Richard Madden Fan

November 30 2018

Press: Richard Madden on James Bond rumours: ‘I’m more than flattered to be mentioned’

Photoshoots & Portraits > Session 046 (2018 British GQ)
Magazine Scans > British GQ (Jan/Feb 2019)

BRITISH GQ – What makes a good James Bond? British? Of course. Scottish? Even better. Can he play brutish but vulnerable? It worked for the last one. Does he look sharp in a tux? See above. But what about a wry, natural humour? Because we haven’t seen that for a while. And yet far from the troubled action man he built for Bodyguard – and even further from the princes and pretty boys that was almost his typecast – it’s his knowing wit and bone-dry quips that explain why Richard Madden is odds-on to make Double-O status. Oh, and guess what? He even drinks Vodka Martinis

Our January/ February cover star, Richard Madden is the man of the moment. From Game of Thrones, through to hit BBC drama Bodyguard and of course, those James Bond rumours. Read an exclusive extract from the interview and download to read the full interview now on digital edition.

Richard Madden lets out a groan when he clocks the question that’s coming.

So, I begin, the Mail On Sunday reported last week that you’re set to be offered…

And that’s when I hear it: the pained expression of the young British actor being forced to talk about speculation that they might be the next James Bond – a sort of hazing initiation for those who’ve done the Donmar.

“My first reaction,” says Madden, “is always the same reaction, which is the papers make up a story on a Sunday so they can discredit that story on the Monday so they can sell papers on both days.”

Sure, I say, but at the same time, the bookies aren’t making Jonah Hill the current favourite to be Britain’s favourite super spy, are they?

“They aren’t, no, but this is what happens with all these shows, like Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager. Then there’s the next one. I’m the next one. Everyone just loves the rumour mill on that topic. I’m just the current one. There’ll be a different one next week.”

All of which is pretty hard to argue with. But still, I say, nice to be mentioned all the same.

“Lovely. I’m more than flattered to be mentioned, for people to consider putting me in that role. I’m very flattered and thankful. It’s a really brilliant thing to be in.”

Just for the record, then, you wouldn’t rule it out?

“I don’t want to curse anything by saying anything. I think that’s the curse of that. If you talk about it, you’ll curse it.”

He will admit, however, that he is a big Bond fan.

“Yeah. I love the movies. I’ve read all the books.”

You’ve read all the books?

“Yeah.”

Download to read the full Jan/Feb issue with Richard Madden now

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November 17 2018

Press/Gallery/Video: The Wrap Interview and Photoshoot

Richard Madden Says He’s Meeting With ‘Bodyguard’ Creator to Talk Season 2 Ideas

Netflix star tells TheWrap he’d like to see a much more relaxed David Budd if story continues

Gallery Links:

Photoshoots & Portraits > Session 044

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Netflix’s “Bodyguard” through the finale.)

I put the article behind a cut because of the spoilers

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November 16 2018

Video: The IMDB Show Interview

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November 08 2018

Press: Richard Madden Talks Emotional ‘Bodyguard’ Role, ‘Game of Thrones’ Ending

VARIETY – SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “The Bodyguard,” streaming now on Netflix.

In his new BBC thriller “The Bodyguard,” Richard Madden plays a special protection officer tasked with keeping Britain’s Home Secretary safe. But his role isn’t relegated to a stereotypical stoic action hero. His background as an army veteran provides layers of emotion that Madden reveals in different doses.

“Trying to get the physicality right of someone who’s a professional bodyguard and has been in the army for many years…is a completely different challenge,” Madden tells Variety. “And then I suppose in lots of ways it was a great relief playing the more emotional scenes because this character spends so much time covering his emotions or holding them in.”

Here, Madden talks with Variety about playing with ambiguity for his character, the challenged of shooting a suicide scene and how response to his new show compares to “Game of Thrones.”

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November 08 2018

Gallery/Video: “The Late Late Show with James Corden” Appearance

Gallery Links:

Public Appearances > 2018 > November 7: “The Late Late Show with James Corden” Appearance

You can watch the whole episode here: CBS.com

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October 25 2018

Press: Richard Madden on playing the damaged and desperate David Budd on Netflix’s Bodyguard

EW – Richard Madden is used to playing men responsible for the lives of others in perilous positions, but have his characters gotten any better at protecting those around them?

In the BBC’s Bodyguard, created and written by Jed Mercurio — perhaps best known for tense, crime procedural drama Line of Duty — Game of Thrones alum Madden stars as police officer and PTSD-suffering war veteran David Budd, who is assigned as a protection officer to the U.K.’s controversial Home Secretary Julia Montague (played by Line Of Duty’s Keeley Hawes). While a divided government deals with a heightened terrorist threat in the country, Budd has his own demons to work through — and Montague doesn’t make his job any easier.

As the Home Secretary aims to introduce a new bill that outlines increased state surveillance, Budd grapples to protect her from those opposed to such legislation as well as the greater threat of domestic terrorism that pervades London and the rest of the country. Throw into the mix his own traumatic past and a young family to look after, and PPO (personal protection officer) Budd is in for a ride that makes the horror of Robb Stark’s Red Wedding look, well, still horrific, but also like another day at the office for the protection officer.

Originally broadcast in the U.K. in late August on the BBC, the show’s electric pace and edge-of-your-seat suspense kept audiences talking incessantly about the drama (and blowing up text threads on Sunday nights!), before tuning in with bated breath weekly, only to be thrown for another loop by the multitude of careening twists and turns, and perpetually unsure who to trust.

Ahead of the show’s Netflix debut, EW caught up with Madden — who also stars in next summer’s Elton John fantasy Rocketman — to learn more about his mercurial character, that (potentially!) explosive opening sequence, and whether David Budd would’ve been any good at protecting the doomed Stark family members.

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September 12 2018

Press/Gallery: Bodyguard, Game of Thrones and why he doesn’t think he’s a sex symbol

The BBC’s new Sunday-night TV drama has made Richard Madden the hottest actor on British TV. In more ways than one. Not that he sees it that way

Photoshoots & Portraits > Session 040 (2018 Saturday Times)

SATURDAY TIMES – How much time are you spending thinking about Bodyguard? A lot, I bet. The new BBC thriller, about the relationship between an ambitious and unknowable home secretary and her PTSD-addled protection officer, was written by Jed Mercurio of Line of Duty fame, and was cynically and artfully designed to hook, obsess and fixate an audience into appointment viewing.

Bodyguard is made to steal us away from all newly acquired suit-yourself, binge-watch and content-stream habits, with charismatic heroes who might actually be despicable antiheroes and a succession of frenzied plot twists that simply must be consumed on the night lest someone catch you out with a spoiler on social media. Even if that doesn’t happen, even if your viewing isn’t partly ruined by a stray Facebook comment, watch an episode even a little late and find yourself locked out of all the best conversations, the most detailed post mortems, most frenetic speculations. Bodyguard is, in essence, a middle-aged Love Island, a reason to gather excitedly round the screen at the prescribed hour in a way that hasn’t really happened since the late Nineties.

Bloody hell, it’s good, I tell its star Richard Madden. The 32-year-old Glaswegian actor made his name as Robb Stark in Game of Thrones and consolidated it as Prince Charming in 2015’s Kenneth Branagh-directed Cinderella. Now, after playing Mellors in Mercurio’s 2015 Lady Chatterley’s Lover for the BBC, he trembles on the verge of Poldarking himself into borderline indecent, heavily fetishised glory as Bodyguard’s David Budd, the protection officer at the heart of the story.

“Oh, right,” he says. His accent is broad, non-posh Scottish; unexpected to those who remember it as generically Yorkshire in Game of Thrones. His eyes are intense. He’s arch and funny; he’d probably qualify as dangerously charming if there weren’t also something watchful and cautious about him. “Thanks very much! I enjoyed playing something a bit more adult, less boyish. I’m keen to play more grown-up roles, without actually growing up myself. Pretending to be adult. I’m done playing princes. Princes and royalty and lords. Also, it’s nice not to do an accent.” David Budd is – conveniently – Scottish. “One less thing to think about. Shall we get a drink? It is a Tuesday night, after all.”

It’s a Monday, I point out, but all the same we order a beer and wine from the front desk of the photographic studio in which we sit.

This is not the first time Madden and I have met. Three years ago, he bowled up to me at a friend’s party and demanded to know why I hadn’t featured him in Grazia magazine’s Chart of Lust recently. A placing in the list (which I compile weekly, and does exactly as its title suggests – rates the most fanciable people of that moment’s news), is deeply coveted among those who present themselves as above that kind of vanity, but definitely aren’t. Newscasters, Hollywood A-listers, national treasures, disruptive artists (Grayson Perry once told me he’d pinned his mention up on the wall in his studio), award-winning novelists … I’ve been lobbied by spads chasing mentions for their political charges on more than one occasion. But this was the first time a candidate had ever approached me in the flesh. I was both impressed and amused by his front.

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September 11 2018

Press/Gallery: Mr Richard Madden On Bodyguard, Strong Women And Six-Packs

Photoshoots & Portraits > Session 039 (2018 Mr. Porter)

The Scottish actor on objectification, roles in the “grey zones” and how he escapes the attention of being a star

MR PORTER – It has been a dizzying week for Mr Richard Madden as the reaction to his latest television series, Bodyguard, has intensified. The BBC’s delirious new primetime thriller – which stars Mr Madden in the title role — has generally been a ratings and critical hit. However, this being 2018, it wouldn’t do to not have a furore, and Bodyguard’s so far seems to revolve around the number of women shown in positions of power. In short: there’s too many, apparently, at least, according to many Twitterati – who felt this was an example of the BBC being unrealistically politically correct. (This despite the fact that until April 2018, the United Kingdom had a female prime minister, home secretary and Metropolitan Police commissioner.) Mr Madden, who is drily Scottish at the best of times, has no truck with misogynist trolls.

“I just thought: this is so fucking bananas!”, the 32-year-old exclaims over a light lunch. The usual healthy foods are complemented by a Diet Coke, a packet of cigarettes and a liberal use of the F-word that verges on the Rab C Nesbitt. “It’s not unrealistic at all to have these women in there – it’s completely normal.” It should be like that, he says. “Especially when the show focuses on a young white male. Let’s not forget that the camera is on a young white male the whole time.”

Handsome, affable and enjoyably cheeky, Mr Madden has thus far shuttled between two types of role: the romantic hero and the action ingénue. Sometimes he has done both at the same time – most famously playing Robb Stark in Game Of Thrones. He has played Prince Kit in Cinderella, and he has been Romeo on-stage, not once but twice. He has also bounced about and wielded a gun in Bastille Day, opposite Mr Idris Elba. Bodyguard has guns, but it’s the chance to expand his range that made him jump at the role. In the six-part series he plays David Budd, a bodyguard whose time as a soldier at war has left him suffering with PTSD. When Budd is assigned to protect a hostile, hawkish home secretary (Ms Keeley Hawes), we soon realise he may not actually want to protect her. Apart from those times when he’s in bed with her, of course.

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