00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, group arts editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to speak to
00:06Ophelia. Goodness, what a role. Eve, you are Ophelia in the forthcoming Minerva production
00:12of Hamlet. What a role to approach. And obviously, you think of other people that have played
00:17Ophelias. How do you get into that? Do you discard that and find your own way? What do you do?
00:23I think a bit of both. I'm obviously very aware of all the Ophelias before,
00:29and I've seen plenty. But I think when you actually come down to working on it,
00:34you've got to discard it all and just approach the text like it's new and fresh.
00:40I've got a little bit of assistance from your 15, 16-year-old self. You said you came across
00:45your GCSE Hamlet text. I did. When I had the audition to meet Justin, I found my GCSE text
00:54and she had great notes. Lots of highlighting, great notes. And in fact, at the little section,
01:02Ophelia's soliloquy, you know, oh, what a noble mind is here. Oh, throne, I'd written
01:08a soliloquy for a woman! Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, underline, underline. I was
01:12very excited.
01:13And did you ever think that one day?
01:15Fingers crossed. I think even then, my 15-year-old self was hoping. So I'm very pleased to be here now.
01:22We're fabulous to realise it. What a role to play. And the interesting thing is you have
01:26to extrapolate a lot, don't you? Because there's quite a lot that you don't actually see.
01:30Absolutely. You know, none of Hamlet and Ophelia's relationship really happens on stage. Things
01:40are hinted at. You know, we've been detectives and gone through the text to get as much information
01:47as possible, but there is quite a bit of imagination as well.
01:51So that gives you latitude then, doesn't it?
01:53Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So we've had to sort of work out what we think our Hamlet
01:59and Ophelia's relationship is and was.
02:03And that's fabulous. Fabulous that you are completing your Minerva hat-trick then. Third time.
02:08Yes, yes. Third time, lucky or unlucky.
02:13Brilliant. We're really lovely to speak to you and very, very best wishes for the production.
02:18Enormously exciting. Looking forward to it immensely. Thank you.
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