Rosebud

Gyles Brandreth’s
Podcast Episode with Rupert Everett

A podcast worth noting for Wildeans is Rosebud—a series of interviews conducted by the estimable Gyles Brandreth. Notable not because Gyles is now a podcaster—surely a part preordained for a journalist, novelist, non-fiction writer, publisher, television presenter, after-dinner speaker, theatre producer, university chancellor, former politician, and perennial novelty knitwear model.

No—it is more pertinently notable because Gyles is also the Honorary President of the Oscar Wilde Society. And it’s more recently notable because on March 21, 2024 his guest on the podcast was Rupert Everett, an actor who also has strong connections to Oscar Wilde.

Gyles Brandreth’s podcast is called Rosebud because it deals with beginnings—an allusion that will be familiar to anyone who knows the plot of Orson Welles’s classic movie Citizen Kane.

The Rosebud podcast episode in question features Rupert Everett—who holds the unique distinction of not only having played Wilde’s fictional characters both on stage and screen, but also having portrayed Wilde himself both on stage and screen. The latter two embodiments respectively being David Hare’s play The Judas Kiss (2016) and in Everett’s own movie The Happy Prince (2018).

In the podcast Everett is frank about his self-identified flourishing from sissy to sex maniac; thankfully, after the TMI of anecdotal openness, the interview becomes more psychologically revealing. Everett discovers that licentiousness was, in reality, a prison that denied him a larger intellectual and more discerning capacity for his work. A missed opportunity that he relates concerns a youthful but abortive project with Orson Welles. Everett says that only after he turned 50 was he able to concentrate on his capacity for being an actor, writer, and director. His fear is that his talent was too latent for him to be taken seriously.

Sounds very Wildean, but it’s not applicable in this quarter. Because, taking the Rosebud motif and the encounter with Welles as a neat segue, Everett’s mature desire to be taken seriously can be found in my review of his film The Happy Prince which critically examined Everett’s role as an auteur progenitor of Welles—noting structural and mise en scène influences from Citizen Kane.

The links to my review, and Gyles’s podcast, are below.

It is worth noting that Gyles has confided that his guest on a future episode, already recorded, will be Oscar Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland.

Links:

Gyles Brandreth’s podcast (Apple)

Review of The Happy Prince (2018).

Preview of The Judas Kiss (2016).

The Oscar Wilde Society