Black Adder is pure British comedy gold 😂 From Rowan Atkinson’s legendary sarcasm to the chaotic historical disasters, every season delivers iconic humor, savage wit, and unforgettable moments. Whether it’s medieval schemes, royal disasters, or war-time satire, Black Adder remains one of the greatest comedy series ever made. 🇬🇧🔥
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00:11When I was given the part of Baldrick, I thought, oh, this is amazing.
00:15Here am I, an unknown, and at last somebody has recognised my great comic genius.
00:22In fact, it wasn't that at all. Loads of people had turned the part down,
00:26and with three or four days to go, in desperation, they turned to me.
00:30Because in the pilot, there was no comedy in it at all.
00:34There were only about eight lines, and they were all,
00:36yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir.
00:39And even in the first episode, I'd got one or two comic lines,
00:44but that was just about that it.
00:46He was just the servant, the kind of every-man servant.
00:51And it was only as the episodes went on,
00:55and I was, after all, surrounded by the greatest comic writers of their generation,
01:02that gradually his character matured and developed.
01:07And then that whole character was thrown completely out of the window,
01:11and we started again with a different character for series two.
01:15So for me as an actor, it was great fun and interesting and challenging.
01:24In order to make Blackadder's character work in series two,
01:30he needed to be able to be surrounded by people who were clearly much stupider than he was.
01:38And the problem with having a Baldrick who was brighter than he was,
01:42as was the case in Blackadder One,
01:44was like everyone was brighter than him, so where's the comedy?
01:47There was no subtlety about it, no duality about it.
01:50And so one of the ideas they came up with at the beginning of series two
01:54was that Baldrick should be the stupidest person there had ever been in the history of the world.
02:01And it took me a long time to get him as stupid as was required.
02:08He was still fairly bright in series two, he was quite chipper in many ways.
02:12By series four he was the living dead, but I'm not quite sure that that was in some ways as
02:22good as how he was in series two.
02:28Miranda is an extraordinary actress and Richard knew that she was and brought her in because of the quality of
02:38her acting.
02:38He was so captivated by it.
02:40Having said that, the part that had originally been written for the Queen Elizabeth character just was half-baked.
02:53And it was, on the first couple of days of rehearsal, we were all silently tearing our hair out
03:01because if the Queen Elizabeth character didn't work, then the show wasn't going to work.
03:07And then, midway through that first week, suddenly Miranda discovered this young woman
03:17who's on the cusp of ponies and sex, as it were, and is in some ways incredibly sophisticated
03:26and is also the most powerful woman in the world, and in other ways is just a spoilt little girl.
03:34And I remember the scene when she got it and John Lloyd was leaping up and down with excitement going,
03:41yes, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it.
03:43And from that moment, that series took off.
03:49And Miranda has this ability to make what she does look entirely spontaneous,
03:56but it's virtually always really, really thought through.
04:01And it's as though by thinking it through, she can then allow herself internally
04:06to have a kind of whole 5th of November firework display going on inside her head
04:11because she's confident of the structure that she's already created.
04:20Although we didn't have the 12 writers that you would have for Taxi or Cheers or whatever,
04:26actually you had 12 people in the room who were doing exactly the same kind of thing
04:31that those 12 writers on an American show would do.
04:34So by the end of the week, the whole thing was really lean and spare and everything,
04:39any ounce of fat on it would have been challenged and hacked away.
04:44Virtually all of us who were involved in the performance were writers
04:48and outrageously we decided that we knew just as well if not better than Richard and Ben
04:59what the words ought to be.
05:00So we were constantly challenging every single gag, the structure of every scene.
05:07We even put additional characters in sometimes.
05:10So there was a lot of tension between the writers on one hand
05:15and the producer on the other hand who was, as it were, the representative of what the actors were saying.
05:21And it was very healthy and very good but it could be quite upsetting sometimes.
05:29I actually learnt to write through being involved with the people in Blackadder.
05:37Not that I learnt the answers to writing but I learnt the questions to ask
05:41and that was what the environment was like in rehearsals.
05:44It wasn't much to do with acting.
05:46Often we didn't know what the moves were going to be or anything like that
05:49until it was hastily decided about 36 hours before we recorded the thing.
05:55All we talked about was the text.
05:58And it's not surprising because virtually everybody in it apart from myself
06:01had got degrees in English and classics and that sort of thing from Oxford and Cambridge.
06:07It was what they were trained in doing. It was where they felt safe and at home.
06:11So every gag would not only be challenged but made slightly more ornate.
06:17And it was almost competitive.
06:19It was like someone would say,
06:22all right, don't let's just have a line, let's make it a simile.
06:25Yes, but let's make it a slightly more complicated simile.
06:28Yes, let's make it a complicated simile but one including someone wearing an amusing hat
06:33and boots and comic gloves and this and that and that until by the end of the week
06:38what had started out as a line that had about five words in it would end up like this.
06:46It would end up like,
06:49that Baldrick is the worst message since Admiral Lord Nelson flagged up at the Battle of the Nile.
06:56Lady Hamilton's a virgin, cut my arm off and poke my eye out if I'm wrong.
07:00None of that was there in the original script.
07:03It was just all of us being more and more competitive and adding more to the line
07:07as the week's rehearsal went on.
07:14Well, if you think about where Blackadder came from,
07:17it is actually the comedy of adolescent boys trying to impress each other.
07:24And given that it was adolescent boys,
07:26most of whom I would have thought weren't great on the games field,
07:30it was going to come through their banter and their competitive use of words.
07:34So I don't think it's a surprise that that use of language
07:40should have been so strong in Blackadder.
07:47Being the only grammar school boy amongst all that incredibly talented group
07:55of highly articulate performers and having left school at 16
08:00and not having been to university,
08:05there was a sense in which they always felt very different from me,
08:10really rather exotic,
08:12and yet in a way not really kind of tuned in to the real world
08:16because they all talked so elaborately.
08:19And I think that probably helped me with Baldrick.
08:23In a way, it doesn't matter to Baldrick whether or not a hierarchy exists,
08:28because they're all up above him dancing around in some way or another,
08:32and I suspect there's a bit of me that felt like that myself.
08:39I think one of the things that we were always striving for in Blackadder
08:44was more focus, more discipline,
08:48really to concentrate on every single little joke,
08:52every little scene, every concept,
08:54so that Blackadder 1 goes hurtling all over the place,
08:59loads of extras, loads of horses, loads of characters.
09:02Series 2 is reduced from that, but by Series 3,
09:08that was the time when I really felt that we were focusing
09:13on what we really wanted to do.
09:20Right from the very beginning, I felt that as performers,
09:27Rowan and I just got each other.
09:29We just knew what each other was doing.
09:32We just knew what the right timing should be.
09:36We just knew how to tee things up for each other.
09:39And I don't think we ever spoke about that,
09:42or if we did, it was only very lightly.
09:44But I know it's there.
09:46And I know that just on the few occasions
09:48that I've performed with Rowan ever since,
09:50in Comic Relief, things like that,
09:52immediately that spark has come up
09:54and lifted both of our performances.
10:01I think my favourite series is Blackadder III,
10:08partly because of Hugh's performance,
10:10but also because I think it's so audacious
10:12to create a six-part comedy series
10:15about a period of history where virtually none of the viewers
10:19can remember anything about the history of that period.
10:25And my favourite episode would have to be Dictionary.
10:29I think the one line is hysterical.
10:33I love Robbie's performance,
10:37and I've got some very, very, very good jokes in it.
10:41The favourite line I had to say
10:43in the whole of all the episodes of Blackadder
10:45was when Rowan said to me,
10:48Baldrick, do you know what irony is?
10:51And I said,
10:53yeah, it's like goldy or silvery,
10:56but it's made of iron.
10:57I still like that now.
11:01It's so sweet.
11:08I'm not sure how conscious we were at the time
11:16of the epic nature of what we were creating,
11:21or at least the way people have responded to it
11:23as though it's epic.
11:26I guess we probably knew that right at the beginning,
11:28and I'm sure the writers knew it when they were writing it.
11:32But once they'd written it,
11:33and because they're such good writers,
11:35all we did was deal with the situations that we were in.
11:40The fact that later on people might say,
11:41oh, Baldrick's heroic,
11:43or that Blackadder has become more spare,
11:47more haunted, more sophisticated, or whatever,
11:52just wasn't there in the rehearsal room.
11:54And if it had been,
11:55I think the performances would have suffered from it.
12:02I think one of the useful things about Baldrick in that series
12:06is that he provides a breathing space.
12:09Everyone else is talking at 900 miles an hour
12:12in the most dazzling vocabulary,
12:16using words that often most of us don't understand,
12:20or think we may understand,
12:21but aren't quite sure we know what they mean.
12:22And then in comes Baldrick,
12:25a much slower tempo,
12:28much less to say.
12:30Whatever he says, you're going to get it.
12:33And I think that helps you to feel comfortable about the series.
12:38Certainly that was how I felt
12:39being in amongst all those dazzling minds in the middle of rehearsals.
12:48I am so proud to have been in Blackadder.
12:51That's probably why I don't mind 25 years later
12:56just pontificating about it.
12:58I don't feel like some actors would,
12:59oh, I don't want to mention that character.
13:02I'm in fear of being typecast.
13:04I don't feel like that at all.
13:08Being in that series was like how I imagine it must be
13:13if you're suddenly dropped
13:14into the middle of the Brazilian football team,
13:16when everyone around you
13:18is playing the most fantastic football.
13:20And you're all right.
13:21You can play a bit.
13:22But boy, oh boy,
13:23have you got to up your game
13:24if you're surrounded by those people.
13:29And a lot of the time, being Baldrick,
13:33I didn't say much.
13:34And throughout that time,
13:36I was just watching what those performers did.
13:40And watching how the writers worked.
13:44And in fact, it was only after Blackadder
13:47that I started writing.
13:49And I've now written, I don't know,
13:5116 kids books, four books for adults.
13:54And I just learned about writing
13:57through listening to what all those people,
14:00particularly Richard Curtis, were doing,
14:03how they addressed the problems of creating comedy.
14:09There are lots of other shows that I've done
14:11that have taken much more time to do.
14:15Lots of other shows that have taken more toll on me.
14:18Lots of other shows where I've actually made more money.
14:22But the fact that I'll go to my grave as Baldrick
14:27isn't something that I'll shy away from.
14:29I just feel, yeah, really proud of that.
14:32Really proud.
14:35You
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