Haven’t Told You). Offbeat? A bit. “It has a very beautiful script,” he adds quickly.
These days, Freeman can afford to be picky. At 39, he’s enjoying a career renaissance. He’s just been in the most talked about TV drama of the year: BBC One’s Sherlock, playing Dr Watson. His name has even been linked to the star role in what could be the most expensive movie ever made (of which more later)
The Unfortunates is about as far from mainstream as you can get: a 1960s experimental novel; cult in its day but now rarely read; written in stream-of-consciousness by a man once described as “the most important young English novelist now writing” but who is, today, largely forgotten. Oh, and originally published as a book-in-a-box, with unbound chapters to be read at random.
“I just thought it was an interesting idea,” says Freeman. “I hadn’t heard of the book before. Or of BS Johnson. But I liked the idea of a book being published in no particular order, and of applying that to a radio version.” The book’s shapelessness has been played up in an intriguing way. “They did it like an FA Cup draw,” he explains. “They put the chapters on little wooden balls and then drew them out [one by one] to get a random result.”
The other thing that should be said about The Unfortunates is that its hero is typically Freeman; that is, meat-and-two-veg ordinary: downbeat, humdrum. Playing the English Everyman is Freeman’s shtick. He rose to stardom doing it in The Office (2001-03) as Tim, and has flirted with it in subsequent roles, such as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005).
Hits have been thin on the ground since The Office – though Freeman has often insisted that his best roles have been the rarely seen ones, such as BBC Two’s 2005 comedy The Robinsons. But then came Sherlock, where he was brilliant as a modern-day, war-scarred Watson, ironing the starch out of Benedict Cumberbatch’s sociopathic Holmes. And even stealing the show, according to some.
Freeman says he was “taken aback” by the programme’s success (it had more than 7 million viewers and critics hollered its praises), but thinks it deserves the accolades. “It’s the best British thing that’s been on telly in ages,” he says. “Quality will out, if that doesn’t sound too arrogant. But why should I sound arrogant? I didn’t write it. I just think it was undeniably good.”
Ironically, though, Sherlock also presented him with a career-defining dilemma. His commitment to the filming dates for series two (due to be screened next year) meant that he had to decline the plummiest of movie roles: that of Bilbo Baggins in the much-delayed big screen version of The Hobbit, reportedly to be directed by Lord of the Rings supremo Peter Jackson, with a record-breaking £315 m budget.
Freeman says he turned down Bilbo “with a heavy heart”, but still hopes there might be a way of resurrecting the part, dates permitting. “If something could be worked out, that would be great,” he says.
But, then again, he’s also a famously unstarry actor who has spent most of his post-Office career eschewing the bright lights of LA. He has admitted being “freaked out” by his first trip to Hollywood six years ago (to promote The Office) and recently described red carpet events as “four hours of my life lost”. Could he really handle being the star of potentially the biggest film ever?
He mulls this for a second. “Well,” he says, “for a start, it wouldn’t be in Hollywood [New Zealand is the likely location]. And I think Peter gives Hollywood a fairly wide berth himself. So it wouldn’t be all that Hollywoody.
“And anyway, I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to say that I wouldn’t do anything Hollywoody.” He pauses. “It’s just that I’m more of an Englishman, really, than a Hollywood man.”
MY DEAR WATSON: Martin Freeman recently starred in BBC One's Sherlock Photo: Rex
It must be tiring being Martin Freeman. As we speak, he’s lining up a trip to Spain. “I’m backwards and forwards from Barcelona,” he says, with a contented sort of sigh. It’s for a feature film called Animals, he says; a half-English, half-Spanish fantasy with a mostly unknown cast, made by a young Catalan director whose best-known work is a BBC Three pilot that never became a series (The Things I Haven’t Told You). Offbeat? A bit. “It has a very beautiful script,” he adds quickly.
These days, Freeman can afford to be picky. At 39, he’s enjoying a career renaissance. He’s just been in the most talked about TV drama of the year: BBC One’s Sherlock, playing Dr Watson. His name has even been linked to the star role in what could be the most expensive movie ever made (of which more later)
The Unfortunates is about as far from mainstream as you can get: a 1960s experimental novel; cult in its day but now rarely read; written in stream-of-consciousness by a man once described as “the most important young English novelist now writing” but who is, today, largely forgotten. Oh, and originally published as a book-in-a-box, with unbound chapters to be read at random.
“I just thought it was an interesting idea,” says Freeman. “I hadn’t heard of the book before. Or of BS Johnson. But I liked the idea of a book being published in no particular order, and of applying that to a radio version.” The book’s shapelessness has been played up in an intriguing way. “They did it like an FA Cup draw,” he explains. “They put the chapters on little wooden balls and then drew them out [one by one] to get a random result.”
The other thing that should be said about The Unfortunates is that its hero is typically Freeman; that is, meat-and-two-veg ordinary: downbeat, humdrum. Playing the English Everyman is Freeman’s shtick. He rose to stardom doing it in The Office (2001-03) as Tim, and has flirted with it in subsequent roles, such as Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005).
Hits have been thin on the ground since The Office – though Freeman has often insisted that his best roles have been the rarely seen ones, such as BBC Two’s 2005 comedy The Robinsons. But then came Sherlock, where he was brilliant as a modern-day, war-scarred Watson, ironing the starch out of Benedict Cumberbatch’s sociopathic Holmes. And even stealing the show, according to some.
Freeman says he was “taken aback” by the programme’s success (it had more than 7 million viewers and critics hollered its praises), but thinks it deserves the accolades. “It’s the best British thing that’s been on telly in ages,” he says. “Quality will out, if that doesn’t sound too arrogant. But why should I sound arrogant? I didn’t write it. I just think it was undeniably good.”
Ironically, though, Sherlock also presented him with a career-defining dilemma. His commitment to the filming dates for series two (due to be screened next year) meant that he had to decline the plummiest of movie roles: that of Bilbo Baggins in the much-delayed big screen version of The Hobbit, reportedly to be directed by Lord of the Rings supremo Peter Jackson, with a record-breaking £315 m budget.
Freeman says he turned down Bilbo “with a heavy heart”, but still hopes there might be a way of resurrecting the part, dates permitting. “If something could be worked out, that would be great,” he says.
But, then again, he’s also a famously unstarry actor who has spent most of his post-Office career eschewing the bright lights of LA. He has admitted being “freaked out” by his first trip to Hollywood six years ago (to promote The Office) and recently described red carpet events as “four hours of my life lost”. Could he really handle being the star of potentially the biggest film ever?
He mulls this for a second. “Well,” he says, “for a start, it wouldn’t be in Hollywood [New Zealand is the likely location]. And I think Peter gives Hollywood a fairly wide berth himself. So it wouldn’t be all that Hollywoody.
“And anyway, I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to say that I wouldn’t do anything Hollywoody.” He pauses. “It’s just that I’m more of an Englishman, really, than a Hollywood man.”
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