Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell Invite Broadway to the Party in Much Ado About Nothing

Longtime friends and Marvel alums Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell are ready to revel. The pair are bringing Jamie Lloyd’s exuberant production of Much Ado About Nothing to Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre. As Benedick and Beatrice, they step into Shakespeare’s great battle of wits after playing the sparring lovers together in London. The Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner and Broadway newcomer know exactly what New York audiences are getting themselves into: Shakespeare, house music, a sea of pink and one big party.

Atwell describes Much Ado as “a very generous play,” but the cast learned on the first day of rehearsal that Lloyd had something less than traditional in mind. “It wasn’t until day one that we turned up into rehearsals and discovered just how much pink there would be and that there would be lots of ‘90s diva house music and that there would be dancing,” she says. “I’m making moves I didn’t know I had.” As for what the pair learned during the show’s acclaimed London run, Atwell points to “how low I can squat every night and how far Tom can lunge.” Hiddleston adds, “I can’t do much, but I can lunge.” Atwell confirms: “Oh, he can lunge.”

For all of the playfulness around it, Shakespeare’s words remain at the heart of the production. “I’ve always believed that Shakespeare should be spoken as if it was written right now, today or yesterday,” Hiddleston says. The production may dress up the Bard for the party, but it doesn’t rewrite him. “There’s no word of this play that isn’t the 400-year-old text by William Shakespeare. We have dressed it in the energy of dancing and music and levity and joy, but the play itself is the play that it always was.”

That joy became one of the biggest discoveries of the London run. “I think I underestimated, if possible, how transformative the joy is in this play,” Hiddleston says. “The audiences come out of it feeling like they’ve had some necessary experience. It made people so happy and it was such a delight to discover that. I can’t wait to do it again.”

Atwell takes the idea a step further. “It feels quite radical to give in to that sense of total abandonment, that joy. It feels triumphant, in spite of whatever you’re going through or whatever your day has been to come in and be part of this immersive play—and by the end of it, to feel changed.” For Atwell, the audience is essential to that experience. “It’s as much their night as it is for us to serve them, for them to be a part of it and to be part of the conversation with us. There’s a great sense of coming together. It feels like a very communal experience.”

At the center of the party are two people who would rather trade insults than admit they’re falling in love. As Hiddleston puts it, “It’s a play where love wins above all else.” Benedick and Beatrice have both fortified themselves with wit, sophistication and charisma, making the prospect of letting their guards down the play’s biggest leap. “The courage it takes for Benedick and Beatrice to set down those defenses, to undress from all that sophistication and all the wit and say, ‘I love you,’” Hiddleston begins, and Atwell finishes the thought: “It’s courageous.”

For Beatrice, those defenses come at a cost. "It’s very familiar, that feeling of, 'I’m too scared to love again and it’s much easier if I just cut myself off from any kind of feeling whatsoever,'" Atwell says of her character. “The cost of that is you cut yourself off from pain, [but] you cut yourself off from love as well.”

Benedick and Beatrice are being played by two actors with plenty of history of their own. Hiddleston and Atwell first met at a drama school audition in 2002, when Atwell remembers seeing “a very tall, charming gentleman with lots of curly blond hair.” Hiddleston offers a different description: “Quite lanky, quite awkward.” Atwell quickly corrects him: “Never. Assured, committed, passionate, incredibly talented. It was the beginning of our journey.”

Despite years of crossing paths, including as Loki and Peggy Carter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hiddleston and Atwell had never actually worked together. Finally sharing a stage as Benedick and Beatrice felt particularly fitting. “It felt like it was these two characters in this moment with Jamie, a director that we’ve both worked with before and love and admire so much, and it’s this time and it’s in this particular way,” says Atwell. “It feels like a real gift.”

After nearly 25 years of friendship, Hiddleston says their shared history gives them room to play. “There’s so much permission, there’s so much freedom,” he says. “That is the magic of theater—the quality of playfulness—and I think we have that.”

Much Ado About Nothing begins performances October 31 at the Winter Garden Theatre. Get tickets!