Magic Con Part 3: Louise Brealey & Andrew Scott

My absolute favourite two guests at Magic Con two weeks ago were the two Sherlock stars: Louise Brealey (Molly Hooper) and Andrew Scott (Jim Moriarty). I love both of them on the show and I was especially looking forward to Louise Brealey, because of all the wonderful feminist and political things she has shared on her Twitter recently.

I therefor very much enjoyed her panel and was a bit disappointed that she only had one. She talked a lot about Sherlock’s Molly of course and about Molly’s feelings for Sherlock and the controversies about Molly’s “mousey” role on the show. But she also talked a lot about other stuff. Like having to be (partially) naked for a role and how that made her feel, but also about politics and women’s rights and how frustrating she thinks it is, that women are still fighting against other women, while so much patriarchy still exists in all aspects of our society. She was so wonderfully eloquent about it all. And smart and funny and so very lovely.

One story that really stuck in my memory was about some event where she was doing autographs. And a guy brought a photo for her to sign, from one of the roles, in which she was partially naked in the way that she wearing something transparent and her nipples were clearly visible in that photo. So she took her time to write in flourishing letters all over her naked breasts until there wasn’t much left to see. When she told the story, she commented it with “Pleasure yourself with that, Luv!” in regards to the guy. Which of course was a funny story, but still… the gall of that man!

When it was my time for the autograph I told her how much I appreciated all the wonderful things she said in her panel the day before. I told her that I’m a feminist myself and that the older I get, the more passionate or even more angry I get about these issues. And all of a sudden I was discussing feminism and women’s rights with Louise Brealey and that was pretty cool to be honest. Because it was her and also because I obviously could articulate my thoughts even on these topics in English. Go Me! She asked me if I had read Caitlin Moran’s “How To Be A Woman”, which I haven’t  yet, but at least I have had it on my Kindle for a long time now. She also recommended another book, “The Equality Illusion” which I put on my To Read list, before I forgot the title. She also asked me about the state of feminism in Germany and I tried to explain how pissed off I was at our conservative female minister for women and family (Kristina Schröder), when she wrote a anti-feminism book a couple of years ago. Like “Feminism” was something to fight against. Anyway, it was amazing and lovely to chat about that with Louise for a little bit.

Andrew Scott was equally lovely and eloquent and smart and he said so many wonderful, thoughtful, inspiring things. I was very much in awe very quickly and I plan to catch up with all his other works besides Sherlock. I didn’t know he was in “Pride” for instance, a movie I missed while it was in the cinemas, but which definitely had been on my radar. Andrew seemed like a rather shy and a bit guarded person. Not guarded in the same way as super star Ian Somerhalder had seemed to me. I think Andrew is just shy and guarded in general. Like me. Which might be the reason I liked him so very much.

He got a lot of questions about Sherlock of course and he told quite a lot of interesting stories about that. But also about Hamlet, which he had done on stage in London and which is transferring to the West End now, if I remember it correctly. He talked about how interesting but also daunting it is to play such an iconic role. A question about how it had been to play “Hamlet” with an Irish accent, prompted some great statements about Shakespeare and how still a lot of people are rather snobbish about Shakespeare’s work in the sense that these roles should be played in a certain (traditional) way by a certain kind of actors or seen by certain kind of people “Preferably white, heterosexual, middle-class English people”. But to Andrew that is not what Shakespeare was all about. He thinks that his plays can and should just as well be played by actors from any background anywhere in the world. And after all (in regards to Hamlet) “we’re all not from Denmark either, are we?”

Another statement that stuck with me – shy as I often am – was, when he talked about how shy people are often underestimated or even undervalued. His words were something along the lines of “Who’s to say that, just because someone is shy and not saying much, that this someone doesn’t have a spark of divine fire?” Which was such a lovely and evocative way to express it and I loved him for it.

Andrew was very lovely during the autograph session as well, he tried to make a connection with every fan in front of him and he took his time to exchange a few words or to draw a little bit with his autograph. He actually likes to draw and paint and does or at least did quite a lot of that himself, when he had more time to do so. He talked about that during one of the panels as well.

All in all: two very lovely guests and I’m so happy I had a chance to meet them.

Here are a bunch of my photos. Unfortunately the ones I took of Louise during her panel all turned out kind of blurry. [I really need to learn more about my camera’s settings]

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