Fame Becomes Her: The Misanthrope's Damian Lewis Chats About Co-Star Keira Knightley

It's tempting, but misleading, to think of the new London production of The Misanthrope as "The Keira Knightley Show," if only because the movies' popular "it girl" is making her West End debut at the Comedy Theatre with director Thea Sharrock's production of the 17th-century classic. In fact, Knightley has a supporting role as an American film actress named Jennifer (the play's Celimene updated to today's celebrity culture) in this rewrite by Martin Crimp of the Moliere original. But it is leading man Damian Lewis, making his own West End debut, who does the heavy lifting as the misanthropic Alceste, a man who can't help but calling life's fakery as he sees it—and who has the dubious luck to fall hard for Jennifer. Broadway.com caught up with Lewis, newly returned to London after several years in L.A. starring on the TV show Life, in the midst of the festive season, where the gifted, ever-articulate Londoner spoke of many things, including his famous co-star.

Congratulations on what must seem for you a sort of homecoming, though I realize your extensive London stage experience [the National, Almeida, Donmar] has never before included the West End.
"Homecoming" seems rather grand but thank you. I have never played the traditional West End, which does have different connotations: those theaters are squarely and firmly in the commercial sector, so it has a different dynamic to it. When I was growing up and was taken to the theater by my dad and grandmother, the traditional end-of-holiday before going back to school theater trip was to go into the West End and usually see an American musical revival like On Your Toes. My dad had lived in Chicago for five years and he loved all those American musicals.

Having just spent several years in L.A., a town not necessarily known for live theater, was it inevitable that you would return to the London stage?
I do feel very comfortable in the theater having spent three years training as an actor: like it's the place you should rightfully be. All my aspirations when I was young involved theater, so it still has a tremendous romance in that respect. I feel utterly at home in the theater and love it. It's that curious paradox: it's as enlivening and liberating as it is terrifying.

Fair enough, though I assume all the media attention focused on a certain co-star takes some of the pressure off you.
Well, it all began as myself and the play. But when Keira got involved and responded so positively and quickly, then, yes, it became an event of a different sort. So far, though, it hasn't been crazy or overwhelming. At the stage door, there might be 40 or 50 people outside each night. Some are there for Keira specifically, but a lot of them are there because they are theatergoers. At the same time, my responsibility is to the evening itself because Alceste is on stage overwhelmingly more than the other people, so that brings its own pressure. What I have to be sure to do is just concentrate and deliver the play in the best possible way.

You've witnessed this sort of event theater before, of course, when you were Laertes in 1995 to Ralph Fiennes's London and Broadway Hamlet.
You know, I think when you're in the business and you're doing well and you have a modicum of fame yourself, you sort of lose sight of how famous people are around you. And you lose sight of the way the public and the media continue to respond to famous people around you. I've sort of removed myself from all that: I don't have a publicist myself, I don't read glossy magazines, I don't read the tabloids. That's the sort of clutter I try to clear away, so the sort of white-hot intensity that is on Keira and the play has in some ways surprised me. I'd forgotten just how famous Keira had become as the second most highly paid actress in Hollywood.

It's lovely in this production that she is playing a Hollywood film star who is very much in the public eye.
It feeds in brilliantly, and the parallels are terrifically intriguing—ours is very consciously a post-modern take on the play. But this is why Keira's instincts are so keen on stage and why I think she's really enjoying it—and is very good. I've said this before, but I really think if the media want to take potshots at her, I genuinely believe it will be out of mean-spiritedness. I hope people are as objective as they can be, because it's very distorting having someone with that much baggage come to do a play.

You mention the post-modernism implicit in casting Keira in this role, which makes this a rare deconstructionist evening on the West End.
It's absolutely metaphysical; it's messing with our notion of reality, and it is a coup that Keira's playing it. It says a lot about Keira and her confidence that she can speak this immortal line, "I am the complete focus of all attention," and make herself part of the joke. She knows what people have said, she's not stupid. So what she's doing is empowering herself massively by joining in the joke, as if to say, "I know the level of my fame and my success and I know that it hasn't always been a smooth ride critically. I get it."

Does all this make you reevaluate your own degree of stardom?
Let's be honest: there's no way of knowing whether Keira had not been in the show whether myself and an ensemble could have filled the theater in the same way. We certainly wouldn't have filled it up in such a dramatically quick way. Keira is bringing people to the theater that never go to the theater. We will have nights at the Comedy that will reflect that, where they are maybe not so quick to pick up on the joke but will be having the time of their life watching something utterly new and being in the same room as this beautiful young film star. At the same time, most of them will know who Tara [co-star Tara FitzGerald, who was Ophelia to Lewis' Laertes] is and who I am and that will be an added bonus. We hope. [Laughs.]

Your director has been down this road before, when she was at the helm of the Daniel Radcliffe Equus here and in New York.
Absolutely. Thea's not afraid of directing well-known actors. Quite the opposite; I think she relishes it. It's a nice match for her ambitions.

So, are you and the family back in London now for good? [Lewis and his wife, the actress Helen McCrory, have two young children, Manon and Gulliver, ages three and two.]
We live in London! I went to L.A. for the duration of that job [Life] and absolutely loved my two years there, but the show has been canceled and two years playing the lead where everything revolves around that character meant it was really enough for me anyway. People expect you to go the full six years because that means it's been the biggest success it can possibly be: that's a very American view of it. But I was very happy with the two years and am very happy that I've been freed up to do things subsequently like this play. Certainly, in terms of the content, the skill of Life, it never should have been canceled. But from a personal point of view, I wasn't unhappy for it to be canceled.

Which means your kids will be British, not American.
Well, my son was born in America. I'm looking forward to him being president of your country.