david tennant around the world in 80 days

David tennant around the world in 80 days series#

When directing the actors, Barron said he had tried to achieve a balance between the fantastical adventures of the story and striking a more realistic tone. “I think her motivation comes from a very deep need to prove to her father, to herself and to society that she is a good and worthy journalist,” she continued, “despite her sex and age.” (Benesch’s British accent is cut-glass perfection.)Ībigail Fix, she said, is “outside of societal convention but with real precedents.” “And Abigail talks and talks!” Benesch said with a laugh in a telephone interview. “As a writer, it gives you much more to play with when there are three of them, with such different personal histories.”įor Benesch, who is German, and Koma, who is French, these were their first major roles in English - and Benesch’s first role playing a native English speaker. (She did it in 72 days.) Making Passepartout a Frenchman of color “felt natural,” he added. But the inspiration for Abigail Fix, he said, was the American writer Nellie Bly, who emulated Verne’s voyage in 1890. Viewers familiar with Verne’s novel will recognize the name Fix, which Abigail adopts as a way to distance herself from her father - the name a nod, as Pharoah described it, to the “rather boring” Detective Fix in the book. “She would have been about 54 at the time, on Fogg’s path, and he would have been appalled by her, so it felt like a great way to bring out more of his character.” “She was an aristocrat and fantastic personality who had scandalous affairs with all sorts of people and married a sheikh,” said Steve Barron, who directed five episodes and helped develop story lines. marshal, and the famed English beauty Jane Digby (Lindsay Duncan). The writers also added cameo characters from history like the legendary Bass Reeves (Gary Beadle), who escaped slavery and became a deputy U.S.

Goaded by a hostile fellow member, he bets a considerable sum (around $3 million today) that he can make it back to the club 80 days later, by 1 p.m.

David tennant around the world in 80 days series#

The series begins in a stodgy men's social club in London, the Reform Club, where Fogg reads an article describing a recently finished Indian railway line that makes it theoretically possible to traverse the globe in 80 days. “But the show looks at the social mores and expectations of the era with a 21st-century lens.” “We are in the world of 1872 it’s very much of the time,” Tennant said. An ambitious young journalist, Abigail Fortescue (Leonie Benesch), and an updated version of Passepartout (played by the Black French actor Ibrahim Koma) share the limelight with Phileas Fogg (Tennant), the buttoned-up Englishman whose initial ideas about the world are based on a colonial-era vision typified by our grand hotel surroundings. A less faithful version, from 2004, featured Jackie Chan as the story’s (originally French) valet, Passepartout.īut this version is tailored to contemporary sensibilities, introducing a diverse cast of characters. There have been many film and television productions inspired by Verne’s novel, most notably Michael Todd’s 1956 version starring David Niven, which won an Academy Award for best picture and included cameos by Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra and Buster Keaton, among others. 2 on PBS’s “Masterpiece.” (In Britain, it debuted on Dec. The eight-part “Around the World,” a zippy take on the Verne story, will premiere on Jan. Ten months later, the finishing tape is behind them. “It feels very special that we made it back and the finishing tape is in sight.” “I was packing my suitcase for Cape Town when South Africa announced a lockdown, and they said, ‘Stand down,’” Tennant recalled. It was February 2021, and it was Tennant’s last day in Cape Town, where he and the rest of the cast of “Around the World” had gathered to complete filming, almost a year after the pandemic had put a stop to production. “An appropriate setting!” he said, alluding to the colonial era architecture and his role in “Around the World in 80 Days,” a new television series based on the 1872 novel by Jules Verne.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - David Tennant, sitting in a wicker chair in the large, empty garden of a grand hotel here, gestured at its pink pillared veranda.