Emily Watson, actor

15:17Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And, you know, obviously we're all still on that journey.

15:20Emily Watson:I wonder about your parents as well. I mean, you know, it sounds like life at home was less strict than life at school, certainly. How do you now as an adult look back at their choice to be part of the SES and the appealing of the central tenets of the organisation for them?

15:36Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:It will always be confusing that because they obviously loved us so much, but they did, I think, unwittingly put us potentially in harm's way. We were OK because we had them, but other people maybe were not.

15:51Emily Watson:And looking back at yourself as that little girl who was, you know, it sounds eager to please, eager to do well, but also had this spirit of a dreamer inside yourself. How did you nurture that? How did that stay alive through those years?

16:06Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Reading, really reading. My parents always took us to cinema and we went to see amazing films. I don't know. It just kind of chose me in a way. I kind of thought, well, I'll try and be an actor. and then I got a job at the RSC. And that was like a, you know, I always, you know, that's a TV series that I discovered when my children were little Mr. Ben.

16:28Emily Watson:Oh, yeah.

16:29Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:It's like you go into the changing room, there's a costume and there you're suddenly you're off in this world. I often think that on set it's like that. It's like, and then as if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared.

16:40Emily Watson:It's time for some more music, I think. Emily Watson, disc number three, please.

16:44Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:What have you got for us? this is um part of the adagio from mozart serenade in b flat for 13 wound instruments this interestingly part of the um culture at this ses was that music that we were allowed to listen to was mozart mozart was conscious music you know we did listen to other things but that was sort of the you know the the kind of the guidance and so we had in our very thin record collection we had this and my father loved it and long before it became a brilliantly used piece in the film Amadeus which that film I absolutely love it also I connect to it because during lockdown early in the pandemic the bit where we none of us really knew where we were heading and it was kind of terrifying.

17:37Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And anyway, I'm very lucky to live quite close to Greenwich Park. And so that was our daily walk. And Greenwich Park is also quite close to Trinity College of Music. And one day we were walking in the park and it was that insanely beautiful, bright, hot spring weather with green everywhere. We came around the corner and there's lots of sort of nooks and crannies and hills and dells in Greenwich Park into this little sort of dell. And they're socially distanced with kind of bicycles and hoodies all over the place with music stands with these kids from Trinity College of Music playing this piece and it was breathtaking in its beauty and and a moment where of realization of this is what we stand to lose this is the peak of who we are we have evolved to the point that we can do this.

18:32Our young people are here by choice in this park

18:35Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:making this incredibly beautiful sound. And, you know, your drive through London and the lifeblood of the city was closed. You know, the theatres were closed. Music, everything was gone. Felt like this, I would fight for this. You know, this is something that I believe is really, really, truly good. And so this piece of music, you know, it was incredibly moving and people didn't know whether to stop and listen because was that a gathering, you know, and you could see people standing around with tears in their eyes and I feel very grateful to those students for that moment. I don't know who they are or where they are now and hopefully they're all having amazing careers, but it was a very powerful moment.

19:33Amen.

20:15Emily Watson:Part of the Adagio from Mozart, serenade in B-flat K361, performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, wind ensemble conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. Emily Watson, at 18 then, you went to the University of Bristol to study English. What was it like to be free to live life on your own terms? It must have been quite overwhelming.

20:37Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:It was very overwhelming. I think I was deeply unprepared for it, but I kind of gravitated to the theatre and I did a lot of student plays. I began to have a sense of this is how I define myself. These are the people that I want to hang out with.

20:50Emily Watson:Yeah, you had some interesting peers around you, didn't you? You're talking to the people. I mean, David Nicholls, the writer, screenwriter who wanted to be an actor in those days. He was at Bristol same time as you. You had the now director of The Old Vic, Matthew Warches. Yeah, Mark Ravenhill. Playwright, Mark Ravenhill, yeah. Did you kind of work together? Were you in plays together?

21:09Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yeah, we did. Matthew and I played Benedict and Beatrice in Much Do About Nothing and David Nichols was dog bro. What a bill.

21:18Emily Watson:Yeah, it was pretty cool.

21:20Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And Mark Ravenhill and I then shared a house after we left Bristol and I remember him and I doing one of those self-help books. We had to sort of visualise what we were going to do next and I said, well, I'd like to get a job at the RSC and he said, I'd like to have a play on in the West End and then within a few months those things both happened so that was quite a moment for us.

21:43Emily Watson:And had you voiced your ambition to anyone else so your friends knew what you wanted to do in future but had you talked to your family about it?

21:50Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:I did talk to my family about it and bless them, My mum and dad were like, yep, OK, you know, we'll see what we can do. I went and did a one-year training at a drum school in London. I managed to persuade a bank manager to give me a loan to pay the fees. And I said, oh, I'm going to be on telly next year, so I'll be able to pay you back. Was that true? No, not sure.

22:15Emily Watson:Emily, let's go to the music. It's your fourth choice today. What are we going to hear?

22:18Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:This is Ernie by Fat Freddy's Drop. When my daughter was, I think, five months old, we went to New Zealand to make a film. And the man who picked us up from the airport, a guy called Seamus, has now become a lifelong friend. And he had recently stopped being the guy who ran the really, really cool record shop in Wellington. He was now working as a driver and he picked us up with our daughter and says, do you want to go the pretty way? So yeah, please. So we drove around the bays in Wellington, which if anybody you've been there, it's an amazing thing. And he said, oh, we'll just stop off here at the surf club and have a bit of breakfast, which was at this really kind of cool bar place where we had breakfast.

23:05Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And he said, oh, that guy over there, he's the drummer from Fat Freddy's Drop. And we're like, what's that? And then he started playing it to us. It's kind of New Zealand reggae, kind of all kinds of things rolled into one, but beautiful. And this really is a song about finding your person. It's the person who makes you who you are and makes you make sense. If you can, go away and listen to the whole thing because it's a long, slow burn that's really ultra cool and then gets to the point where the lyrics are, I'd step out of the rush for you, which is what love is, I guess.

23:51Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:I would step out of the rush for you Would step out of the rush for you Would step out of the rush for you

24:06Emily Watson:I would step out of the rush for you There's nothing that I'd rather do Ernie by Fat Freddy's Drop for your husband, Jack, who you met Emily at the RSC. Your next big break was when Lars von Trier cast you in Breaking the Waves in 1996. You play Bess McNeill, a young wife persuaded to engage in increasingly risky extramarital sex by her paralysed husband. This was a role that changed your life and it was your very first film. What do you remember about how it was received?

24:40Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:It's quite the story because that was the point at which the SES said to me, go on your undignified way. Literally, they said that to me when I said this was what I was doing.

24:51Emily Watson:So you told them beforehand?

24:52Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yeah. And then everything of that upbringing had defined you. I was sort of, I felt like I was in free fall. And the thing that caught me was this part, acting, giving yourself over to something. And the experience of making the film was amazing. If being on a sort of religious path is about a search for meaning and that's what my life in many ways had been this feels more alive and more full of meaning than I have ever felt in strange imaginary not real ways it was an immersive process because Lars von Trier didn't it wasn't a traditional filming process where there were lots of setups and artificial sense of you know the camera's here and you're over there and they're changing the shot and you're waiting around.

25:47Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And it was a handheld camera that was just in the scene, like it was a character in the scene, observing you all the time. So you must have been very immersed in it then. We were very immersed and the camera was just like another person. It was your friend.

25:59Emily Watson:You worked alongside Stellan Skarsgård and Katrin Cartlidge. What did you learn from them?

26:04Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:I was so lucky to have them as role models in my first film because both actors who care passionately about everything that matters and really don't give a toss about the things that don't. And they were, I couldn't have asked for better role models.

26:22Emily Watson:So you've made this film, I mean, lots of graphic sex scenes, lots of nudity, a cast that you love, and then it's released. Now, listeners might not get the distinction between making a film and releasing it,

26:34Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:but they are very different. Well, first of all, it went to the Cannes Film Festival, which I'd heard of, I was aware of, but I'd no idea what kind of a deal that was. Found myself walking up the steps at Cannes in a Dior dress and then going into the cinema and watching myself naked the size of a tower block. And then this incredible response to the film. I mean, really very, very powerful, overwhelming response that I didn't necessarily understand because it wasn't part of my world. It felt overwhelming, but I didn't kind of get the significance of what Lars had done in terms of film. It was the toast of Cannes.

27:16Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:You were nominated for an Academy Award. Yeah. And then it sort of spiralled into a whole press thing. And I sort of became a little bit catatonic, to be honest. You know, I just didn't really quite know what to do. You were in shock. Yeah, it was a sense of shock. I felt a bit frozen.

27:32Emily Watson:You know, given all of that, how did you start to pick your way through it and decide your next move? Because it sounds like you were only really starting to find yourself as a person, as an actor.

27:41Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yeah.

27:42Emily Watson:And then suddenly, you know, you're on this, you've got the eyes of the world on you.

27:45Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Well, I have to say through all of this, my husband was an absolute rock and an anchor for me because we just sort of held hands and looked at each other and went, oh, my God, what's going on? But we did very much sense that we did that together. And all of those changes, you know, he was there through all of it. And how did your parents feel about what was going on? Well, they were very, very proud of me. And it was also a little bit weird because the organisation was very against what I was doing. And, you know, and they were kind of those conversations that you never quite have and you should have had.

28:26Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And, you know, it's complicated.

28:29Emily Watson:Were you able to talk to them about it later? Yes.

28:32Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yes, I was. I think, you know, as I became more able to articulate what was going on and who I was and mature a bit with it all. Emily, I think we should go to the music. What's your fifth track? My fifth track is the opening movement of Algar's Cello Concerto, performed by Jacqueline Dupre. And I first heard this when I was a student. And in the aftermath of the storm in 1987, the great storm that the BBC failed to predict, when there was sort of a real sense of heightened drama and, you know, things being ripped apart, the news came through that she had died. And they played this piece of music on the news.

29:22Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:and it hit me like a steam train. And then obviously later in my life, I then played her in a movie and I got to know this piece very intimately. But hearing that piece of music was the first time that I really started to have an inkling of what it was to be as an artist, to be what I would call absolutely all in. She became that music. She gave everything. She was 21 when she made the recording And it's a piece of music by a man written towards the end of his life that's full of incredibly intense sense of nostalgia, maybe regret. You know, it certainly feels a very mature emotional piece. And here she was with every fiber of her vibrating in this piece of music.

30:15Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And that was mind blowing to me.

30:49ORCHESTRA PLAYS . .

30:57. . . . . . . .

31:18Emily Watson:The opening movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, performed by Jacqueline Dupré and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli. Emily Watson, after your success in Breaking the Waves, every director was keen to see you. Your next Oscar nomination was for your role in Hilary and Jackie, where, as you mentioned, you were cast as Jacqueline Dupre. And you learned to play the cello for that role. You'd had a few lessons when you were younger. But is it true that you really practised till your fingers bled?

31:50Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:I don't know if they bled, but they were blistered, certainly. I mean, it was a very steep learning curve. You know, it's a trick that you soap the bow. So it doesn't make any sound. And then I learned all the fingering and all the bowing. And then I had a movement teacher help me kind of imitate because she physically inhabited her playing like no one else. Really sort of threw herself around with it. I remember my husband said, how on earth am I going to do this? I mean, it was a terrifying, daunting prospect.

32:19Emily Watson:And what did he say to you?

32:21Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Fear of universal scorn.

32:24Emily Watson:It's a good motivator. It is a good motivator. It's not wrong. It's been a great motivator ever since. So that level of immersion then of just, you know, like blistered fingers and constant cello playing.

32:36Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yes, and it's like anything you take on as an actor. You have to get to, you know, like trying to do an Irish accent or something like that. If you don't get it right, it's excruciating and people howl at you. You know, it's fear of universal scorn is a very powerful motivator.

32:50Emily Watson:And that was the role that Steven Spielberg saw you in. And then a decade later, he cast you in War Horse. War Horse. I know that that shoot, the first day of it, clashed with your little girl's first day at school.

33:01Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:It did. And, yeah, she was starting primary school and I said, I'm really sorry. I can't come. I have to be there. To Steven Spielberg? Well, to the producer. And they moved it. They did? Yes. Yeah, they moved my first day. So let me.

33:16Emily Watson:Yeah, well, he's a dad of many. So six kids I think he's got. So he would get that. Let's have some more music. This is your sixth choice. What are we going to hear and why are you taking it to the island?

33:27Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:This is part of the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso by Morricone. And it's a piece of music that my son plays on the piano, which absolutely turns my heart over every time I hear it. Because this is a film about, it's an absolute love letter to cinema and the power of storytelling. And how this man who has grown up in this small town in Sicily where his mentor and friend was the projectionist in the cinema and he just fell in love with the film. And the projectionist said to him, leave here, never come back. You have to go and make something of your life. And he has. And then he's come back for his funeral and the cinema is being shuttered and closed down and destroyed.

34:13Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And it's all story about the loss of young love. And then at the very end, he gets something in the will. And it's during the early days of the cinema, they had to cut out all the kisses because of censorship, all the sort of passion had to be cut out of these movies the projectionist has spliced them all together onto a reel, he has this reel of film and it's just all the kisses, it's the most beautiful, anyway a film that I love and this is the soundtrack

34:53Thank you.

35:41Emily Watson:Part of the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso by Ennio Morricone. A quote from you then, Emily Watson. Acting, if you're doing it right, you're traumatising yourself. Tell me more about that.

35:53Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:What do you mean? Well, I think possibly there's a lot of parts that I've played that have been, you know, had a lot of trauma and sadness involved in the nature of the roles. But I think you are putting yourself into an emotional place, which is pretend you're pretending, but your body doesn't know the difference.

36:15Emily Watson:So all of the stress hormones and everything.

36:17Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:The stress hormones and your kind of neural pathways are doing the thing that they would do. And you're not just doing it the once, you're doing it over and over and over.

36:27Emily Watson:Okay.

36:27Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:How do you deal with that then? That must be really difficult. You have to learn to sort of regulate yourself physically. And, you know, you come away from doing a big scene and you feel like you've been through the ringer and you have to. I have a friend who actually, who's a wonderful actress, who's had to recently wear a, for health reasons, she's had to wear a blood sugar monitor.

36:48Emily Watson:Oh, like a blood glucose. Blood glucose thing.

36:50Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And she said that not having eaten or drunk anything when she's acting, it's going up and down like crazy. Because of all the stress hormones and all the things that your blood is doing in response to the emotional story that's going on in your chemistry. So do you worry about that? I mean, the body keeps the score. Well, exactly, the body keeps the score. I do worry about it. But I think being an actor is like, you know, you're sort of an amateur psychologist anyway. And really annoying amateur at a lot of things. but but um i guess you know it's the shakespeare said it your job is to hold a mirror up to nature and you know you just try and tell stories as truthfully as you can and you go to places that you need to to do that and i find walking it's the rhythm of you know like all those therapeutic things that have rhythm drumming emdr all those kind of things meditative meditative yeah just walking is something i do pretty much every day and that helps you decompress just

37:55Emily Watson:walk it out yeah yeah um so do you find it easy to leave characters behind to leave the you said you know the the sort of amateur psychology and being all in inhabiting that person you know

38:07Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:there must be people that stick with you yes I think there are they are like friends you know they're sort of people you've got to know over your life dreams they're like you know very strong memories but you have to put a distance you can't let them dictate your responses to your real life you know you have to you have to let them go and put them on the shelf and i get a distance from

38:31Emily Watson:them emily you talked earlier about you know the beginning of your career the pressure you put on yourself um not to have people at the ses proved right you know to they said off you go on your on your immoral way to kind of you know pursue this uh flibbity jibbit career and you wanted to you know be a person of substance and prove them wrong how have you continued to make the right choices as an actor because you know you have had critical acclaim throughout your career you haven't had the missteps that many other actors make there's been one or two but thankfully they they sink pretty quickly you've executed them elegantly if there if there have been not not visible to to my keen eye when I was looking back over your cv I'd like to take credit for that

39:17Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:path but I get less and less sure of my kind of moral rectitude as I get older I just think I've been lucky I've been you do something that gets noticed in that way early on and there are still to this day I meet people filmmakers who say breaking the ways is the reason I'm a director it made me and that has a currency that's just lasted it's kept me in knickers you know for a

39:45Emily Watson:very long time long may that continue let's have some more music shall we what's next your seventh choice today my husband said to me emily you cannot have lee morgan playing sidewinder because

39:58Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:it's like asking mozart to play happy birthday but we've already had mozart don't worry about it i just love this piece and if there is a version of my children that reflects the little girl that I was going to France with Jacques Tati. This is a moment I remember so clearly driving my kids in the car and listening to this. And my husband has, he's always been a bringer of music into the house. And we've always listened to loads of different sorts of music. And jazz has been a big part of that classical, you know, and then the kids have brought their own things in. But it's always a big part of our day.

40:39Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:and family holidays, just taking requests and listening to things. But I just remember this moment, driving in the car and listening to this and the kids suddenly getting the idea of it being the soundtrack of the way to see London and people just going about their business and the delight of being in a day when everybody's just, you know, the joy of small things, the banal, easy, just going about your business, walking down the street in London to Lee Morgan, Sidewinder. Just joy.

41:38Thank you.

42:13Emily Watson:Lee Morgan and The Sidewinder. Emily Watson, we've spent quite a lot of time looking back today at your career and your many successes. I wonder what you think that young dreamer, 11-year-old Emily, who you described for us earlier, what would she make of it all?

42:28Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:I think she'd be delighted and quite surprised. I think she wanted to be a writer. But yeah, no, I think she'd be delighted.

42:36Emily Watson:you're now one of the more experienced actors on set what advice do you give to younger artists who are starting out and following you in your footsteps i know they ask you jesse buckley was

42:47Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:quite up front that you've given her great advice i'd say don't bring your phone don't bring your phone to set to set okay i think that sense of sitting around the fire being with the best company in the world and you learn so much about being an actor but also about being a person and And, you know, how we or what you do relates to the world. And it's like a absolute gold dust, that stuff. And when mobile phones first started appearing, there was a time where you got on set and you went, oh, and people you really respected were just gone. I call them the disappeared. There's now much more of a culture of don't bring your phone to set.

43:27Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:And, you know, people are really realizing that it's an important part. And don't get a tattoo because it puts at least 45 minutes on your call in the morning trying to cover it up.

43:35Emily Watson:That's the kind of practical advice. I love that combination. So we have the kind of philosophical and practical. Perfect. Well, you're going to a different campfire very soon. We're going to cast you away to your desert island. It's almost time. Your career has taken you all over the world. How good are you at adjusting to a new place when you land somewhere?

43:57Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Well, I like to think that I'm quite good, but I'm not very good at the lonely of it. I don't think. That's going to be the problem. the isolation okay I like to jabber away and talk to people and you know that's sort of very feeding

44:11Emily Watson:for me what about the practical side I mean how will you be able to fend for yourself keep yourself

44:16Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:alive keep yourself warm and dry I'll probably give myself food poisoning pretty quickly right

44:21Emily Watson:I think I'm pretty rubbish are you a good cook in real life no no I meant I meant I cook a lot

44:26Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:because you know you just do because of life but I'm I'm very sad that my daughter describes her boyfriend's mom as a really good cook which is always a bit of a hammer blow that's that's a

44:38Emily Watson:tough review okay so this isn't shaping up too well what kind of island are you hoping for what

44:45Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:are you imagining oh something balmy breezy warm seas sort of hawaiian maybe talking that sounds

44:53Emily Watson:better yeah okay so so at least the vibe is going to be good yeah and a few cliff walks yes absolutely A bit of bluster. Definitely some bluster. All right. Well, we'll let you take one more disc before we cast you away, Emily. What's your last choice today? Okay.

45:06Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:So this is a piece by the Citizens of the World Choir, which is a choir that I am a patron of. And when my kids were young, I had a music teacher who used to come to the house. and when the Dubs Amendment failed to pass in Parliament, which was an attempt to bring unaccompanied minors into this country, refugees, she'd been working with Lord Roberts and he said, let's start a choir. And they started. Then she knocked on my door and said, will you be patron? And I think at the time my mum had recently died and my dad had adopted this principle of just say yes to everything. So I thought, I'm going to say yes to that.

45:51Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:and it's been the most incredible journey. That was 10 years ago and it's a choir made up of refugees and displaced people and allies. So it's sort of 50-50 people from here and people not from here and their brief is to sing music from all around the world that's not religious and they do a lot of kind of mash-up of different cultural things. So there are 50-odd members of the choir from 26 different countries around the world, kind of Ukrainian, Iranian, Afghanistan, all around the world. And they sing stuff from loads and loads of different cultures. And to me, they are an incredible success story.

46:34Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:They're singing on Ed Sheeran's latest album. They've sung twice at Glastonbury. They sang with Guy Garvey at the Platinum Jubilee Palace concert. They sang at Kofi Annan's memorial. and hearing them sing is like taking a bath in the opposite of hate. It's just a beautiful thing. And this is a song that was written for them by Felix Buxton of Basement Jacks and who is a great supporter of the choir. And yeah, this is one of their pieces that they are readying for Refugee Week this year.

47:42Emily Watson:We will sing Citizens of the World Choir with Vula Malinga, conducted by Becky Dell. so Emily Watson the time's come I'm going to cast you away to the desert island I'll give you the books to take with you you can have the bible the complete works of Shakespeare

47:56Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:and you can take one other book of your choice what's it going to be it's staying alive which is a poetry collection by published by blood axe books and why have you chosen it why that one I think poetry is in a way the most insightful. If you were to take philosophy, film, art, everything and boil it down to its essence, poetry would be the most successful way to express it. It's an expression of the human condition that is very potent. And in a collection like that, you have very, very different views and expressions of that.

48:35Emily Watson:It's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like to take with you?

48:39Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Well, it's a kind of a massive cheat. No, come on. I'm going to take the Tate Modern.

48:44Emily Watson:Oh, OK. It's not a cheat. There's plenty of precedent. Well, it's cafes and restaurants and toilets. They'll be unmanned. You'll be the only one there. I'll do the cleaning. But they are yours. Exactly. You can dust the paintings and the sculptures, make sure everything's just perfect.

48:59Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Why have you chosen the Tate Modern? I spend quite a lot of time there when I'm not working. I think being a creative person is a bit like having a dog and you have to take it for a walk every day and just going to see other people's attempts to reflect the nature of life. You know, you feel connected to yourself in some way doing that. Sometimes you go and you think, oh, I don't connect to that at all, I don't understand it. And sometimes you have a mind-blowing sense of the power of creativity and art. You said that your kids are very creative.

49:32Emily Watson:Did you take them there while they were growing up?

49:34Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yeah, my daughter learned to walk. in the Tate, actually. And the Tate are not going to thank me for this, but we have a trick that we do, that if you take a coin and you stand at the top of the slope in the main gallery. In the turbine hall. In the turbine hall. Yeah. If there's nothing on, and you roll the coin from the top of it, you start it off at the top of the slope. If you're really lucky, it will go all the way down and right to the other end.

50:00Emily Watson:Oh, my goodness. Best game ever. You're right. They're going to hate it. But what a brilliant game. Also, we'll now know who the Desert Island Discs listeners are.

50:09Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:Yeah, they'll be causing a riot.

50:11Emily Watson:Gathering with two Ps. That is yours. What a great luxury. Thank you. More people should take galleries with them. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Emily, would you save from the waves first if you needed to?

50:25Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen:I think that I would take Fat Freddy's Drop. Why?

50:30Emily Watson:Because it's about my person. Emily Watson thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs it's my pleasure I've really enjoyed it thank you

50:51hello

50:51Emily Watson:it was lovely chatting to Emily and I hope she's very happy on her island wandering around her gallery there are more than 2 ,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to we've cast lots of other actors away over the years, including plenty of Emily's co-stars. You'll find Hamnets' Jessie Buckley, the writer Maggie O 'Farrell. You'll also find Monica Dolan, her fellow BAFTA-winning actor, Inappropriate Adult, in there too. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio managers for today's programme were Sarah Hockley and Jackie Marjoram.

51:26Emily Watson:The Executive Production Coordinator was Susie Roilance. The Content Editor was Mugabe and the producer with Sarah Taylor. Join me next time, where my guest will be the motorcyclist and presenter Guy Martin.

51:57Emily Watson:I'm Noel Titheridge and for BBC Radio 4 from Shadow World this is Impulsive what happens when someone's personality changes completely. It was completely out of character. Never done it before. Never done it since. And it's because of a prescription drug. I asked myself, why would you do such a thing? What were you thinking? I've been uncovering the shocking side effects linked to medications called dopamine agonists. For BBC Radio 4 from Shadow World, this is Impulsive. Subscribe to Shadow World Impulsive Now on BBC Sounds.