Tom Hiddleston on why he loves Much Ado About Nothing

 Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play you haven’t been in?

Tom Hiddleston: Immediately the one that comes to my head is Much Ado About Nothing. I think it’s the most beautiful, warm, redemptive, compassionate play that he ever wrote. I suppose the reason I say that is because it’s full of such deft, fine, subtle, brilliant comedy. I mean, really amazing bravura moments of setpiece, laugh-out-loud moments. When you get actors who have digested and studied and thought about and understood the verse and the characterizations, it feels as though it was written yesterday, or it sounds like it’s being made up on the spot. I’ve seen so many adaptations of it. I saw Joss Whedon’s film most recently. I grew up on Kenneth Branagh’s film. I’ve seen amazing productions on stage in London. I saw Simon Russell Beale play Benedick and it was hilarious, at the National Theatre with Zoë Wanamaker. David Tennant did it with Catherine Tate playing Beatrice. I’ve seen it set in ’30s Italy. I’ve seen it set in contemporary Los Angeles. I’ve seen it set 400 years ago. It never fails to delight. It just leaves people with a very, very happy feeling in their heart, I think. 

And I think the reason is that it’s about love. It’s about your last chance. You might have sworn off finding the right person and think, “Love’s not for me. Marriage isn’t for me. I will die a bachelor, or I will die a maid. None of your romance, none of your love poems.” It’s about these two old cynics who are like, “Nah, it’s not going to happen for me.” And it does. I think that’s just very redemptive and sweet. And there’s one extraordinary aspect of the play, which is that when Hero’s chastity is in doubt—it’s called into question because of the plot of Don John—an extraordinary thing happens, which is almost unique in all of Shakespeare, which is the man, Benedick, takes the side of the women in blind faith. So he says to Claudio and Don Pedro, I think, “What you’ve done is appalling. This is an act of brutality.” He doesn’t explicitly say that, but it’s an amazing thing where the leading male character takes the side of the women, and I think it’s, yet again, evidence of Shakespeare’s extraordinary compassion and understanding of human nature.