{"id":470732,"date":"2026-06-01T13:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/470732\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:55:11","slug":"hugh-bonneville-talks-the-celebrity-traitors-rumor-as-he-opens-sxsw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/470732\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugh Bonneville Talks \u2018The Celebrity Traitors\u2019 Rumor As He Opens SXSW"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDownton Abbey and Paddington star Hugh Bonneville<\/a> shot down rumors that he is in the frame to appear in The Celebrity Traitors<\/a> as he opened SXSW London<\/a> with an onstage conversation on Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI keep being told I\u2019m on Traitors, but no. I know Richard E. Grant is, because I tried to call him the other day\u2026 and his phone has been removed from him,\u201d Bonneville replied to a question on whether he is set to appear in the show.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe UK star was in conversation with UK Minister for Trade Chris Bryant, who also has strong connections to the UK\u2019s creative industries through his previous post as Minister of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe talk kicked off the second edition of SXSW London, running from June 1 to 6 in some 20 venues in the UK capital\u2019s Shoreditch neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn keeping with the Austin SXSW original, the festival will bring together professionals from the creative, tech and business worlds with a lineup encompassing a conference program with some 800 speakers; 40 film screenings and an extensive live music offering. <\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline will also be out in force at the festival on June 2 with the Deadline Reality TV Summit<\/a>, featuring speakers from Netflix, Two Four, Remarkable, UTAS UK, Fremantle and Studio Lambert.<\/p>\n

\n\tBryant announced Bonneville as one of UK\u2019s biggest exports thanks to his roles as the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey and Henry Brown in Paddington, and revealed that they shared a tie through the fact they are both alumni of \u00a0the UK\u2019s National Youth Theatre.<\/p>\n

\n\tBonneville addressed the UK\u2019s position as a major international filming hub, noting he felt the mood in the industry was more positive in recent months after a lull in production but acknowledged fears over AI.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUnlike the ministers, I have no statistics at my fingertips. I only have anecdotal evidence and feelings about where we are at\u2026 I was talking to a barista from the film world who said that since Downton Abbey, his work had grown and grown and then subsided last year, but he says there\u2019s good prospects on the horizon. So that\u2019s coming from the catering side of things, it\u2019s a good barometer of where things are at,\u201d said the actor.<\/p>\n

\n\tBonneville revealed he had felt nervous a year ago about the amount of studio capacity that was coming online in the UK, even if he acknowledged it was needed, pointing to the tricky logistics of shooting Paddington in Peru.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the latter point, he suggested that only reason the shoot at the Sky Studios Elstree in late 2023 had been feasible was because the Wicked shoot was forced to shut down due to the writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 strikes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[It] is designed as a TV studio, so it was completely hopeless for a film unit which goes out on location every so often to do exterior shots. Luckily, the strikes came along. Wicked had to move out of the studio so we could park all our trucks in the Wicked studio, and were able to make it work. So, there was a weird uplift, in a sense, for our side of filming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe noted Paddingon in Peru had been able to continue shooting while Wicked went offline because it was a French production produced by Studiocanal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were able to work under our European contracts. It obviously decimated a huge number of jobs, not only in the U.S., but also here\u2026 it was a very delicate time,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd yet, there was this building and building of new studios and contraction of stuff being made\u2026 I think we\u2019re at a sort of crossroads where hopefully the pendulum that\u2019s been swinging around in quite extreme directions will find a centre and obviously the big elephant in the room is AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe noted how digital technology had been impacting the sector long before the rise of AI, \u00a0revealing that for Paddington in Peru none of the cast had set foot in Latin America.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause of this wonderful new digital age we live in, we never left the M25,\u201d he said, referring to the orbital highway that encircles London.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a lot of crossing of ravines and so on\u2026 it involved a platform and a couple of boxes. When Sony bought the American rights, they said you need to cut the budget by 70 million. The first thing to go was 200 people flying to South America,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe crew did, I hasten to add. The second unit spent six weeks in the jungle, so every shot you see is genuine. It\u2019s just that the actors were put on top afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTackling the current production malaise in L.A., Bonneville suggested Hollywood had priced itself out of the market.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love my colleagues in Hollywood\u2026 every producer there or location manager will tell you that Hollywood itself has traditionally priced itself almost out of the market. Runaway production has runaway for a reason. It goes to Canada, it goes to other parts of the States because of tax incentives and breaks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHollywood has turned into a very expensive place to film\u2026 it\u2019s not imploding, but it\u2019s certainly contracting at a massive rate. And it\u2019s a worrying time for my colleagues there, and I\u2019m talking about everyone from the teamsters to the baristas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tQuestioned on his personal thoughts on AI and how he felt about his likeness being used in future AI productions, Bonneville said he was \u201cnervous\u201d about current developments but praised Micheal Caine, who recently licensed his voice to audio-focused generative AI company ElevenLabs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re very much in the foothills of this which will become a bigger experience for all. I\u2019m nervous\u2026 Michael Caine has been very savvy in his twilight years. I believe he has licensed his voice, his iconic voice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLet\u2019s face it, you can scrape anyone\u2019s voice and use it with impunity and that\u2019s the risk. I keeping being told, \u2018They\u2019re using your voice\u2019\u2026 and then I listen to it and I can tell it\u2019s not me, but it won\u2019t be long before it will be me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe key issue, he said, was ensuring that the people in the creative industries who make the original content get their share of the profits in the AI chain. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI am nervous but obviously, I\u2019m excited. We\u2019ve already seen people like Paul Newman in adverts\u2026. How do you copyright that and protect IP. The world of IP is the Wild West. Are you big enough to protect it, our we big enough to protect it? How much are the online platforms responsible\u2026 again these are bigger questions than me,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Downton Abbey and Paddington star Hugh Bonneville shot down rumors that he is in the frame to appear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,180490,85,46,218888,26777],"class_list":["post-470732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-hugh-bonneville","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sxsw-london","tag-the-celebrity-traitors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}