Fuck Yeah, Paul Gross!

My only regret, internet, is that I couldn’t find a larger version of this pic for you.

skepticmuffin:

Paul Gross stop looking like Mr. Darcy

this is ridiculous

Oh he went further

trust me

Geoffrey: Okay. I’ve been thinking about the willow speech—

Ellen: Oh no…

Geoffrey: You describe Ophelia’s death—

Ellen: Geoff—

Geoffrey: —in great detail, why?

Ellen:(exasperatedly) Geoffrey, please, you’re driving me insane!

Geoffrey: Why do you describe it in such detail?

Ellen: A young girl falls in the river and drowns. (turns to look at him) That kind of thing tends to stick with you.

Geoffrey: Why didn’t you save her?

Ellen: I don’t know, I didn’t want to ruin my dress— please don’t make me talk about this now—

Geoffrey: Ellen, come on. (slaps the dressing table top with his hand)

Ellen: (sighs) She was better off dead, she was suffering.

Geoffrey: Okay. (rises from his seat and walks across the dressing room) Let’s take this a little bit further. What if Ophelia didn’t drown? What if she killed herself?

Ellen:(twists in her chair to look at him) I say she was mad, she was incapable of her own distress.

Geoffrey: You could be lying.

Ellen: Oh, Jesus Christ!

Geoffrey: Ophelia drowns and you stand by and watch it happen. Why? Because you do believe that she’d be better off dead. You already feel responsible for her madness, and now you feel responsible for her death, so in a final act of mercy… (he sits back down) you lie about it. You disguise her apparent suicide so the poor thing can be buried in consecrated ground.

Ellen: (stares at him) Geoffrey, that is a completely different approach to the speech. 

Geoffrey: Yeah. (stands up again) I think it might be a bit stronger than your, “I didn’t wanna ruin my dress” subtext. 

Ellen:(shouts angrily) You can’t do this to me! This is the last performance!

Geoffrey:(pauses by the dressing room door) Well, think of it as your last chance to get it right. 

Ellen:(waits for him to leave, then screams incoherently)

- Slings & Arrows 2x01 Season’s End

Can I just talk a minute about how much I love this scene? Okay, well, I love all of the scenes, but this is indicative of Geoffrey and Ellen’s relationship at this point: he knows Ellen is capable of more, of better. He pushes her, openly challenging her. He knows she’s better than the performance she’s been giving and she won’t respond to coddling, so he pokes and prods at her, demanding she justify her motivations, knowing that she will rise to it in turn - and she does, magnificently.   

I found two more photos from the Hamlet production Paul did at Stratford in 2000 so here’s a small Hamlet picspam :D

Still writing a fabulous steampunk series for him in my head in the vein of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne.

Geoffrey tries to explain Ophelia’s madness to the very much clueless (and talentless) Claire:

Geoffrey: Stop. For God’s sake, stop.

Claire: What?

Geoffrey: (with his head in his hand) Where is this coming from?

Claire: What?

Geoffrey: This… staggering about with your mouth open?

Claire: (tight smile) You’re being sarcastic again with me, please don’t be sarcastic.

Geoffrey: Actually, I’m not, but sorry.  (he gets up and approaches her)

Claire: Ophelia’s mad.

Geoffrey: Right.

Claire: I’m playing madness.

Geoffrey: Right… and how does staggering about with your mouth open suggest madness?

Claire: (forebearing smile) I’m not mad.

Geoffrey: Right.

Claire: And I never have been, so I have to simulate it.

Geoffrey: … Right.

Claire: I’m using sense memory. I’m remembering what it was like being stoned and I’m using that. I’m disoriented… my head is spinning… that’s probably what it’s like when you’re insane.

Geoffrey: (tight smile) Right. Well. It’s not. Trust me. That’s what it’s like when you’re stoned.

Claire: Forgive me, I mean no disrespect, but I don’t have your experience with insanity.

Geoffrey: (tight smile still very much in place) Right.

Claire: And this is hard anyway, I can’t take any meaning from the text… Ophelia’s just singing nonsense songs.

Geoffrey: (still smiling as he nods, his hands clenched) Right. Claire… (he chuckles briefly) Claire, Claire, Claire with the hair… Ophelia is a child. She has been dominated by powerful men, all of her life, and suddenly they all disappear. Her brother goes to France. Her father is murdered by her boyfriend, and he is shipped off to England. She is alone… for the first time, grieving and heartbroken and guilty, because — as far as she’s concerned — it’s all. Her. Fault. She ignored her brother’s advice and fell in love with Hamlet and now her father is dead and all because of her, and the pain, and the loss and the shame and the guilt, all of this is gnawing away inside this little child’s mind and it comes out as … little… songs. ‘And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No… no… he is dead… My father is dead… and I killed him.’ Okay?

Claire: (nods silently)

Geoffrey: Now, let’s try it again, without the Vietnam flashback.

— Slings & Arrows 1x05, A Mirror Up To Nature

“[Doing Hamlet] was like going to the world’s meanest, cruellest therapist.”

— Paul Gross

Paul during his tenure as The Dane back in 2000 - ugh, how can MORE clothes make him even hotter, I ask you? *throws up hands*

From an interview, when Paul was portraying the Dane at Stratford (2000)

Paul Gross in period attire, check.

Playing Hamlet, check.

Sparring with a fucking rapier, FUCK YES CHECK.

Multiple fangasms as a result: CHECK CHECK CHECK

omg those boots….

A rare shot of Paul as he portrayed the original melancholy Dane.

I would very much like to speak of country matters, sir.