{"id":166587,"date":"2025-09-28T19:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T19:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/166587\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T19:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T19:25:09","slug":"why-actor-michael-sheen-initially-rejected-blair-role-in-the-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/166587\/","title":{"rendered":"Why actor Michael Sheen initially rejected Blair role in The Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added: &#8220;If someone had come up to me when I was at Rada and said, &#8216;one day, you will be playing Tony Blair in a drama for Stephen Frears in the day, and going and playing Caligula at the Donmar theatre at night, I mean, I can&#8217;t imagine anything better.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I remember thinking being tired is a very small price to play.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He also explained the way in which he was initially approached and asked to play the Blair role.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I went to go and see a play I remember, when I was back in London for a little bit, and whilst I was there, a lady came up to me who I&#8217;d never met before, in the interval.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;And she said, &#8216;I&#8217;m working on a love story about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and casting it, and I think you should play Tony Blair&#8217;, and I just thought she was a mad woman, &#8216;what are you talking about?&#8217;, and this was The Deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was committed to doing a play, and I said, &#8216;well, I can&#8217;t do it because I&#8217;m doing this play&#8217;, and everyone was like, &#8216;well, you need to not do that play&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sheen said everything was worked out so he could play Caligula &#8220;at night and filming The Deal in the day&#8221; so &#8220;someone would run on to the set and say, &#8216;right, you&#8217;ve got to go now&#8230; and I would run off&#8221; and jump on to his motorcycle taxi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sheen&#8217;s song choices on Desert Island Discs included Ultravox&#8217;s Vienna, Talk Talk&#8217;s Desire and the Rolling Stones&#8217; Gimme Shelter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He added: &#8220;If someone had come up to me when I was at Rada and said, &#8216;one day,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-166587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}