Rupert Everett Happy Prince interview: Oscar Wilde would have HATED this today

This beautiful film was written and directed by, as well as starring Everett. A stellar supporting cast includes Colin Firth as Wilde’s great friend Reggie Turner, Emily Watson as his wife Constance, Colin Morgan as the bewitching Bosie and Edwin Thomas as the devoted Robbie Ross.

But this is one man’s story and one man’s triumph. It had its roots in Everett’s remarkable 2012 portrayal of Wilde in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, but has been a passion project of the actor for even longer.

Now that it has finally arrived in cinemas to glittering reviews, is Everett himself, a man who has risen and fallen and risen again in his industry and private life alike, a Happy Prince at last?

Like so much of the man and his own myth, his answer is quixotic and contradictory.

He says: “Yes, I think I’ve had very dark periods trying to bring together this film, but now I feel very happy… Well, not that happy. It’s rather like being undead making a movie – it never ends. But here today, now, I’m feeling so happy.”

I ask Everett what would Wilde make of our modern world. Would the original king of one-liners embrace social media?

He says: “I think he wold be horrified by people walking down the streets looking at their phones. It seems such a defeatist thing for human beings that we are reducing our focus to a little tiny box and not looking at the world around us at all.

“But I think he’d be fascinated by the notion of gay marriage. Particularly since marriage in those days was more romantic, a much bigger deal, so the idea of it going to gays too…”

He doesn’t tink marriage is romatic these days?

Everett says: “I think it’s much more fly by night now. You’re not saying ‘I will stay with you forever’, you’re saying ‘I’m going to stay with you for as long as we feel like it.’ So it’s a completely new version of the marriage contract. It was a completely different thing (then).

“I think he would have loved the idea (of gay marriage).”

Everett recently said he felt Wilde was always “searching for the gutter.” I ask if he thinks that still reflects the gay experience, if somehow gay people feel life will inevitably hurt them, deny them, lead them to the ‘gutter.’

He says: “I think my generation feels like that but I hope a younger generation feels more optimistic. If you are gay, or lesbian or transgender, there is more opportunity than possibly any other country in the world.

“There are still some terrible things that happen here but in other parts of the world being gay is a life and death risk. People are still getting chucked off rooftops in Syria.

“I think (that is why) this film is just as important today. Particularly as Wilde is the patron saint or Godfather of the gay movement.”

Everett’s mother read him The Happy Prince as a child and he has revently moved back in with her, splitting the family home. 

I point out that life has a way of closing circles and that Wilde famously said it was women’s greatest tragedy that they became their mothers and men’s that they never did.

He smiles: “I’m resisting becoming my mother because I could easily become my mother and I want to stay being me if i can.”

So, where does that leave him?

“I’m a catastrophe – i play to catastrophe rather han success. But in many ways I’m happy. I’m very lucky.”

The world, of course, is very lucky to enjoy this new era of Rupert Everett – older, wiser, happier and, we sense, with so much more still to come.

Oscar, we are sure, would have approved.

The Happy Prince is out now in cinemas