Roger Rees

The most intimidating person was when we did Man of No Importance.

It was Roger Rees who played the lead, and, you know, I've been a Nicholas Nickleby fan since the beginning, and he's just extraordinary.

And it was-- that was intimidating, but he was also the sweetest, kindest, most-- he took notes.

He was remarkable, so.

Mm-hmm.

They also brought in Roger Rees to play Fred, and he essentially serves as a quasi-narrator, delivering portions of Dickens' exact opening and closing prose.

Which honors the book nicely.

But for all the reverence to the dialogue, Donner made some highly specific omissions.

I'm gonna sort of split the difference in that most people that have seen If Looks Could Kill like If Looks Could Kill, but I will argue, especially coming out as it did right in between that six-year gap between License to Kill and GoldenEye, it is a James Bond spoof that even more so I would say than the first Austin Powers, works as an above average, if not excellent, James Bond movie.

It's similar to Paul Feig's Spy, in which you have a somewhat funny fish-out-of-water central character who is stuck in what is otherwise more or less the real deal, and you have Roger Rees and Linda Hunt as two awesome Bond villains.

I would put them head-to-head with any of my favorites.

The action scenes are cool.

Do I think it's some, like, underloved, nobody likes it gem? No.

But I think it's a genuinely spectacular piece of genre satire.

If I ever actually ask Christopher Nolan a question, the one question I would ask him was, like, "You cast Roger Rees in The Prestige.

Happy to see that.

Have you ever seen that film? Yeah.

1986, William Tyndale was played by Roger Rees, which for all of my people my age, if you remember Robin Hood, Men in Tights, that was the sheriff of Rottingham.

So he played a very silly character in the Mel Brooks film, Robin Hood, Men in Tights, but he also played a very sobering character, William Tyndale.

So you've seen the movie.

And, uh, w- well, we had a couple.

We had Roger Rees, remember, come in as a substitute teacher.

Right.

In this episode?

totally right.

So, Judge Roebling was voiced in the show by Roger Rees, who's, you know, an Englishman, one of the classic Hamlets of all time, playing Southern...

Heavy Foghorn Leghorn influence.

And so I just thought, okay, this character's fun.