{"id":827408,"date":"2026-11-07T20:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T20:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/827408\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T20:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T20:36:10","slug":"rob-brydons-battle-to-stay-in-character-playing-peter-otoole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/827408\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Brydon’s battle to stay in character playing Peter O’Toole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actor and comedian Rob Brydon has said it was difficult to stay in character while playing the role of a legendary actor portraying a man who was frequently too hungover to do his job.<\/p>\n

He was speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme<\/a> about his role in new radio drama, Peter O’Toole Is Unwell.<\/p>\n

It encompasses O’Toole’s critically acclaimed stage role in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell in the West End in 1999, along with his universally panned performance of Macbeth in 1980.<\/p>\n

Brydon, who grew up in Baglan, Port Talbot, said taking on the role “felt like a challenge once we got into the studio” and he battled “to stay on the saddle” to remain in character.<\/p>\n

The 61-year-old, known for his role as Uncle Bryn in Gavin and Stacey, said he initially thought “I could probably get close to his voice but there were a lot of words” written by award-winning playwright Terry Johnson.<\/p>\n

The title of the audio drama is a riff on Keith Waterhouse’s play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, in which O’Toole played the title role of journalist Jeffrey Bernard to rave reviews in 1999.<\/p>\n

It is said to derive from the words used by The Spectator magazine<\/a> when the journalist had missed the deadline to file his column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor and comedian Rob Brydon has said it was difficult to stay in character while playing the role…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-827408","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\/827408","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=827408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}