Kim Cattrall signed up for the Horrible Histories movie after discovering a “hilarious” clip from the original television series on Twitter.
The Sex and the City star plays Roman empress Agrippina in Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans, which was inspired by Terry Deary’s best-selling children’s books and the subsequent TV adaptation.
The Canadian star, who is an active social media user, first became a fan of the franchise – and its idiosyncratic sense of humour – when a Twitter follower sent her a video from the show.
“Someone sent me a voguing number that they did about Cleopatra on Twitter when I had just played Cleopatra [in Antony and Cleopatra at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2010],” she told A List.
“And I just thought, ‘Who did that? That is hilarious!’ So I started following them and then got involved with the movie.”
The actress, 62, said that she is “making choices right now about doing things that really make me laugh,” adding that she sees the anarchic spirit of “Ealing comedies and the Carry One movies” in the new film.
Social media also provides the punch lines for many of the “crossover” jokes in Rotten Romans.
“I come back from a holiday and I’m showing pictures of my vacation and they’re all chiselled out on a tablet,” she explained. “That crossover of very ancient and very ‘now’ was very clever.”
Cattrall said that the film’s ensemble cast of British comic actors – including Alexander Armstrong, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Nick Frost – fostered a “jovial and fun” atmosphere “between takes” where creative license was encouraged.
“What I really loved about this experience was that I felt that I could do things and then our director, Dom [Brigstocke] would look at it and say, ‘Well, go with that,’” she recalled.
“We weren’t improvising, but we could really have a license with it.”
Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans is in UK cinemas from July 26.
