Edward Bluemel’s New Play Asks “What if Shakespeare was Sexy and Bi?”

While in rehearsals for his current project, the buzzy West End play Born With Teeth, actor Edward Bluemel has the same routine. Everyday he takes a short stroll to The Orchard, a little shipping container-sized café in London’s New Docklands, to have his lunch. Today he’s ordering a jacket potato with beans and cheese. He’s a humble man with simple pleasures.

Bluemel is one of the Brit boys: that crop of late aughts breakout actors who’ve found their rhythm in the industry making romantic dramas, comedies, and, every so often, a play like this. You’ll likely recognize his face from his role in Prime Video’s sexy period romance My Lady Jane, or the man-boy MI6 agent Hugo Turner in Killing Eve. But in Born With Teeth, he’s reunited with a former co-star from his days on Sex Education, fellow Brit boy Ncuti Gatwa (hot off Barbie and a stint as Doctor Who).

The play’s subject matter is already sending traditionalists spiralling. In it, Bluemel stars as William Shakespeare, while Gatwa plays Christopher Marlowe, his creative rival. There is a longheld belief that Marlowe helped write Shakespeare’s Henry VI—Born With Teeth brings those imagined conversations to life, and questions if, maybe, there was a more erotic friction between the pair at play too.

It’s been nearly eight years since Bluemel last performed on stage, and he’s in his final week of rehearsing before he hits the theater. Over those aforementioned jacket potatoes, he dealt out zinger after zinger, as we discussed Shakespeare’s hidden bi history, period acting, and the most overrated thing about London.

Douglas Greenwood: The last time you did a Shakespeare play was when you were in drama school. When you were doing it, how much were you thinking about the guy who wrote it? 

I wasn’t thinking about him at all, but we’ve gotten quite close over the last few weeks. There’s so much to uncover in a Shakespeare play that you’ve just got to get straight into the text. What’s great about this play is that I’ve been able to do the complete reverse. In this play, for instance, we ask: What bad things has he done? When has he felt guilt? And how might that manifest in his later plays? I’m hoping after this people will be able to back and read his plays through a slightly different lens.

Are you a Shakespeare stan? Or pretty ‘take it or leave it’? 

It always comes and goes. And as soon as I’m involved in a Shakespeare play or something to do with it, then you unlock that key, and suddenly you’re in that world again. 

Do you think he knew what sexy was?

Oh my god, definitely! Let me read you something. It’s from Venus and Adonis, which we talk about in the play. It’s this epic poem. [Bluemel opens his phone browser]

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

Wow. 

Right? I think the way that he purposefully plays with gender is really sexy too. But at the time, they didn’t have a word for bisexual, there was a relaxed, cavalier attitude towards it.

Have you ever psychoanalyzed why you get cast in period dramas so often?

I have the hair of a guy who wears a top hat for some reason. I’ve also been accused of having the opposite of an iPhone face. It looks like I’ve never seen an iPhone.

Does that affect what you want to do with your hair? 

Sometimes, because I just love having jobs!

Is there an era you’d have liked to have lived through?

I’d say the ‘70s, mainly because of the clothes. I love a high waist. I like a boot cut jean. I like a cowboy boot. And I’d enjoy the facial hair options. Oh, and even though I can’t drive, I’d like to have been in those classic cars. 

Can I quote your Wikipedia back to you?

Are you going to ask me about fish?

Yes. It reads: “He also has an interest in fish.”

I did an interview years and years ago. They asked, “What other things have you wanted to be throughout your life?” and I said I wanted to be a fishmonger. I just like the idea of being able to fillet really fast. Seeing a person who’s confident with fish is quite exciting. I like perusing the fishmonger and the idea of wearing wellies to work. 

Do you prefer Edward or Ed?

Edward. I enjoy the second syllable. 

What’s the most overrated thing about London?

Soho House. I’m not a card carrying member. 

What’s the craziest way you’ve exercised free will as an adult that your child self would be proud of?

I found myself in Catania earlier this year, and it has a bit of a reputation for being quite spicy. My friend and I were there, but he’s an actor and he got a [callback], so I was on my own in Catania. I realised: I have to take this holiday by the horns. Online it said you should go to one of the scariest streets and eat a horse meat sandwich, purchased off of a very colorful Sicilian individual. So I did. It was chewy, but it was nice. Then I wandered around, went to a monastery and had the time of my life.

What’s the last movie you watched on a plane?

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. Those films are so good for aeroplanes because they are long, but they’re also low commitment in terms of emotion. Once I watched Past Lives sitting in the middle seat between two muscly men watching Joker. It was clear that if they saw a sign of weakness in me, they would kill me. But I was shoulder-shaking crying. Past Lives is an amazing film but if I watch it again it won’t be on a Boeing.

‘Born With Teeth’ plays at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre until November 1.