Petronella Wyatt

I think I’ll sue over my appearance in Sky’s Boris drama

Weren't Rachel Weisz or Kate Winslet free to play me?

  • From Spectator Life
Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson in his 'blond fright wig' [Phil Fisk/Sky UK]

There on my television screen, in a somewhat surreal sequence, was Boris Johnson contemplating the women in his life. And suddenly before me appeared the famous Wyatt features: first eyes, then a nose and then a mouth, right into camera. Medium-range shot and then a close-up. Ah, we had faces then. And then I looked harder, and my blood turned to Freon. It was just a large photograph of me stuck on a 10ft projector screen. Couldn’t those cheapskates at Sky have got a goddamn actress instead of a Polaroid? 

As it turns out, This England, the Kenneth Branagh series about my old friend Boris, is more Psycho than psychodrama. Someone in the make-up department seems to have thought they were remaking What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The prosthetic mask Branagh wears makes Boris look like a burns victim. And what is that blond fright wig? Boris’s hair deserves an actor all of its own.

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