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BBC – Hit BBC drama Bodyguard kept an average 10.4 million viewers on tenterhooks as the series drew to a close on Sunday.
The audience reached its peak – 11 million – in its final five minutes.
The overnight ratings make the show – the brainchild of Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio – the most watched drama of the year so far.
In fact, it is the biggest overnight drama figure since 10.5 million saw Downton Abbey’s series two finale in November 2011.
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
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.
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.
DIGITAL SPY – With Richard Madden’s volatile veteran David Budd eyeing every other character in BBC One’s Bodyguard with suspicion, it’s can be tricky to work out who’s actually up to no good.
But we’ve got some theories after a stunning second episode that saw Keeley Hawes’ formidable Home Secretary, Julia Montague, become the target of an assasination attempt, and later end up in bed with Budd.
Here’s what’s going to be keeping us up nights after the latest installment.
1. Who is behind the terror attacks?
With London under siege, the UK’s threat level soars across Bodyguard’s latest episode.
The investigation continues into the aborted October 1 bombing that Budd helped prevent, and while the culprit Nadia – apparently coerced by her husband – is “too intimidated to reveal much”, it’s suspected that the couple’s “accomplices… may still be at large”.
What’s more, the bomb used in the attack on Budd’s children’s school includes the same “sophisticated mechanisms” seen in Nadia’s device, suggesting that both operations were carried out by the same terror cell.
This is all part of something bigger.
2. Who is the leak?
The attack on the school was apparently a revenge plot, with the terror cell seeking retribution on Budd for thwarting their previous bombing.
How did the terrorists identify Budd as the officer in question? Honest(?) copper Anna Sampson (Gina McKee) argues that a witness at the scene of the train bombing, or an accomplice of Nadia’s, could have fingered Budd.
MI5, though suspects an “internal leak” within the police, and later – during the attempt on Julia’s life – the boys in blue are apparently given orders by “an executive officer at SO15” that prevent them from intervening.
Is there a police conspiracy out to get Budd? Was the intention of limiting police protection to have him and Julia knocked off in one fell swoop?
Or… could Julia have given the order herself? (More on our suspicions that the Home Secretary is actually a supervillain below.)
The Game of Thrones actor plays a Personal Protection Officer in Jed Mercurio’s tense new BBC drama
RADIOTIMES – Richard Madden plays the Home Secretary’s Personal Protection Officer in Jed Mercurio’s new BBC drama Bodyguard – but he already knows just how impressive real bodyguards can be.
Speaking on set at a mocked-up Home Office in an empty Uxbridge office building, he recalls an exciting (but disorientating) experience in Mexico.
“I was doing press for Game of Thrones many moons ago,” he says, “and I had a bodyguard in Mexico City, about six foot five, a female bodyguard. She was just huge. And we were at an after party one night after some premiere, and a fight broke out.
“My feet didn’t touch the ground. She had me up, out, and in the back of a car, into the footwell in the back of the car after this fight. Because it was Mexico City, there were guns and everything, and I just didn’t know what had happened.
“But I was just thrown into the back of the car and the door wasn’t even closed before we were off. Which was quite exciting – but I spilled my drink!”
Having had “a few” bodyguards in his time (including one in Rio “that had been shot about four times and showed me all his gunshot wounds”), Madden was pretty clued in when he was cast as PPO David Budd.
In Bodyguard, he is a war veteran who is newly assigned to Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes). He must protect her from all potential dangers, constantly scanning for threats and searching her home and even deciding the route of her car.
From his own experience, he knows how weird that can be.
“It was quite a bizarre thing of just being shadowed the whole time, and knowing that someone’s got their eye on you, and doing it in a way that is completely invisible,” he explains. “And you just have no idea.”
Bodyguard begins on Sunday 26th August at 9pm on BBC1
VARIETY – Richard Madden, best known for playing Robb Stark on “Game of Thrones,” is in negotiations to join Taron Egerton in Paramount’s Elton John biopic “Rocketman” as the music icon’s longtime manager, John Reid.
Jamie Bell is also on board to play Bernie Taupin with Dexter Fletcher attached to helm the project. Lee Hall penned the script. Paramount Pictures will finance and distribute the pic.
Reid, a legendary music manager in the ’70s and ’80s who also helped with Queen’s rise to fame in the mid-’70s, managed John from 1970 to 1998. Along the way, the two also became lovers, but their romance ended after five years following the leak of a letter from John’s accountants detailing Reid’s spending that was uncovered by the Daily Mail. The two would continue to work together professionally until 1998.
Matthew Vaughn and his Marv Films will produce, along with John and his Rocket Pictures partner David Furnish.
The role is a big win for Madden, who has been particular about the film roles he chooses since leaving “Game of Thrones” after Season 3. He did co-star in Disney’s “Cinderella” as the Prince and also appeared with Idris Elba in “The Take.” On the TV side since “Game of Thrones,” he has starred in the Netflix show “Medici: Masters of Florence” and Amazon’s “Electric Dreams.”
He is repped by WME and Troika.
VARIETY – “Game of Thrones” actor Richard Madden has closed a deal to star opposite Gillian Jacobs in the Netflix comedy film “Ibiza,” sources confirm to Variety.
Vanessa Bayer and Phoebe Robinson are also on board.
Alex Richanbach will direct a script by Lauryn Kahn, and Gary Sanchez Productions’ Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Kevin Messick are producing with Good Universe’s Nathan Kahane, Joe Drake, and Erin Westerman.
Sony first bought Kahn’s R-rated comedy spec, then titled, “I’m in Love With the DJ,” in 2014. The project eventually left Sony and ended up at Netflix, with the studio setting production to start sometime this month.
Jacobs will play a young woman whose two best friends, played by Bayer and Robinson, tag along on her work trip to Barcelona and Ibiza. The trip quickly turns into a crazy hunt for a popular DJ, played by Madden.
(source)
Although not the 18th of June in the UK anymore – it still is here in the United States! Today is Richard’s 31st birthday! Nicole and I would like to wish Richard a happy birthday! We hope you got to spend it with all your friends and loved ones!
To celebrate his birthday, we decided to share something with all the fans and followers of the site! 2 outtakes from a photoshoot Richard did in 2015 for Vanity Fair! The photos are beautiful and definitely one of our favorite shoots!
Check them out in our gallery and be sure to tweet your birthday wishes to @_richardmadden if you haven’t already!
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