Judi Dench tears into her gender-flipped Cats role with sweary rant: ‘It was like five foxes f**king on my back’
Dame Judi Dench was not a fan of Cats (Photo: Karwai Tang/WireImage)
Cats star Judi Dench has revealed that she has not watched the film – and she doesn’t exactly sound impressed with it.
In an interview with Vogue, the national treasure opened up about her role as Old Deuteronomy in the critically-panned Andrew Lloyd Webber adaptation.
Cats star has never sat through the film.
She said: “The cloak I was made to wear! Like five foxes f**king on my back.”
Dench said she had hoped to look elegant, but was left looking like “a battered, mangy old cat… a great big orange bruiser. What’s that about?”
The actress has not bothered to sit through the film in full, but did reveal that at least one person was a fan – her former James Bond castmate Ben Whishaw.
She said: “I had a very nice [text], from Ben Whishaw, who just doted on it. So sweet. So lovely.”
Dame Judi Dench appears on the cover of Vogue
Her view on the film certainly seems to have changed from the press junket in December, when Dench said it was “lovely” to take on the traditionally-male role.
She had said: “Its glorious to have been included in it, I must say… nerve wracking, because all I can hear is Brian Blessed all the time in the production that I wasn’t able to be in.
“I kind of call it ‘trans Deuteronomy’, is the part for me, you know. But it was lovely, lovely to be led about and be an aged cat, very nice indeed.”
Judi Dench speaks out over convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein
Elsewhere in the interview, Dench spoke about the role that convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein played in building up her film career.
She said of his victims: “My sympathies go to anybody who went through an experience like that. It’s very upsetting.
“It’s good that things come to the surface and are spoken about and people feel a kind of freedom, I’m sure.”
Asked if she had experienced sexual harassment in her career, Dench said: “No… not something that I wasn’t able to deal with.”
Dench also shared an idea for a film which sounds better than Cats.
She said: “I long to play this really elderly woman who is very revered and living this wonderful, calm life, but in actual fact is bumping everybody off. But that part hasn’t come yet!”
