Telegraph Magazine photoshoot

Ben Whishaw attending photocall for TV mniseries A Very English Scandal

Ben whishaw

A year later, the actor was in another play at the Royal Court. So I thought I’d give myself one more go at making him love me. I felt I’d written and performed all the insanity out of my head and was now ready for something real. I believed this because it would have been unbearable to accept that after all that transformative, healing comedy I was still the same lunatic. I found him in the bar and we got talking again. I felt more relaxed than I ever had with him + I wasn’t pretending this time, I was actually relaxed, though I was also very impressed with how relaxed I was, so I can’t have been that relaxed. We must have sat talking for around an hour, and it was actually a really grounded, relationship-building conversation. The only moment of panic came when he told me that he’d seen a photo of me as a little boy somewhere, which he thought could have been him. The sudden lack of distance between us was too much for me. I started ranting about what a brilliant, sensitive child he must have been and what a stage-school maniac I was. He offered me a moment of connection and I couldn’t receive it. And then he revealed he was very happy with a boyfriend.  A composer. I thought, OK, Simon, we tried our best, he’s happy, it’s enough now, he’s with a composer, we can’t beat that. Can he juggle? He also told me he couldn’t email me back all those years ago for reasons more complicated and personal than anything to do with me being less brilliant than him. He hadn’t rejected me. I put on my coat, we hugged goodbye and I went to the toilet feeling relieved it was over. As I walked out of the toilet feeling a real sense of completion, he walked in, which I wasn’t expected. We’d had our hug goodbye and I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “Composer, huh?”