This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Gordon: Welcome back to Episode 5 of the Broadway Teachers Podcast. Hi, Pam.

[0:10] Pam: Hey, Gordon. I'm so excited for this episode because anyone who knows me knows that ever since I was a little kid, I've been an Anglophile and really looked at British theater as the pinnacle of achievement. When I finally directed a show in the West End, I felt like I was stepping into a movie of my life. I just walking through the streets and walking the same hallowed grounds as all of the people that I idolized. So when I heard that Dame Diana Rigg was coming to New York to perform in My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center, I made a beeline for her, not physically, but through mass communication. I found her and she was generous and body and honest and everything I could have hoped for. I am so excited for you to hear some of her very refreshing takes on her career from The Avengers all the way to now and just the changes that have happened in the industry and in the world. Of course, she passed away last year, and so I feel even more gratified and grateful to have this record of her life in joy.

[1:34] Gordon: The following was recorded live at the Broadway Teachers Workshop, an annual program that brings theater teachers together with the Broadway community for behind-the-scenes classes, workshops, intimate discussions, and Broadway shows in New York City and online. Learn more at www.broadwayteachinggroup.com. Diana Rigg.

[1:59] Diana Rigg: Thank you.

[2:08] Diana Rigg: Thanks a lot. Lovely to be here.

[2:11] Pam: So I'm just going to start, and I know some of these answers already because we were chatting back there, but can we just talk about where you are from and what life was like growing up in Yorkshire?

[2:22] Diana Rigg: I was born in Doncaster, which is not a very glamorous place to be born in. It's a mining town in Yorkshire, but my father was an engineer, and he wanted to get out of the confines of a very restricted life. He answered an advertisement in the Times for an engineer to go to India, and this was God knows how many years ago. And it said, only public school boys need apply. Only boys who've been to public school need apply. And public school in England equals private school here? And he was an apprentice to the man who designed a very famous engine called the Mallard, and my dad took no notice of the fact that he hadn't been to a public school. He saved his money. He traveled to London. He met an envoy.

In those days in India, the Maharajas were all powerful. They built the roads, the railroads, the canals, the lighting system, everything. And he met an envoy from the Maharaja of Bikaner with his letter from this designer of the Mallard, and my dad went out there at a very young age to build railways in India. And anybody who's been to India now knows that the railways crisscross India. They were a vital part of traveling around India. And my brother and I went back some years later, and it was like royalty. We arrived in a train, and the train shunted slowly into the station at Bikaner, and it was like being the queen, because when she arrives at a station, the door that she's standing at arrives exactly within sort of three or four inches of the red carpet, which our train did.

And there was the red carpet for my brother and I to step out on to. We were given garlands around our necks. The town band was there. Hundreds of people were there. We had no notion that we were going to get this wonderful welcome. And somebody stepped forward and wrote a poem that he had written in honor of my father, saying because my father had founded a foundry there for mending engines in Bikaner, he had put food into the mouths of generations of mothers and their children. So beautiful.

[5:22] Pam: So I'm curious, what was school like in India?

[5:26] Diana Rigg: Oh, it was peculiar. There were no schools for girls. You went to a convent. I went to a convent where they were ill-prepared to teach you. And all I can remember is they taught me how to lace up my shoes, and they had a frame with buttons and buttonholes, and they taught me how to button, which actually probably was quite useful. My brother, at a very early age, went to a boarding school in the hills, which is where we used to go for the hot season. And it was a two-day train journey. And my mother took him there. He went there for months on end without seeing either me, my mother, or his mother or father until we went up for the hot season. It was really quite tough for children in those days.

On the other hand, it was also very dangerous, because when my brother and I went back, the cemeteries were filled with little graves of the children that had died from all sorts of diseases, cholera, what is it you get from mosquitoes? Malaria. Malaria, dysentery. And so, it was amazing that that early on, like 70-odd years ago, my mother managed to raise two kids, and we never had an illness that I remember.

[7:06] Pam: That's amazing. So, how old were you when you went back to England?

[7:10] Diana Rigg: Seven. And I was taken back to England by my mother. My father stayed in India, and I was put into boarding school. And I remember the first day I was there. I walked into this room. I'd never seen so many white girls under one roof before in my life. And I was rather rebellious, because I was so ill-equipped for school and for discipline and for anything. And I remember they gave me some porridge to eat. Well, after you've eaten food in India, which, oh, we didn't have curry all the time, but we did quite a lot, and it was spicy and delicious, and porridge is bleh. So, I refused to eat my porridge, and they made me sit in front of my porridge all day. And then I finally got the spoon, and I dipped it up, and it sat there for the rest of my days in school, getting brown and cracked on the wall.

[8:19] Pam: As a reminder of your rebelliousness.

[8:26] Diana Rigg: Yes. So, would you say that was your first creative moment?

[8:30] Diana Rigg: Definitely. Yeah. Did you do any theater at school?

[8:37] Diana Rigg: No, but what we did do was dance, Isadora Duncan dance. Do you know whom I mean by Isadora? You would, wouldn't you? And it's all self-expression, absolutely divine. Yes. We were given little tunics, and so we pranced. Nobody told us how to do it. We were just allowed to respond to the music.

[8:57] Pam: Interesting. So, there was no disciplined structure to the classes. It wasn't ballet per se.

[9:05] Diana Rigg: Oh God, no, no, no, no. This was just, it was teacher, I think, having a fag around the corner.

[9:11] Pam: That means cigarette.

[9:20] Diana Rigg: That means cigarette. I speak English. Anyway, she was taking a break. She just put the music on, and went around the corner to relax, and said, you know, get on with it. Nobody told us what to do.

[9:52] Pam: So, when did it first occur to you that you might want to act?

[9:58] Diana Rigg: It was about 11. I was about 11, and I loved words. I loved poetry, and that lit the fire, lit the flame. And it is a flame, and it is a fire, because it's passion, isn't it? I feel passionate about it.

[10:14] Pam: Did you do any performing locally when you were a kid?

[10:20] Diana Rigg: There were school plays. We did one play, I do remember, which was called Wild Decembers, you can imagine, not very good. And it was about the Brontes, the Brontes sisters. And I played Emily, outrageously, because, of course, I'd read that they all died of the lung disease.

[10:47] Pam: Tuberculosis or consumption?

[10:52] Diana Rigg: Cue for coughing. I coughed all the way through the performance. Everybody else didn't get a chance.

[11:02] Pam: Just full-on Camille.

[11:03] Diana Rigg: Yeah. But interestingly enough, my instincts must have been sort of quite... Because I knew nothing. I hadn't seen any theatre. I'd seen pantomime, but not straight theatre. And I asked my father... We lived in Yorkshire, and we lived quite close to Howarth, which is where they were brought up. And I asked my father to take me there, because I wanted to research, which, when I think back, was really quite sort of imaginative of me. And I do know that I had a very strong imagination. I mean, this is something that I have in London worked with children, not in drama, but immigrant children, teaching them how to read and to speak English. And it's the imagination in children, which you are dealing with, which I think is sacred. It is wonderful. And I had this imagination, and have always had this imagination, thank God. So, for example, I can be sitting next to the world's most boring man at dinner, and I'm a thousand miles away.

[12:24] Pam: Are you here now?

[12:31] Diana Rigg: I'm here now.

[12:34] Diana Rigg: But Winston Churchill has a wonderful phrase about that, whenever he had encountered anything that was terribly boring, he said, I lend myself to the occasion. And that's what I do.

[12:51] Pam: So, when you were doing this play, and coughing up a storm, and probably stealing focus from the other actors...

[12:57] Diana Rigg: Oh, not probably, definitely.

[13:01] Pam: Was that a turn on? Was that exciting?

[13:02] Diana Rigg: Of course it was. It was wonderful. Covered in green powder, I seem to remember, because I was extremely robust, 11-year-old or 12-year-old, and they tried to make me look ill. Do you think, you mentioned Pantos, how many of you guys have been to a pantomime in England? They're sort of very broad holiday shows where the audience participates by yelling back at the stage things like, he's right behind you, and things like that. But it always occurred to me that because you, from a young age, go to the theater and understand that you're a participant, the arts become almost more vital and more knowable to your average English person. It's not a highfalutin art form.

[13:49] Diana Rigg: No, no, it isn't. It remains expensive, of course. So, not a lot of people go there, or can afford to go there, unless it's subsidized. And do you think that Pantos in any way seed the population for an appreciation for the arts?

[14:14] Diana Rigg: Well, I suppose, yeah, yeah, but it's sort of kind of separate to the main thrust of theater. It's once a year at Christmas, so it's not a constant rhythm in life. It just feels like a good gateway drug.

[14:30] Diana Rigg: Yes, it is for children, yes. And then what was your first, or how did you transition from school? I should first say, how did you decide to study theater after high school? I had a teacher, most of us do, teachers that lead us. I had a teacher. She was called an elocution teacher, but that's supposedly helping you to speak properly, but she did poetry with me. And she said to my parents, she thought that I should try for RADA. RADA is like Juilliard, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

[15:12] Diana Rigg: Yeah. You really have to believe me when I tell you that in those days, actors and actresses didn't have the gravitas that they have today, for the most part. Certainly not in the Yorkshire that I was living in at the age of 15, 16, which is when I did my audition for RADA. You were tantamount to being a bit of a tart, frankly, loose with the morals and a lot of makeup and frightfully over the top, is what we say. And so when I said to my parents, I wanted to be an actress, they were a bit taken aback. And my last term at school went into the head mistress, as one did, and she asked us what we wanted to be. Most of them said they wanted to be secretaries or nurses. And I said, I wanted to be an actress and she paled. I mean, she had no words of encouragement for me at all. So off I went to RADA.

[16:24] Diana Rigg: What was that audition like? Do you remember? Oh yes, I do remember. Yeah. It was a lot of very serious people at the end of a room and you had to sort of walk towards them and you had to do two pieces. You had to do Shakespeare and a modern piece. I think I did Fie, Fie, I knit that threatening unkind brow from Catherine. I never got to play Catherine ever, which is one of the great tragedies of my life because I'd love to do it. Anyway, I did that. I can't remember what I did for a modern. Anyway, that was it. And that was it. And then you got in. And I got in. That's pretty great. But I didn't know what I was getting into. I had no idea.

[17:11] Diana Rigg: What did you find when you got to London? Well, I think I can speak about it better in retrospect in the sense that we had a gentleman to teach us fencing. We had a lady to teach us voice. We had movement. We had verse speaking by a darling little old lady called Nell Carter who was well into her retirement years. The teachers weren't particularly inspirational. They were not. I have to be honest. Some of them were ex-actors. One was an ex-actor teaching us technique. Peter Bach, he was called, and he was brilliant. But then he was still acting. And in those days, it was also used by people with money as a sort of finishing school. They weren't going to ever do anything. They were going to do the debutante season and then marry Mr. Wright who had an estate somewhere. So, it wasn't the most serious drama school.

[18:32] Diana Rigg: And it's interesting because now it certainly is. To say you went to RADA is a very, very high honor. Did you feel like they were polishing rough edges off of people? Yeah, they had to do that. I mean, Albert Finney was there at the time. And the big joke is he had a Yorkshire accent. And as he left RADA, he said, oh, thank you very much. It's been lovely. And the teacher said, not at all. It was lovely for me too, dear.

[19:03] Diana Rigg: So, they all were secretly from Yorkshire. No, he turned her. Oh, he turned her. And to what extent do you think that has remained the same? Because now there's, at least in acting schools here, there's a greater premium on mining your truest self. So, if you're from Yorkshire, they would kind of hone and make that the best Yorkshire. You see, you mustn't ask me questions to get me irritated.

[19:38] Diana Rigg: Bring it. Let's hear it. It's like a friend of mine came to me and she said, I've just done a rehearsal. She was going to do As You Like It. She was playing Rosalind. I've just done a rehearsal with my Celia. She said, do you mind if I play everything out front? Because I'm dyslexic. That's got to get a laugh, boys and girls. So, are you saying that you... I don't care what your private problem is. Your problem is to work with what you've got on the page and get it right. There's a lovely word called subsume. Subsume yourself.

[20:36] Diana Rigg: Oh, interestingly enough, I warned him. I'm in my anecdotage, right? I have an anecdote for every quest. Feel free to leave. But this springs to mind and here is a major... You'll hear quite a lot of name dropping, by the way. Please, we welcome it. My first major name drop, right? I was invited to Harvard for a ceremony which was honoring Arthur Miller and we were both there very early and you never know what to do. So, I suggested we went and had a drink. Of course. And so, I had the very great privilege of talking to him one-to-one and he's not a man of many words. So, it was up to me to keep the conversation going and I asked him a series of questions, one of which was, I said, over the years from the first performance to what you see now, it must be absolutely fascinating to have remarked upon all the changes that have taken place in attitude and social situations. And what is the greatest change that has taken place with actors playing your roles between when they were first played and now?

[22:14] Diana Rigg: And there was a bit of a pause and he gave me a one-word answer which was, personality. And I knew exactly what he meant, that they were bringing their own personality to the part and subsumation was not taking place. In other words, in other words, they've forgotten to serve. Actors are here on the stage to serve the play, the director, and the audience.

[22:52] Diana Rigg: I like that attitude. That's great. It's interesting because there's definitely a school of thought that the actors are participants in the creation, particularly of a new play. I think they might well be, in which case, it's great. If the director and the playwright want their input, it's perfectly valid. Have you... I've done new plays. I've done two stop-art plays. And believe me, Tom doesn't want yours.

[23:36] Diana Rigg: That makes sense. What's the difference for you between doing a new play and a classic? Oh, that's easy. The point is you don't have the weight of history when you're creating a part. No critic can come up and say, Sarah Bloggs played it five years ago and she was so much better than Diana. There's none of that. You're free to imprint whatever you wish and they cannot quibble.

[24:11] Diana Rigg: And just getting back to the chronology, after RADA, your first job, was it Caucasian Chalk Circle? Oh, that was the final performance. Yeah. I wasn't terribly good. I was... Yeah, I wasn't. No, I... With the play? The point is you know you're not good when you're leaving drama school, when the favorite gets to play the evening performance and you get to play the matinee. I was the matinee. I did learn subsequently that Lady Adoha, who was playing the evening, was having an affair with the principal of RADA. There you go. That must feel better in retrospect.

[25:56] Diana Rigg: But you see, these things happen in the theater. They do. And it's amazing that you're able to look back on certain performances, because you've done so many, to be able to say, this one I don't value as much as this other one. It's not a question of valuing it. It's whether you were any good. I don't think I was very good. But then I went into rep. Now, here's where I really want to tell you about this, because there's a very famous writer called J.B. Priestley in England who wrote a book called Lost Empires, about lost theaters. It's wonderful. If you're interested in history, try and get hold of it. It's a very good read as well. He wrote An Inspector Calls.

[26:42] Diana Rigg: Yeah. And I was an ASM playing small parts in repertory. Now, it was a new play every week. And I was an ASM and playing small parts. And I had to run around the town borrowing things for the theater. It was Chesterfield. It was a northern town, very poor. I was in digs with a widow and her small son. And the lavatory was at the bottom of the garden. And there was an umbrella by the back door to get to the lavatory. And if I wanted a bath, which I was... She filled a tub in front of the fire with hot water. That was the way one was living, an equity minimum. Running around the town trying to find an Asperdistra. Can I borrow an Asper... No, go away. All that was happening. Meanwhile, in the prop room, Ronnie Harwood, who wrote The Dresser and wrote the film The Pianist, which got an Oscar, he, in order to save money, was living in the prop room with his girlfriend.

And he'd been to university, so the director kept on asking him what plays to do. And he'd always suggest a play with a bed in it. And I had difficulty getting into the prop room, knocking on the door. Can I come in? I need to get some cups and saucers. And so I'd scuttle in like a mouse to try not to disturb their domestic life. And years later, we're both in First Class Lounge, British Airways, and he recognizes me and comes across and we laugh about those old days. And he said, you know, I was sitting in this chauffeur-driven limousine car with the Oscar on my knee, and Natasha, my wife, turned to me and said, it's a long way from Chesterfield. Isn't that good?

[28:16] Diana Rigg: Anyway, to carry on with what I did, it was the best job in the world.

[28:27] Diana Rigg: I was at the bottom, but I would be prompting and in costume, and here would be the lighting cue board, and behind me was a panotrope, which was a turntable, and I had a record on it with various different sound effects, car arriving, car leaving, or there would be music for the intervals and things like that, and you'd turn around and put the arm down for the cue, or you'd get up actually and put it, because you had to be precise, because the different cues were really quite small on one, you know those black records? I thought I was the only person who remembered them. Anyway, that's, and of course, I sometimes got things wrong. Instead of playing the Riders of Valkyries at the end of Act One of An Agatha Christie, I played Jimmy Shand in his Dancing Dusman.

Didn't go down well. But at the end, or when it came time for me to do my one small whatever scene, somebody would relieve me of the prompt book, and then I'd go and play it, and then at the end I'd put the prompt book down, and there would be a rope there, and I'd pull the curtain down, and then take it up again for the call. Up, down, up, down. And the sense of satisfaction of having put the props out, of having run the play, I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it was. And of course, nowadays, it's all computerized, and I'm a very confused person. But I'm sure you had a great appreciation once you were on stage for all the people working the pan of vision or whatever it was. I mean, working the record player and the props and all of that.

[30:32] Alan Seales: But once you got on stage and you were acting.

[30:36] Diana Rigg: Oh, no, that's true. I mean, I've got a definite affinity with stage management, definitely, because I've been there. I mean, they don't do what I did. Like, we only had one sofa, so it had to be recovered every week. And the other ASM would, this would happen on a Saturday night. You know, we'd take the set down and we'd put the other set up. And the other ASM, I'm still in touch with him. He's 94. He lives in Australia. We'd start at the other end of the sofa, covering it with copy decks and hammer and tacks and things. And imagine the mega row when we met in the middle and his pleats were different to my pleats.

[31:27] Alan Seales: So, how long did you do that before The Avengers happened?

[31:27] Diana Rigg: Oh, years. I was 18, 19. Avengers happened when I was 25. I spent five years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, working my way up. I did actually carry spears. In Midsummer Night's Dream, Hippolyta had these butch women behind her. So, I have carried a spear.

[31:53] Alan Seales: And did you act with Olivier?

[31:55] Diana Rigg: I did. He was... Okay, I've got two stories about Olivier. One, when I did Lady Macbeth with Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins was not entirely successful and left rather early. Anyway, I had a run through with him before we opened. And Sir watched it. And he obviously didn't like it at all because when we'd finished it, he didn't say anything. And we all kind of sort of rather dribbled away. And then he suddenly beckoned me and he was a naughty man. And we weren't in costume. I was in jeans and a t-shirt. And I thought, oh, good, he's going to give me a note. Oh, lovely. Yeah. And I just leant towards him. When he was naughty, he used to put his tongue under like this. And he said to me, you weren't wearing a brassiere during that run through, were you, darling?

And I went... And I went, no. And he went, very disturbing. And that is all he said. Anyway, years later, I worked with him in King Lear. He'd never played King Lear, but he desperately wanted to before he croaked, before he died. And he was pretty old by that time. And so he did it for the television. And I played Regan. And it was heartbreak because he, although he was doing it for television, he desperately, desperately wanted to get through all those speeches without a cut, as if he was on stage. And he simply couldn't do it. And we watched him, this old lion, desperately trying to get it right. And we were all willing him on, and he never, ever achieved it. And actually, to this day, I have not been able to bring myself. I've got a copy, but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it. I couldn't. A tragedy was played out while we taped King Lear, another tragedy.

[34:34] Alan Seales: Fascinating. Life like art. And then for your first television show, The Avengers, what was it like to suddenly go from the stage to what became one of the greatest hits of British television?

[34:49] Diana Rigg: Well, that wasn't my first. I did a couple of things beforehand. But it was my first major one. I hadn't seen it, you see, because I was busy working. I didn't have a television. So I didn't know what I was getting into at all. And they asked me to go and audition. And you had to play a scene with Patrick, who was absolutely adorable. And then you had to fight the fight. Stuntman was called Ray Austin. You had to fight him, I think, with a handbag or something. I can't remember. But I got to audition, if you like, about four o'clock in the afternoon. Poor Ray had been hit about the head by these highly ambitious actresses who battered him to pieces all day with their handbags. So I went easy on him. And I think I got the job as a result.

[35:56] Alan Seales: And how long were you on The Avengers?

[35:56] Diana Rigg: I was only on two years. I got so tired of finding dead bodies. Here we go again. And what do we say? I loved Patrick. But I wanted to move on. I knew I wanted to learn more. I wanted to experience more. And so it was two years and then I moved. And I actually didn't move on to anything. I mean, it was quite an honorable departure. I didn't have a job.

[36:26] Alan Seales: And after that, what was your next major job?

[36:26] Diana Rigg: Before that, I had a little confrontation with the management when I discovered that as a lead working God knows what hours, I was earning less than the cameraman. And so I gave an interview saying I thought this was quite wrong. And nobody supported me. I was quite by myself in that respect. And I was actually, they wrote about me as if I was a terribly mercenary woman. Do you know? There you go. Now see what's happening.

[37:03] Alan Seales: Yeah. I mean, in some ways, that was probably the beginning there of a larger awareness.

[37:12] Diana Rigg: Yeah. It was got nothing to do with men, women, any of that. It's unfair. That's all. And if anything's unfair, I'm going to say something about it.

[37:25] Alan Seales: And do you find yourself to be a political person generally?

[37:29] Diana Rigg: Not really. No, I despise most of them.

[37:34] Alan Seales: People or politics?

[37:36] Diana Rigg: Politics. I love people.

[37:40] Alan Seales: And can you tell us a bit about what it's like to work here in the United States as opposed to working in England? Is there a difference in the audiences and the actors?

[37:49] Diana Rigg: Well, the audiences are just... Have you been to see the show?

[37:53] Alan Seales: Yes. I've seen it. This group is going tomorrow afternoon.

[37:57] Diana Rigg: The audiences are won over already. I mean, it's just glorious. You walk on stage and they go, welcome. And it's just so lovely. And very spoiling because we certainly wouldn't get that in England.

[38:10] Alan Seales: How do you find audiences in England?

[38:16] Diana Rigg: Well, they're much more critical and less overwhelmingly accepting of you. It's definitely harder to get a standing ovation in England than it is here.

[38:30] Alan Seales: Yeah, very much so.

[38:32] Diana Rigg: And your first American appearance, was it in Madea?

[38:37] Alan Seales: Yes. No, no. It was The Misanthrope.

[38:40] Diana Rigg: The Misanthrope. And was that your first time in the States?

[38:46] Alan Seales: No. I can't remember.

[38:49] Diana Rigg: Do you remember what it...

[38:50] Alan Seales: Senior moment.

[38:53] Diana Rigg: That's all right. I can't remember what I had for breakfast. But was it a culture shock to be here?

[39:01] Alan Seales: No. I'd seen movies.

[39:05] Diana Rigg: And it lived up to the movies.

[39:06] Alan Seales: Yeah. It did. I loved it. I loved it. Oh, yeah. I had an American boyfriend. My first boyfriend. He was an American.

[39:14] Alan Seales: And he prepared you?

[39:16] Diana Rigg: Not really.

[39:25] Alan Seales: So, your American cast mates now. I mean, you are surrounded by just a gorgeous group.

[39:37] Diana Rigg: Are you still thinking about the boyfriend?

[39:44] Alan Seales: How long did you rehearse for My Fair Lady here?

[39:49] Diana Rigg: Oh, a long time. Yeah. Bart's very specific. He's a pointillist. He goes, you know, dip, dip, dip, dip, dip, dip. Let's get all the details.

[40:01] Alan Seales: So, was it four weeks, five weeks?

[40:01] Diana Rigg: Six. I think it was. I could be wrong. Don't quote.

[40:05] Alan Seales: Still, that's quite long. I would say, generally, rehearsals in England run longer. You get more time than we generally get here.

[40:12] Diana Rigg: Oh, really?

[40:13] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[40:13] Diana Rigg: Ah, no. I mean, when I did Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, we had four weeks.

[40:19] Alan Seales: Four weeks total?

[40:20] Diana Rigg: Four weeks for a three-act play.

[40:23] Alan Seales: That's short.

[40:23] Diana Rigg: That's short.

[40:24] Alan Seales: Where did you do it?

[40:25] Diana Rigg: At the Almeida.

[40:27] Alan Seales: Not bad. Do you know the Almeida?

[40:28] Diana Rigg: And we transferred.

[40:29] Alan Seales: Phenomenal. To the West End.

[40:31] Diana Rigg: Yeah.

[40:32] Alan Seales: How was that play? Because it's one of my favorites.

[40:34] Diana Rigg: Oh, it's a killer. But it's a wonderful, wonderful play.

[40:40] Alan Seales: Who was your George?

[40:41] Diana Rigg: George was David Suchet.

[40:45] Alan Seales: We love David Suchet.

[40:47] Diana Rigg: Poirot. Yeah. He was very good.

[40:51] Alan Seales: Did that... That relationship is so toxic, the two of them. Did that seep into your life?

[40:55] Diana Rigg: Yes, it did. It does. I mean, I defy anybody to play that play and like your leading man. Because you really dislike each other by the end. It's nothing... It's there. It's astonishing. Really astonishing. How I don't believe in it. I mean, I walk away from a performance and I'm me immediately. And I've done this all my life, but suddenly I found there was a lot of bitterness there.

[41:29] Alan Seales: And it works both ways. When you fall in love with someone on stage, do you...

[41:33] Diana Rigg: Never done that.

[41:37] Alan Seales: I would avoid it. Anybody here on the cusp?

[41:45] Diana Rigg: No.

[41:52] Alan Seales: I think that's a beautiful way to end this conversation. Let's thank Dame Diana Rigg.

[41:59] Diana Rigg: Thank you.