“I had no idea until the first day of rehearsals that there would be dancing. Or that there would be furry heads and a giant pink heart,” says Hayley Atwell. The actor is talking about Jamie Lloyd’s club-anthem-driven, flamingo-tinted revival of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at Drury Lane last year, which required levels of exuberant grooving she’d “never done in public before, sober”.
Atwell, 42, and her friend Tom Hiddleston played the warring lovers Beatrice and Benedick — she beady and intelligent, he a vain manchild (the production even acknowledged the pair’s shared existence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where she is Agent Carter and he is Loki). Both were nominated for the prime acting honours in the 2025 Standard Theatre Awards, with Atwell winning the Natasha Richardson award for best actress. “The fact that it’s Shakespeare that I’m winning for feels important, because it asks everything of an actor in order to get it right,” she says.
