During its time on the air, ‘T4’ became renowned for its irreverent and chatty presenting style, but former host Rick Edwards has admitted that not every celebrity guest was a fan of the show’s sense of humour.
In an interview with HuffPost UK on ‘BUILD’, Rick recalled a rather awkward encounter with Russell Crowe, which proved to be especially awkward.
Reflecting on his time presenting on ‘T4’, he revealed: “There were occasions when you’d misjudge… I misjudged it with Russell Crowe once, that was terrifying. [The interview] went down really badly.
“He was about two and a half hours late, and then when I finally got there...they just have these hotel set-ups where the star just sits in a chair, and there’s a constant conveyor belt of journalists coming in and asking questions, and the stars tend to get quite bored. And usually you’re sitting at a comfortable distance, but on this occasion, my knees were basically touching Russell Crowe’s.
“So he’s here... and he looks quite angry, I don’t know why everything’s running late but it is.”
Rick continued: “I’d read him complaining that he kept getting asked the same questions in every interview and he was really bored of it. So I said, ‘Russell, I know you’re getting annoyed at people asking you the same stuff… so we’ll try something different’.
“And this film was the Ridley Scott ‘Robin Hood’ one where he did the accent, and he was quite antsy about it… because his accent was terrible. So I asked him, ‘would you rather be called Scidley Rott or Crussell Rowe?’
“And there was a horrible pause where he just fixed me with his eyes and just went, ‘what’s the point of that question?’” And I sort of went, ‘Now… now you ask I don’t know actually. I was trying to inject some levity I guess, Russell, and it’s failed spectacularly, and now your knees are touching mine, and you hate me. And I’ve got another seven minutes of this.”
However, that’s nothing compared to his infamous encounter with Jake Gyllenhaal, during which Rick has admitted to “misjudging a question quite badly”.
He explained: “To give a bit of context, my wife is an actress, and I don’t like that she has to occasionally kiss other boys, which I think is a reasonable thing to not like. And actors always say, ‘it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just acting, it’s all very mechanical, blah blah blah…’
“I didn’t really explain that part of it to [Jake Gyllenhaal], maybe I should have done… so I said to him, ‘what about this then, Jake? If there’s an amazing role, like, your dream role. It’s the thing you’re going to get lauded for, the thing you’re going to get an Oscar for, it’s the role you were born to play.
“‘You’re offered the part, and there’s one small caveat, [they’ve] already cast your sister Maggie as the love interest. Do you still take the role?’ Which I think is a fair question, if it is only acting, why wouldn’t you want to make out with your sister on screen?”
Sadly for Rick, Jake did not see the funny side.
The TV personality recalled: “I’ve never seen anyone, even Russell Crowe, look that angry. He was just like, ‘are you joking? No. That’s disgusting.’ And I sort of just went, ‘are you sure?’
“And again, it’s that sort of thing where if that had been the end of the interview, fine, but it was about halfway through.
“You have to just soldier on, because you can’t just go ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll see you later’ and leave. But to be fair… it is still a good question. But not in the opinion of Jake Gyllenhaal, crucially.”
Watch Rick’s full interview on ‘BUILD’ below: