Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell bring the party, and a lasting friendship, to 'Much Ado About Nothing' on Broadway

Having known each other for decades, the stage and screen favorites bring a foundation of trust, chemistry, and fun to their turns as enemies-to-lovers Benedick and Beatrice.

Summary

• Tom Hiddleston, Hayley Atwell, and director Jamie Lloyd discuss the new Broadway revival of Much Ado About Nothing
• Hiddleston and Atwell share how their 20-year offstage friendship informs their onstage performances as enemies-to-lovers Benedick and Beatrice
• Lloyd discusses what the actors bring to his high-energy production, which features hot-pink set design and '90s music
• Performances start at the Winter Garden Theatre on October 31

Tom Hiddleston knows how to control the giggles on stage. They're bound to happen from time to time in a show like Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's beloved rom-com packed with plentful zingers and, in director Jamie Lloyd's revival, cheery flourishes like pink confetti, an inflatable heart, and dance battles to '90s house music. But even if Hiddleston can hide his laughter from the audience, he can't hide it from Hayley Atwell, his co-star and longtime friend.

"No one would ever know, but he suddenly gets very serious and then turns his back to the audience," Atwell revealed. "When he does that, I'm like, 'Oh no.'"

"It's because I'm terrified! It's just white-knuckling at that point," Hiddleston replied with a smile. "You've got to hold the line so hard."

Both actors are perhaps best known as Marvel Cinematic Universe screen stars, but their appearances in the franchise — Hiddleston's as trickster god Loki, Atwell's as secret agent Peggy Carter — didn't overlap. Their shorthand was actually forged over 20 years of offscreen and -stage friendship that began at auditions for London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Now, it informs their star turns as enemies-to-lovers Benedick and Beatrice, first in the West End and now at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre with the whole London cast intact.

The two friends have always had a "playfulness," Hiddleston said, "and that's given us a lot of trust and a lot of permission so that when we're in our 'merry war,' whatever comes across the net to you [Atwell] is received with love. And you send it back with some extra spin on the ball."

It also helps that, long before they became household names, Hiddleston and Atwell were U.K. theatre workhorses and ace Shakespeareans. That's how Lloyd, who'd directed both actors separately before Much Ado, knows them. "Their facility for making Shakespearean language seem so effortless and accessible and human is really inspiring," Lloyd said. "But also, they're really funny people. You need to have people with immaculate comic timing [...] but underneath it all, they need to be aware of very human emotions, and they need to dig deep in terms of longing: a longing to connect, a longing to be loved, a longing to be seen and heard."

It's implied, Lloyd added, that Benedick and Beatrice had a past attempt at romance that left both their hearts bruised. Echoed Atwell, "The audience is ahead of, in a way, how brilliant they are at their battle of wit [...] and how at times prideful Beatrice feels about that, that she feels she's won the moment or won the scene and annihilated Benedick. Actually, she's created this impenetrable armor that has meant that she won't experience the pain of being rejected by him again. But as a result of that, she's also lost the capacity to actually feel the vulnerability of love.

"That, to me, is very human," she continued. "That's something that most people can identify with, the sophisticated ways we present to the world that we're absolutely fine when, inside, we are really vulnerable, and we don't know how to marry the two."

That relatability might point to Much Ado's staying power; the past decade alone has seen it resurface in adaptations ranging from an acclaimed Shakespeare in the Park revival (staged in 2019 and set in pre-2020-election Georgia) to the Glen Powell/Sydney Sweeney rom-com Anyone But You (released in 2023). Lloyd's hot-pink, party-hearty take may seem like an equally bold departure for both the show and director: His recent revivals of the plays Waiting for Godot and A Doll's House and the musicals Sunset Boulevard and Evita (upcoming this spring), were decidedly neutral-toned. But a show "about energy and life and humor and love," he said, warrants a different approach.

"Sunset Boulevard was [...] set in the world of black-and-white silent movies, so it made sense that it wasn't a Technicolor palette," Lloyd explained. "This has an exuberance and a silliness that needed to be full of pink and the colors of the rainbow."

As for the play itself, certain elements reflect the way Shakespeare was performed in his time, with song-and-dance sequences (which Hiddleston and Atwell deliver) and an awareness of the audience. Lloyd's Much Ado isn't interactive or immersive, but he, Hiddleston, and Atwell all said theatregoers are key to the production as the actors, who play off the energy and reactions in the room.

"There are moments of connection with them. And it's not only in moments of great levity, but there are moments [Hayley and I] both have of real intimacy, where I feel like I'm talking to them like I'm talking to my best friend," Hiddleston said.

What do the actors have to say to audiences right now, ahead of Much Ado's first performance on October 31? That the play is "endlessly discoverable," in Hiddleston's words, and they invite everyone to join the party — and all the love, messiness, connection, and pain that arises therein.

"[Much Ado is] about how impossible personal relationships are in the hopeful attempt to get to know someone and all the ways in which we get the person wrong, or we say the wrong thing, or we misunderstand each other, or we accidentally flirt with the wrong person, or we regret, the next day, choices that we've made, and how we try to have some sort of resolution," Atwell said.

"And love wins," Hiddleston added. "Love is vulnerability. Love is openheartedness. Love is humble and defenseless. Benedick and Beatrice are two people who think they have it all together, all figured out, and they're alone. And actually, they're perfect for each other, if only they would see that.

"It's so reassuring that, actually, you can find your person," he continued. "And maybe your person is closer than you think." With such a longstanding, thriving friendship between them, he and Atwell can certainly attest to that.

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Photo credit: Much Ado About Nothing in London. (Photos by Marc Brenner)