playwright and director jonathan lynn
playwright antony Jay
The latest British Invasion: The politics and personalities of Yes, Prime Minister An interview with Jonathan Lynn by amy levinson
Amy Levinson: Did you and Antony Jay know when you set out to write this play that you were going to use your original characters from the television series you co-created — Yes Minster and Yes, Prime Minister. JL: Oh, yes. We’d been asked since the series first aired more than 30 years ago if we would turn it into a stage play. In England this series is much like Frasier or Friends, it’s always on the air, even all these years later. But Tony (Antony Jay) and I chose to stop the series when we did because we felt we’d said what we wanted to say. You know, there’s not enough money when you’re writing a series for British television to just carry on, come what may. And then Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, who had created the roles of Jim and Sir Humphrey, died within a short time of one another. At that point, with those two extraordinary P4 PERFORMANCES MAGAZINe
actors gone, we felt, well that’s that. But four years ago, when we realized we were coming up to thirty years since the show had first aired, I was thinking about the fact that Daniel Craig had just become the most popular James Bond ever, and he was maybe the seventh person to play that role. And Dr. Who has been played by numerous actors over the last 40 years. Not to mention Sherlock Holmes! Why shouldn’t we try Sir Humphrey and Jim played by other people? We didn’t know if the audience would accept them but we wanted to see if the characters were strong enough to stand on their own feet. I didn’t want this to be seen as though it were an interesting spin off from a well known series, I wanted the play to be accepted on its own terms. We wanted to write a play that was a play. So when it was time to cast it, we did it as differently as we could. The actors who