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Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Creating TNT's ‘Will:’ Craig Pearce and Shekhar Kapur

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8878 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2017

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

'Will,' the new series on TNT, tells stories derived from what we often call Shakespeare’s “lost years”—the time before he made a name for himself as a writer. The series takes advantage of that gaping hole in Shakespeare’s biography to weave an intricate and exciting tale of art, strife, death, love, poetry, and violence in Elizabethan England. Executive producer/writer Craig Pearce and executive producer/director Shekhar Kapur tell us about adapting Shakespeare's biography—or lack thereof—into a new television show with a punk rock aesthetic. Pearce and Kapur are interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published July 12, 2017. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “We'll Tell Tales” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Esther French is the web producer. Special thanks Martine Resnick, Scott Radloff, Heather Crawford, and Kristin Boos at TNT; Tony Ward, Sharon Bowe, Ruth Waites, Pete Smith, and Alison Atkey at the BBC in London; Melissa Kuypers and Peter Stenshoel at NPR-West in Culver City, California; as well as Shekhar Kapur’s assistant, Rhiannon Allen, and Craig Pearce’s assistant, Angus Wilkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's morning, sometime around the year 1590 in Stratford upon Avon.

0:05.2

A young writer and sometimes actor is getting ready to leave for London as his sleeping son wakes up.

0:11.1

Dad.

0:11.8

Good morrow, Prince Hamlet.

0:14.6

Why don't tell the stories, Papa?

0:18.2

Ah.

0:20.6

Then I will leave Queen Mab with me.

0:23.6

What's she?

0:25.6

She is a fairy, no bigger than a nat.

0:28.6

And night by night, she creeps into boys' ears and tells stories of...

0:34.6

What?

0:36.6

Dragons.

0:38.3

Aye.

0:40.3

Dragons.

0:42.3

Can you be satisfied with Mab till I return?

0:46.3

If you hear echoes of the young father's future in that tender family moment, you're not mistaken. From the Folger of Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

1:03.8

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.

1:06.4

What you just heard is from the opening scene of the pilot episode of a new TV series that

1:11.4

has just premiered on the cable channel TNT. The series is called Will. And as

1:17.8

you've probably figured out by now, it tells stories derived from what's

1:21.6

commonly known as Shakespeare's Lost Years, the time before he made a name for

1:26.1

himself as a writer. The series takes advantage

...

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