John Hurt is appearing as Quentin Crisp in a film about the cultural icon’s time in New York?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthe Guardian speaks to the writers about capturing the essence of Crisp on screen. Hurt is reprising the role?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùhe originally played Crisp in 1975’s “The Naked Civil Servant.”
“I don’t believe in abroad,” John Hurt’s Quentin Crisp says towards the end of The Naked Civil Servant, the 1975 Thames Television drama that made Hurt a star and Crisp an icon. Before long, Crisp would revise his opinion: after his new-found fame led to him performing in New York in 1978, he fell in love with the city and, forsaking his self-appointed status as one of the stately homos of England, relocated there in 1981, aged 72. He would remain one of its most celebrated resident aliens for the remaining 18 years of his life.
Now that period is the subject of its own ITV film, An Englishman in New York, which takes its title from the song Sting wrote about Crisp. Hurt reprises his role and, perhaps surprisingly, Crisp is once again presented as an outsider: initially basking in an apparent idyll of self-determination, he soon finds new pressures to conform and is ostracised for crossing party lines in the gay utopia, particularly when he downplays Aids as “a fad”. Focusing on his friendships with Phillip Steele (Denis O’Hare) and the performance artist and Warhol protege Penny Arcade (played by Cynthia Nixon), with whom he often performed, the drama opens up the space between Crisp’s persona and his private self, probing the limitations of his assiduously cultivated continence.
The city’s appeal was immediate. “He walked down the street here and felt that he was part of a society that was eclectic and diverse rather than judgmental and introverted,” says director Richard Laxton.
The film airs December 28 at 9 pm in the UK, on ITV1.