Veteran stage and screen actor James Cromwell will take on the role of media mogul Rupert Murdoch in David Williamson's bio-play Rupert, the Sydney Morning Herald reported this weekend.
Just as Murdoch is one of the world's best-known Australians, the prolific Williamson is one of Australia's best-known playwrights. One of his most recent works, Rupert has already played in Melbourne and in Washington, D.C., but Williamson is updating it in light of some very recent events such as the conviction this summer of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking trial.
Cromwell is best known to Americans for his roles in films like LA Confidential, Babe, The Green Mile and The Artist and in TV series like American Horror Story (for which he won an Emmy last year) and Six Feet Under. The 74-year-old has appeared on Broadway in Shakespeare and he looks at Rupert Murdoch as a character of Shakespearean dimensions, telling the Herald, "I like taking on the dragon. And Murdoch is definitely the dragon."
Cromwell goes on to compare Murdoch to Shakespeare's King John, who "doesn't have any soliloquies and never talks about his motives. That's also true of Rupert. Murdoch's reasons are unintelligible to the rest of us. And he doesn't seem to have any perception that the cost of what he does to other people is untenable."
Cromwell isn't afraid of bad reviews in Murdoch's papers. "I'm not at the beginning of my career," he told the paper. "I don't give a f--- what he does to me. If this is going to be my last shot, I think it's a good one."
Rupert is aiming for a West End transfer in 2015 and a Broadway debut in 2016. The Theatre Royal production runs November 25 through December 14.
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