Michael Keaton Doubted He’d Last Long With Denzel Washington and Other A-Listers in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
Actor Michael Keaton teamed up with Training Day star Denzel Washington and a roster of other A-listers for the film Much Ado About Nothing. But he was concerned that his lack of expertise on the film’s subject would get him kicked off the star-studded movie.
Michael Keaton didn’t think he’d fit in with his ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ cast
Fresh off of his Batman Returns success, Keaton joined director Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing. The feature saw Keaton working alongside A-list stars such as Emma Thompson and Denzel Washington. Keanu Reeves was also another recognizable name in the 1993 film.
But when Keaton was brought on board, he began to wonder if he was in over his head. Especially after thinking that many of his co-workers were trained Shakespearean actors, while he had little to no knowledge of the iconic playwright’s work.
“I didn’t think I could do it. I essentially had no knowledge of Shakespeare, hardly at all,” Keaton once said according to Contact Music. “The first day I showed up I was really intimidated because I thought all these Shakespearean actors were gonna laugh at me and they were gonna have to say we made a horrible mistake, and they were so ridiculously cool about it.”
Fortunately for Keaton, he soon discovered that his fellow co-stars were also in the same boat.
“It was such a relief that they really didn’t understand the text at times either! Kenneth had a guy on set who was a Shakespeare scholar who was right at his side at all times who would tell Ken what this or that means. That poor man, oh God. I didn’t want to look over at him,” he said.
The A-List star that stayed in character while shooting ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
Most of the cast seemed to have fond memories of their time on Much Ado. Thompson remembered a younger Washington lying under bushes much of the time because of how hot where they filmed was. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s producer, David Parfitt, confided why they cast Washington in the film. Even though, like Keaton, Washington had no background in Shakespeare at the time.
“We weren’t aiming specifically at blind casting — we were just aiming at good casting,” Parfitt said. “Denzel has that nobility in him, and you absolutely believed him as a prince.”
The film also welcomed John Wick star Keanu Reeves, who was still an up and coming megastar. Parfitt remembered his first impression of Reeves, and initially didn’t even realize Reeves was an actor.
“I remember Keanu showing up in our London office when he first came over to the U.K. on our way to Italy, and we thought he was a motorcycle messenger,” Parfitt said. “He turned up in leather, he looked like he just got off a bike and no one knew who he was.”
According to crew members, Reeves opted to stay in character while doing Much Ado. Which helped Reeves deliver a very unique performance.
“His acting was just different than everyone else,” editor Andrew Marcus said. “To Ken’s credit, I don’t think he quite got what [Keanu] was doing when we saw it on set, but then when you saw it all, it kind of worked.”
Michael Keaton’s performance in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ nearly killed an on-set Shakespearean expert
Initially, Keaton’s lack of experience with Shakespeare didn’t seem to bother director Branagh. Instead, Branagh actually encouraged the Beetlejuice star to draw up his own interpretation of his character. But seeing what Keaton did to a beloved Shakespeare character was very unsettling to the Shakespearean expert Branagh had on the film set. Keaton remarked that the accent he used for the film almost killed the scholar.
“This poor man in his 80s with a straw hat on, God, he was so nice. He was watching me, going, ‘He can’t do this. Please don’t let him do this.’ But Kenneth went, ‘No, no, no, no. Trust me, this is good. Keep doing what you’re doing,'” Keaton recalled to Entertainment Weekly.
