Toby Stephens

Julie, how do you feel about Private Lives? Do you like Private oh

I do love Private Lives it's a good play I've seen it twice on the stage I saw it once back in 2013 with Toby Stephens and Anna Chancellor and that was a brilliant production it was just fantastic and I saw it more recently with Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge and what was nice about that was that was a come out of lockdown productions.

It was the first production I saw after lockdown.

Oh,

My interest started in it when one of my first jobs in the television industry was as a runner on a BBC four-part drama series on the Cambridge Spies.

Toby Stephens was Philby, amongst others.

and i made my tv debut in that as an extra because the extras hadn't turned up one day and they wanted to film i think it was in bushy or somewhere and it was standing in for the u.s embassy in washington and i think it was toby stevens was having a conversation with somebody walking down this pathway and in the background there's these people playing tennis obviously i had to get my hair cut kind of 1960s style wore a 1960s outfit and everything, playing tennis in the background.

As soon as they called action, kind of missed the ball.

Duke

Orsino was played by Toby Stevens as this, it's a perfect example of this guy is a shitty man by modern standards, but in Shakespearean standards, he's fine.

A bit of a fixer-upper, but he's fine.

Kind of like Claudio.

Hold on one second.

Toby Stephens, the English actor, is in it, and Ariana Osbourne.

And it is on Māori Plus for free, and it is a brilliant hour and a half, one of the best New Zealand films of the last few years.

And, yeah, I was absolutely blown away by it and wished I had seen it sooner.

It sets the stage for everything we know.

It stars Toby Stevens as a younger... highly educated, terrifyingly driven Captain Flint.

Luke Arnold plays a younger, two legged, incredibly manipulative Long John Silver.

And Tom Hopper is a massive, imposing Billy Bones.

Okay.

But what I didn't know was that one of her sons from a previous marriage is Toby Stevens, who played Gustav Graves in Die Another Day, the worst Bond film of all time.

I didn't know that Toby Stevens was her son.

So Toby Stevens narrated one of the Bond novels on audiobook and also was in Black Sails as the pirate captain.

And he plays stunningly in that.

And has also been in other bits and pieces.

Black Sails operates as a gritty, grounded prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island.

We follow Captain Flint, played by Toby Stevens, as he leads his crew against the encroaching sources of the British Empire.

His overarching goal is to plunder a legendary Spanish treasure galleon to fund the defense and independence of New Providence Island, which operates as this radical, ragtag, democratic community of pirates.

Okay, quick trivia time.

Hit me.

Jaina dropped a fantastic nugget in the comments of the TV line piece.

Did you know that the star of this show, Toby Stevens, the man playing this ruthless, blood-soaked pirate captain, is actually Dame Maggie Smith's son?

I do not.

Yeah.

And then it's got Robert Stevens, Toby Stevens' dad as the boss, Rilford Bramble playing his sidekick.

His brother is played by, by Warren Mitchell.

And it's just, it, it, it, it's just a brilliant small film that, Again, you just think it just doesn't date.

Um...

The cast is Danny Dyer, Tim McKinney, Toby Stephens, and Andy Nyman, amongst others.

And they are all sort of really fascinating picks because, like, this is probably the best use of Danny Dyer outside of Rivals.

Yes, he's in his loud persona, but it's quite fun to watch him, like, be injured.

I think he gets his leg caught in a bear trap.

This is Tim McKinney after he's on Blackadder, so it's kind of that interesting period of his career post-Blackadder when he kind of pops up and stuff.

Toby Stephens is smugly posh, as he is in everything.

And then Andy Nyman is adorable in this, as he is in Much.