Video: Tom Hiddleston & Hayley Atwell Are Ready to Make Much Ado on Broadway

Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell are getting ready to spar on Broadway! The longtime friends will return to the stage this fall as Benedick and Beatrice in Jamie Lloyd’s acclaimed production of Much Ado About Nothing, which takes up residence at the Winter Garden Theatre.

For Hiddleston, the Broadway engagement is the culmination of an idea that has been years in the making—one that actually began during his last Broadway run in Lloyd’s Betrayal in 2019.

“At the end of our run of Betrayal… we went for a drink across the road and it was such a happy experience for all of us,” Hiddleston recalled. “Jamie said to me, ‘What are we to do next?’ And I said, ‘Are you serious?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘Much Ado About Nothing.'”

Lloyd didn’t forget the suggestion. The pair continued discussing the possibility over the next several years, eventually bringing the production to London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane with Atwell as Beatrice. For Atwell, who has known Hiddleston for more than two decades, the opportunity was an easy yes.

“I’d worked with Jamie before… and then the next day I got a call from Jamie and he said, ‘Would you be our Beatrice?’ And I said, ‘I’ll be your Beatrice,'” she explained. “The idea that I could work with Tom, having known Tom for over 20 years at that point, Jamie for a third time, [and] this particular play just felt such a gift and such an amazing, timely opportunity.”

Lloyd credits his stars’ command of Shakespeare with helping make the production especially accessible to audiences. “Their facility for the Shakespearean language is uncanny,” he said. “First and foremost, they are theater animals. They are Shakespearean actors, and they make it sound so effortless and so easy to understand. And they’re so human.”

That connection will take on a new dimension when the production arrives at the Winter Garden, where Lloyd believes Broadway audiences will become an essential part of the show.

“The audience is like another character in Much Ado About Nothing,” Lloyd explained. “Actors are constantly talking directly to the people out in the auditorium, and there’s a real relationship, a back and forth. And of course, the whole evening is sustained by laughter. So you really need to hear that Broadway audience. And as we know, Broadway audiences are not shy when it comes to being vocal. So I think that’s gonna add a whole new energy to the production.”