Eddie Izzard on Acting, Marathons, and Activism

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And now, turning to the theater and reimagining an old classic. Emmy Award winner and Tony nominee, Eddie Izzard, is a standup comedian and actor who’s performed across the world in four different languages. Now, she has developed Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” into a solo show. Playing all 19 characters in an epic performance. Here she is with Hari Sreenivasan discussing her off-Broadway show and future projects.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Eddie Izzard, thanks so much for joining us. First of, I was fortunate enough to see the play. And why this play? Why now?

EDDIE IZZARD, ACTRESS, “GREAT EXPECTATIONS” AND STAND-UP COMEDIAN: Why now? I — there is no particular thing on the now, except for I am of a certain age — I’m 22. And at this very ripe old age of 32, I — it hit — well, it hit me about four or five years ago but I’ve never read the work of literature. I am severely, expertly (ph) dyslexic distressed. I got tested. So, I got half of the dyslexic traits and half I haven’t. I seem to be like a high functioning dyslexic. Spelling is all over the place. Cat with a K. Ceiling with and F and all that kind of stuff. Writing is not very good. Thank, God, though — you know, typing came in and stuff. But, anyway, so reading is very slow, particularly, reading is very slow. So, great work of literature, you know, tend to be larger books and smaller ones. I’m not going to read that, I watched the film, but I thought I had never read one. So, I had this kind of brilliant — I think it’s a brilliant which I — I know — and you may not know this but audiobooks are on the rise. So, I said to my agents, would anyone (ph) come help me up there in the U.K. like to commission me to read an audiobook? So, this is the way I was going to get paid to read the book.

SREENIVASAN: True.

IZZARD: You have to do it, you know. It’s three months in the studio, it’s 20 hours a book, including quotations. And to add to this, why Dickens, a success one? Because I’m exactly 150 years younger than Dickens. He’s 7th of February 1812, I’m 7th of February 1962. And exactly 150 years, what does that mean? That means nothing in particular. But I decided to run with it. Go with Dickens. I did the audiobook. And then I realized, using Richard Pryor’s technique, which I use in my stand- up, which probably have developed this — well, he had this guy. I mean, I didn’t have it all the time but sometimes you don’t have guys and he’d go, what are you doing over there? I don’t what I’m doing. Just change — just back up a bit. Well, I will back up a bit. And he would just turn about a quarter of a turn and play these two characters together. And I thought, ah, I’ll do that in my stand-up, because I used to be a sketch comedian before I was a stand-up.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

IZZARD: So, it’s all through my stand-up that multiple characters talking. And I realized I could take that technique and put it into drama as well. And that is how we get to this day. Haven’t thought about how frank and easy way about him, that I found rather taking. My father tells me that you were acquainted with Miss Havisham. She sent it to me once.

SREENIVASAN: When you talk about this quarter turn, you make it sound relatively simple, but on-stage, how many characters are you cycling through in these, what, two hours to 15, 20?

IZZARD: It’s 19. It’s 19 of it. Some of them, I’d say two characters, you know, (INAUDIBLE) at the end, I wake up and there’s two people in the room who have one line each. So, I’m saying that’s one character. But it’s 19, 20, something around there.

SREENIVASAN: For people who might not remember what this story was about, summarize, if you can, what you were trying to convey on stage? What is the story?

IZZARD: “Great Expectations”, I think it’s almost like — it might have come from a dream of it’s — it’s kind of what Dickens would’ve wanted to happen to him. When he was a kid, the idea of — that someone just turning up and saying, you have an inheritance. You’re going to come into money. And suddenly become the gentlemen. So, this is a story of Pip — a kid called Pip, and he helps out this very tough, rough, threatening character in the very first scenes who is a murderer, a thief, or some sort of villain, and he escapes from prison and he’s forced to help him, this guy, by scaring him. And then that disappears. The person is recaptured. He just brings him of all kinds and food and stuff and that all goes bad for that criminal. And then life goes on and he meets this — or he has to go to this strange woman’s house, Miss Havisham, and she has a beautiful adopted daughter called Estella. And it’s just a whole relationship with Estella and money, and gentility. He wants to rise and — as life goes on, he realizes he’s got it all back to front, and then he hates this story. It’s him becoming a wiser person. Writes a passage. Learning to be a more mature person, which before he’s just after money and advancement, and having relationships with the most beautiful women, and not being a blacksmith’s apprentice and an orphan as he is. His life is so tough at the beginning, but only one person who shows him any love. And he dismisses this person who shown him love, and wants to go off to this flashy life. So, he becomes a wiser person, and it’s a bittersweet ending. It’s a great classic. “Great Expectations”, it’s a great classic from Dickens.

SREENIVASAN: So, I’ve got to ask — I mean, two hours on stage is a physical feat in and of itself. How tiring is it? And I don’t think most people in the audience know about your marathon level energy. So, what’s harder? Doing something like this where your mentally as tuned in and focused for two hours, along with what you’re doing on stage, or running marathons, which you are actually pretty famous for?

IZZARD: Well, I have. I’ve ran 130 marathons, but I’m a lot of people (INAUDIBLE) but I do multiple marathons, as you mentioned, which is, I guess 43 and 51 days in the U.K. and I did 27, 20 something days in South Africa. So, stuff like. It’s for raising money and it’s a good thing. But each marathon, it has this physically, massively draining, a certain amount of mental — it’s the tenacity in your head that puts — what you have to keep going. But on stage, physically, it’s not that much, but mentally, it’s huge. And I don’t tend to notice it. It’s like an ill. If I ever get ill, get a cold, and I find as you’re trying to get better each day to help you get your performance and get through this cold, it just drains all this energy out of yourself. And I haven’t got ill this whole run here in New York, so that’s great. But the mental energy is intense. And you have to do this very off thing which you might have — which you would have noticed, which is you — if Pip — if you’re playing Pip and he’s getting really rather, out of a romance situation or trying to get through to Estella, Estella is not there emotionally. She’s just, sort of, blank. Blank. So, you have to flip to her, flip to him, flip to Miss Havisham, flip to Pip, and jumping to these emotions is rather odd thing. You don’t normally do that in — if you’re acting a single role, because you will probably go through an arc in a scene with one character. You would not have flipped to the other character. So, yes. A lot of energy. I don’t know how you’d measure it, but I just do know that if you ever ill, it’s so something of — wow, there’s so much energy going to this. So, I have to be match fit every time. And I have to look forward to gigs, because you know, I do gigs in German, in French, and Spanish as well. My stand-up. So, (speaking in a foreign language). So, if you do those things, and then you go back to doing something in English, it makes English, like, that’s easy. So, I just developed my own ninja training for acting and performing, which is making it as hard as you possibly can. And then, something else you’ll do will be easier. Ending in English, has got to be easier that doing it in German.

SREENIVASAN: I also wonder about how jokes translate. I mean, you can’t literally translate something because it just might —

IZZARD: Perfectly.

SREENIVASAN: Right?

IZZARD: No, they translate perfectly. But references do not translate.

SREENIVASAN: Right.

IZZARD: So, if you’re talking about Hershey’s bars, if you’re talking about Twinkies, we don’t have them — I don’t think they exist, I think in Korea and Canada, but around the world for some reason.

SREENIVASAN: Right. Right.

IZZARD: Kit Kats, yes. Kit Kat, I hit him with a Kit Kat. OK. So, that’s great. Hit him with a Twinkie. No, that doesn’t work. So, talk about human sacrifice. You go to France, you go to the (speaking in a foreign language). Why don’t we do a human sacrifice? Crazy. You think about human sacrifices, it — back in the day they used to go, the weather is bad, the crops have failed, the Gods obviously hate us. So, we’re going to kill Steve. And then that’ll be a lot better. We all agree? And then Steve go, whoa. What do you mean? Well, Steve, it was a lottery and I didn’t like you anyway. You know — so, at that — its references that muck (ph) you up. And the rest of it, humor is human. Humor is human. And then, you know, America is famous. Immigrants are coming all around the world. Immigrants are coming. And you know you can sit and get attacked when you sit with someone. And even though they have an accent, they can make you laugh.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

IZZARD: And you got — well, how did that translate? And we don’t analyze that. We just go, oh, well, you know, in America you’re making someone laugh and therefore you’ve got American sense of humor. There is no American sense of humor. There is no British sense of humor. There is no Chinese sense of humor. There’s only a mainstream sense of humor in every country.

SREENIVASAN: You have casually referenced to how many marathons you do and how many you have done in the day, et cetera. But what is it, in your mind, that allows your body to complete such a task or, frankly, even start to take on these other mental challenges like doing comedy in different languages. Like doing, you know, one person interpretation of Dickens on stage. You know, what’s the — sort of, the — how does the clock tick?

IZZARD: I seem to have the determination gene. I think it might be genetic. I’ve had it since I was very young. So, one could say, oh, I’m determined and please, please, give me a big thumbs up or a pat on the back for that. But I think it might be built — baked into me. I — my mom passed away when I was six. I think I started performing and acting because I (INAUDIBLE) love of an audience going to someone who’s doing a very good at all (ph). I thought, I need that kind of love injection. And so, that’s what it came from which is not a bad thing to do. I don’t think because it’s a conditional love from an audience. If you do bad work on the stage, they will not get up. They’ll just go, that wasn’t very good, and walk out. So, that’s where it all started. And I think if you have a certain look, if you’re a good looking young man or young woman, you will get into a green lighting position and stay in until (ph). And so — and if you’re doing right, if you’re a good actor and they think, OK. We’ll let you green light that. If you’re not in that kind of standard character — I’m a gender trans (ph) as well, you know, then you’d better do some good work. You know, you’d better do some work that bounces out of the thing. So, I — there’s a human political element to my running marathons. That was me saying, you know, let’s reach out, let’s see if we can do good. And then — and if I — 27 marathons at 27 days, that was a salute to Nelson Mandela’s. What a great person he was. What he did. He was 27 years in prison, surely, I can give him 27 days and that might resonate with someone else. And they’d say, oh, good for you. I mean, it’s also healthy. And I look to do one thing that does multiple things. The language is because I don’t agree that Brexit is a good one. I think the pulling back and going back into smaller and smaller tribal groups, that’s humanity walking backwards. So, I go out and I look to make connections. You know, I want to go to politics. You probably know this. I stood to be a candidate as Labour member, I didn’t get in that time but I will keep going back until I get in. But I look to make connections in this world rather than break connections. I think everyone in the world has the right to have a fair chance in life. And I came out as trans 38 years ago now, and that was so hard coming out back in 1985. But it’s made me very tough to take on, sort of — kind of, impossible things because I had no one to talk to back then. I just thought, I’m doing this. I’m coming out. And I will take whatever is given to me in the streets. The abuse in the streets now, less abuse in the streets these days. More abuse online. But I just, you know, I just pushed through that and say, I exist. I’m here. This is my own body. I’m in my authentic self, so just keep moving forward. But the tenacity that I got or the training I got from coming out back in 1985 has stooped (ph) me to do, like I said, to do multiple languages, multiple marathons, and coming up with unusual ideas. My dad, always, said — well, you know, once he said to me, he said, you’ve always had crazy ideas. The difference is now, some of them have worked. And that is kind of true. Not all my crazy ideas worked, but some of them are kind of beautiful.

SREENIVASAN: Given that you have been trans for so long. What do you notice — how do you notice the changes, I guess, between when you came out and the kind of abuses then to now, when you were running for parliament? There were, still, pretty horrible things being said about you that were incredibly personal or it was not at all about your policy, it wasn’t about your plan for, you know, your campaign or your candidacy?

IZZARD: I didn’t read them so I don’t know what they said.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

IZZARD: But people would say, God, it was horrible, wasn’t it? Oh, yes. Glad I didn’t read it. So, yes, you know, I’ve been truthful and honest and open. I’m — I don’t have all the answers. You know, trans people have existed since the dawn of time. As we know, LGBTQ people have existed since the dawn of time and they’ve been pushed back on. I just exist. But I’m not going into politics to be a trans candidate. I’m just going out to be a human being who’s a candidate who happens to be trans. Some other people who are candidates, they play piano. Some of them, you know, do that. I just — I’m trying to, you know, like Barack Obama. He was an African American man but he wasn’t going to be the president of America and just deal with African American issues. He was going to be someone who is a president for the country. And that’s my attitude too, going forward. Just — I want to do things that will help people in the country. Help people in our continent in the world. Everyone has the right to have a fair chance in life and I want to fight for that. So, when I came out, there were no arguments about being trans because, you know, we weren’t even people. We weren’t even considered as citizens. That was — I felt that when I came out. That we were real outliers and I had to — part of my job was just to exist, carry on doing — I had no career, at this point. Try and get my career and just say, I happen to be trans, but this is currently what I’m doing. I happen to be trans, this is the drama. (INAUDIBLE). My sexuality really got nothing to do with this. It’s just I’m being honest about it.

SREENIVASAN: There’s a line that you have that on stage. I think Pip says, I cried myself to sleep thinking that my great expectations might have made good on someone else. And I wonder if that line resonates with you (INAUDIBLE) considering the conversation we are having now?

IZZARD: That’s what I always hoped (ph). I had this idea that — it’s kind of — a friend just said to me, it’s kind of like a Peloton in the Tour de France, the very tough cycle race and all this race. They have these things with Pelotons, it’s now a bicycle. But if you’re head of the Peloton, you are taking all the wind pressure. But people can slip stream behind. So, I thought, well, I’ll go and take whatever pressure is coming in. And if anyone says, I’m a bit like that person. That’s, kind of, roughly where I’m going. Then, hopefully I can try to be a positive example to myself. I was trying to be my own world. This is my, kind of, technique. I will do so in politics. So, I get, oh, that’s great. I would do — run marathons to check that. That’s nice. And if you’re trying to help out and if you’re trying to be a, hopefully, a decent person. Anyways, you just try and do that. And then people might say, well, I’m kind of like that. And then people are saying, if he sounds OK, then that’s kind of where I’m going. So, I did I did want that to happen. But I — there are other people who have been, actually, straight up activists. And I haven’t done this. And I kind of apologize for not doing that. But I’ve decided to do it this way where I would be, like, an unconscious — or subconscious activist when I would — my activism was just standing there, going forward, and trying to overachieve in my career. That’s it.

SREENIVASAN: Now, you mentioned earlier that you got this bug to perform after your mom passed when you were at such a young age. Do you think she’d be proud of you now?

IZZARD: I hope so. When I came out, my dad was a very decent man. He passed away. But when I came out, he — I was ready to never talk to my dad again. I knew that that was the deal I had to make. I was ready for it. I told him. And he sent me back a letter, saying, I’m OK with this. And if your mom was alive, should be OK with it too. Which is a pretty great thing for your dad to write. But with regards to performing, she was an apt (ph) performer. She loved to sing comedy songs, kind of, light comedy songs. She sang in choirs. She sang to — at the Albert Hall as part of the choir. So, we know that she did that. My dad talked about it. I never saw it. But dad was a real comedian. So, comedy comes from him. A sense of crazy, kind of, comedy comes from him. But the performance comes from mom. And my brother — my older brother, Mark, he did the adaptation of the book. Now, the book is over 20 hours a book and he cut it down to two hours. He had to cut out 90 percent. But then hopefully you still get the essence of the show. And I think I said this on — I think it was opening night, but I think mom would be very happy that both of her kids were doing this, and particularly in New York. It’s — so if something is happening in New York. And New Yorkers are going, yes. Come and see the show. Then we go well, this is pretty good. And I think mom would have been very happy.

SREENIVASAN: Eddie Izzard, thanks so much joining us.

IZZARD: Thank you.