Welcome to Richard Madden Fan, a fansite dedicated to Richard Madden, Scottish stage, film, and television actor known for portraying Robb Stark in Game of Thrones, Prince Kit in Disney's Cinderella, David Budd in Bodyguard, and most recently, Ikaris in Marvel's Eternals. Please enjoy our site and our gallery with over 35k high quality images.

"I just think of myself as an upstart who is trying to get better at what I do."
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The two actors are longtime friends off screen and now play even longer-time lovers in Marvel’s latest tentpole.

EW: If you’re going to play immortal partners with an on-again, off-again relationship of 7,000 years, it helps if you have some history.

Real-life friends Gemma Chan and Richard Madden star as Sersi and Ikaris in Marvel’s Eternals, an ambitious epic from Oscar-winning Nomadland director Chloé Zhao. The film (out Nov. 5) follows a group of ageless superhumans as they protect mankind through the centuries, with a starry cast that includes Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie. But it’s Sersi and Ikaris’ tender romance that anchors the film, stretching from modern-day London all the way back to their first arrival on the planet in about 5,000 B.C.

For EW’s Fall Movie Preview, we sat down with Madden, 35, and Chan, 38, for insight into how they brought their undying love story to life.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you two first become friends?

GEMMA CHAN: I think just socially.

RICHARD MADDEN: Because we have so many friends in common.

CHAN: It’s a small world in London.

MADDEN: Somehow we ended up just spending lots and lots of time together. I think we ended up not having jobs at the same time, and that helped, like, “Oh, great, you’re also not working.” [Laughs] And we never ever talked about work!

CHAN: No!

MADDEN: So it’s quite funny that we ended up then working together, when we’ve never really acknowledged each other in the industry or talked to each other about work.

How did you react when you both were cast in Eternals?

MADDEN: Over the moon. I mean, we’ve known each other for over 10 years now, so if you’re going to go to work and get up and see someone at 4 a.m. every day, it makes it a lot easier if you like them. Because we’ve known each other so long, we already have this trust and rapport. We know how to push each other’s buttons. We know how to make each other laugh. We wanted to bring out the best in each other, so it makes it just a nice, organic process — rather than meeting someone for the first time and being like, “Hey, you’ve got to make out now.”

Gemma, you’ve joined the MCU before, as Minn-Erva in 2019’s Captain Marvel. What was your reaction when they asked you back for Eternals?

CHAN: I was not expecting to be asked back so soon. When I spoke to [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige and he said, “We would love to have you back,” I thought he was just being nice. [Laughs] Like, maybe at some point in the distant future, if at all. But it was a nice surprise. And to be working with this one was a treat. Obviously I wasn’t going to turn that down.

What was it about this millennia-spanning epic that first hooked you?

MADDEN: For me, it was the fascination of when you’ve got a character that’s thousands and thousands of years old, what is it about them that makes them want to keep living? What is it about the world around them that they find joy in?

CHAN: And I was excited about playing this character where I haven’t really seen a superhero like her before. She’s a free spirit. She’s not your typical warrior-fighter kind of superhero. And I was interested in this mix of characters as well, them coming together and [figuring out] what they’re like as a slightly dysfunctional family.

Richard, your Game of Thrones brother Kit Harington also stars in Eternals. How was that reunion?

MADDEN: Just great. I mean, I’ve been friends with Kit for many, many years, and sadly we don’t get to do a lot in the film together. But I get to have one moment with him where we say hello, and it’s nice to be on set with someone you know and trust and have known for a long time. On set, it was kind of like hanging out with your friends, and then it’s like, “Oh, right, we’ve got to do acting now? Okay.”

For each of you, what was the biggest challenge of playing these immortal, seemingly untouchable heroes?

CHAN: For me, it was finding moments to bring truth amongst the craziness of a production of this size, with everything that’s going on and the challenges of shooting on location. Finding moments where you could be still, or just have a really intimate, small moment—that kind of grounds you through it.

MADDEN: I’d say the same. It’s finding these moments of reality amongst laser eyes and fighting monsters and being thrown into rocks and upside down. These characters are superheroes, but they’re also souls, and they have really complex feelings and relationships that have spanned a long time. We tried to find the truth and honesty in those moments, while wearing superhero costumes and diving off cliffs and stuff.

What was the superhero training process like?

CHAN: [To Madden] Oh my gosh, you have to do so much.

MADDEN: Because I’m flying all the time in the movie, I’m on these wires in the studio and in different locations. It’s just very hard because you have to pretend like it’s effortless, when actually you’re in this kind of corset harness, and your legs are up here, and your blood’s all rushing to your head, and you have to swan in as if you’re really cool — and actually you’re screaming on the inside. [It helps] having a friend to say, “Hey, does this look dumb?” And they’ll say, “Yeah, you look like Peter Pan.”

That helps, having someone to tell you where you fall on the scale of dumb to cool.

MADDEN: Gemma is great at telling you if you look dumb.

CHAN: [Laughs] Hey, you do the same for me!

MADDEN: But she always looks cool all the time, so that’s easy. [Laughs]

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

 



 
 



Photoshoots & Portraits > Session 066

Magazine Scans  > Vogue (May 2019)

 

VOGUE – Halfway through our interview, Richard Madden discloses that he didn’t have sex until he was 18. “Eighteen!” he exclaims, as if that’s ancient. “I was the fat boy: 38in waist. I’m a 31 to 32in now, so add another seven inches…” he draws my attention to his crunched midriff. At school he was shy, and taunted in the playground. At one point he even thought, “If I get beaten up it will end” – and so scheduled a lunchtime fight with his tormentors. “And then my mum drove by and saved me. I love my mum for that.”

This “big potato”, as he describes himself, is hard to square with the 32-year-old man sitting with me now, ripped and vacuum-sealed into a navy polo shirt and jeans; blue eyes, thick brows, jaw as sharp as a bowler’s elbow. On screen he’s brooding, melancholic: everything you’d expect from a west coast, working-class Scot from Elderslie, the birthplace of William Wallace (also known as Braveheart). But his accent doesn’t have the volatile edge of fellow actor David Tennant’s, raised up the road in Ralston, nor the casual rolling confidence of Gerard Butler’s, from nearby Paisley. It’s like a lawnmower on moss – a sweet flat purr.

And he’s still boyish enough to giggle at the enormous pink bed headboard in the Soho hotel room where we meet, and to bounce briefly on the sofa and find it too soft – Goldilocks style. He settles instead in a stiff velour tub chair opposite my own, flipping one leg over the low-slung arm. Is he comfortable being the hottest man in film right now? He says he’s “flattered”, but I sense deep down he’s baffled that his taut buttocks drew record audiences to Bodyguard, the BBC thriller for which he won Best Actor in the 2019 Golden Globes. His torso spawned a thousand memes after Game of Thrones and he’s been cast as every romantic cliché – smouldering in a smock in Medici: Masters of Florence, simmering with a scythe as Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He’s played Romeo twice (“I love that character, although I am happy to leave him alone for a while”), even Prince Charming in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella.

Read More




 

Movie Productions > Rocketman (2019) > PORTRAIT

Movie Productions > Rocketman (2019) > BEHIND THE SCENES

Movie Productions > Rocketman (2019) > PRODUCTION STILLS

Magazine Scans > TIME (APRIL 2019)

Magazine Scans > GQ (MAY 2019)

Magazine Scans > VOGUE (MAY 2019)

Magazine Scans > ELLE (MAY 2019)

Magazine Scans > THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (JUNE 2019)



 

Photoshoots & Portraits > Session 056

Magazine Scans > Elle (May 2019)

 

ELLE – Richard Madden is giddy at the prospect of going dark. Hunched attractively in a leather chair at a Beverly Hills hotel, the 32-year-old Scotsman, known for playing doomed scion Robb Stark on Game of Thrones and the trauma-stricken David Budd on the BBC’s Bodyguard, is eager to shed his broken-good-guy image. “I really enjoyed being a bastard,” he says, punching his right fist in his left hand like a ball in a mitt. He’s referring to his role as John Reid, the rebrand manager and former lover of Elton John (played by Taron Egerton) in this month’s fantastical and much-anticipated Rocketman biopic. “He just loved fighting people,” Madden says. Reid also had moments of charm and generosity, the actor acknowledges, but his manipulative side was much more fun to play.

In person, the actor is a riveting combination of flinty and safe. He looks like the guy to trust in a crowd, but then his nerves seem spring-loaded, like when he catches a bottle top falling off the table like it’s a grenade. We talk about getting a beer but order sparkling water instead because it’s early in the afternoon and pouring rain and, well, that combination can make for a booze-soaked slippery slope—especially in London, where Madden’s lived for 14 years. “There, it’s dark by 3 p.m. and it’s raining and miserable and you go, ‘I just want to sit by the fire with a bottle of red wine in the pub,’ ” he says, slipping into an almost incomprehensible back-and-forth Scottish brogue: “ ‘Eh, we’re shot.’ And you’re like, ‘Well, I’ll have another one.’ ” Pause. “ ‘So, are you shot or not shot? All right, cool, I’ll have another one.’ ”

Madden will abandon his beloved London for Los Angeles next month, but he still hasn’t secured a job or a place to live. Also, he’s single, maybe. A few days ago, the British press crowed about the actress Ellie Bamber breaking up with him, but he shuts down all talk of his love life. Don’t ask him about rumors that he’s the next Bond, either. “It’s all just noise,” says the actor, a pleasant aftereffect of his success in the title role in Bodyguard, the BBC’s most-watched drama since the season finales of Downton Abbey, for which he recently won a Golden Globe for Best Actor. “By March, there will be another British TV show with another young male actor, and then he’ll be the next James Bond for the following two months.”

Things might be a bit up in the air, but Madden is loving it. “I feel quite free at the moment,” he says, like any man worth his scruffy beard. “If I’m going to be reading scripts for two months, I’d rather sit by the pool than sit in a pub in East London.” Plus, he’s got some great friends in L.A., like Elton John, who whisked him off to his concert in Sacramento last night, and fellow Iron Throne heir Sophie Turner, whom he’s going to try to meet up with tonight. “It’s quite nice because we were so close when we were kids, and then we went off and did other things but reconnected as adults,” he says of Turner and other GoT costars like Kit Harington, Gwendoline Christie, and Maisie Williams. While some of his pals are still going strong on the show, he has a no-spoilers policy: “I have to be like, ‘Just let me watch it.’ ” He does, however, have a Season 8 prediction with regard to Turner’s character, Sansa Stark. “People thought she was weak and wilty,” he says, “but she’s our mother’s daughter, you know….” Since getting offed in the infamous Red Wedding scene, Madden has enjoyed watching as a fan. “It’s weird because they talk about Robb Stark, and I don’t associate myself with it anymore,” he says. “But then I remember, ‘Oh, that’s me, I played that part.’ ”

In preparation for Rocketman, Madden spoke with a number of Elton John’s and Reid’s friends. Donatella Versace, in particular, helped Madden get a better grasp of his character’s righteous zeal. “She said, ‘The thing about John Reid was that he was never wrong.’ ” And even as the relationship deteriorated (Elton John cut ties with Reid’s management company in 1998 and later settled financial disputes out of court; Reid has since retired from music management and lives in Australia), the two men shared an intimate bond. Madden and Egerton re-create that dynamic—sometimes clad in ’70s-style double-breasted suits and stacked Cuban heels, other times naked. When asked about Rocketman’s much-hyped sex scenes, Madden shakes his head and says, “I dread doing these things.” But, to him, the differences between male and female costars are negligible. “With one you get stubble rash, right?” he says. “That’s basically it. Otherwise, there’s no difference. It’s storytelling.”

Clearly, he’s a good guy at heart, though his whole body rejects the idea that he’s anything like his most famous characters. “It’s incredible to think about me in one of them,” he says with a shiver. “I don’t like it one bit!” But whether he wants to be or not, he’s bound to the code. “I suppose there’s a thing with a lot of these characters I play—to do the right thing, to look after people,” Madden says, taking a swig of sparkling water. “I suppose that is something.”



   

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