Richard Armitage goes to Sydney 3

[A report from “me +” reader bollyknickers, who attended the Popcorn Taxi event in Sydney, Australia on May 1, 2013, relevant to the discussion here. The photo attached is hers; I have not edited it except to put her name on it. Many, many thanks to bolly for recording her impressions and reactions!]

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I never thought I would see Richard Armitage in the flesh. I don’t like crowds and never saw myself going to a red carpet event. Getting up at the crack of dawn to stake a pitch, all that pushing and jostling — good grief, I don’t even go into department stores when the sales are on. I missed him at the ARIAs – though as it turned out, everyone missed him at the ARIAs — because I wasn’t up for standing all day in the blistering heat just for a quick glimpse. My lack of action sometimes makes me think I’m a poor excuse for a fan. I have never had a burning desire to meet him or to own anything he has touched. I don’t want an autograph and I can empathize with the recent “confession” on tumblr that the writer doesn’t want him to see her. In my fantasy world, RA would adore me the moment he met me. He would be utterly and completely besotted. So why would I shatter that fantasy? If I met him and he were simply polite … well, I think I might struggle to keep my adoration fantasy alive. I also seek equality in my relationships, which creates an issue in this case. I love him. If he did not love me, that would be a problem. I know a lot about him while he knows nothing about me — another inequality. He is part of my life, but I am not part of his. So unless I could make a meaningful contact with him, I’m not sure I would want to make contact at all.

But he was coming to my local cinema. How could I not go? I bought two tickets. Mr. Bollyknickers balked at going due to thinking he would be the only male in the audience (“I wouldn’t want to cramp your style”) and, I think, because he knew I might fangirl so much more freely if he weren’t there. But my eighteen-year-old daughter was keen — at the time I got the tickets, more because of The Hobbit and because of RA’s “one degree of separation” from Aidan Turner, although I think she’s coming into the RA fold now. I procrastinated about scheduling time off from work, and then, just as I tried to book the afternoon off to meet other fans, we became short staffed. One colleague resigned; another has Wednesdays off. A third would have covered, but got called away at the last minute. I work in crisis mental health and someone needs to be on call to manage emergency interventions. And on Wednesday afternoon, that was me. I managed to get the person doing evening cover to start an hour early so I could race out at five p.m., barely with time to reapply my lippy or brush my hair. Bechep bought a new outfit — I just sponged the yoghurt spilled at lunch off mine! I picked my daughter up en route and we battled our way down Military Road (which any Sydneysider knows is one of the most congested roads in the state of New South Wales). We looked into cars and taxis and mused that RA was probably stuck in traffic, too. We got there just before six p.m., collected our tickets and joined the queue. A very long queue. A queue that went past Cinema 4, down the stairs, out the fire exit and up a back street. Most of the Armitage Army stood at the front, having arrived at 3 p.m. But after the doors opened, we went in and found places in row six, even though at least 350 people got in there before us. Great seats — right in the middle and opposite RA’s chair. Less than twenty feet away. There is a G-D.

On the interview itself, I will be brief. We will doubtless see at least parts of it at some point anyway, as it was filmed. First, we were warned about inappropriate behavior. Then we watched an “exclusive” short — most of which I have seen on the Internet. Then RA was introduced — “This man literally ran away to the circus” — to an audible groan from the front row where the Armitage Army ladies were seated. A door opened, right next to my daughter and her friends at the other end of my row, and out came RA — much to our surprise, as I had assumed he would enter stage left, as the interviewer had. Loud whoops and clapping! Everyone was on their feet — and RA looked somewhat embarrassed as he made his way down to the stage. My guess, from his very slight stoop, his clenched hands, and his microexpressions, was that he was hating that moment. But the man is a professional and once in his seat, he gave off an air of ease and control. He answered questions from the audience intelligently — amazing me with his ability to find new and interesting things to say about a film he has been promoting for five months now — and sidestepped attempts to blur the boundary between the professional and the personal. He didn’t even answer a question about whether he would see Dawn French as she is also (apparently) in Sydney – he just smiled and said nothing. He was engaging and funny. He spotted Bechep and Meri in the front row and acknowledged he remembered them from that morning. In short, he was the RA we have all come to know and love from Internet clips. During the interview, I learned a bit more about the making of The Hobbit, but apart from his basic admission that he looks at blogs about him, I didn’t feel I learned any more about the man himself. He was RA playing RA.

The end of the interview came. We all stood and clapped and RA more or less bolted from the stage. It was clear he wasn’t planning to stay to hear prolonged applause. But then something happened that I suspect was not planned. He went up the flight of steps next to my daughter and stopped on the first landing. Perhaps someone was supposed to meet him there to accompany him out … and the expected person wasn’t there. Suddenly he was standing in the middle of the audience and looked as if he didn’t know where to go next. A woman from the audience started to run towards him. At that point, he was only a few feet from me so I could see his expression clearly and the look on his face said it all — complete horror. I thought she was about to launch herself at him, but she may simply have been running to the bathrooms and collided with him. Or she might have seen his face, too, and decided the most contact she could make was the pat on his shoulder she gave him before the diminutive PR woman appeared, took his hand, and led him quickly through the audience to the exit.

I wonder why no one else has talked about this moment. I’m convinced it happened. I was within personal distance and I interpret non-verbal communication for a living. My daughter saw it, too. Of course, facial expressions are subjective; perhaps I am layering my own concerns onto my fellow fan’s actions and RA’s fleeting reaction. Perhaps no one mentioned it because it was just a blip on the screen of the pleasurable effect of the evening. RA clearly triumphed during the Hobbit premiere and press tours and the Q & A in Sydney was no exception. Nor did it change my general impression of his capacity to deal with fan attention. Thanks to youtube we can all witness his development from a man who blushed so endearingly during early interviews to the confident, articulate star of the biggest movie of the year — the RA who was present at the Sydney event.

So why did a few seconds of confusion and an unguarded moment leave such an impression on me? Whatever the cause of the expression on his face, that is the moment I will remember — the glimpse of the man who’s just like the rest of us. A man who, I’ve read, was raised to be polite and put others’ feelings before his own, but also a normal person who gets intimidated, lost, fed up, and tired. A man who had been meeting and greeting since seven that morning and, I suppose, had had enough. Who probably just wanted some time to himself. A man who did not need one more stranger hugging him that day. A man who understands these encounters as part of the deal and manages them gracefully but cannot always enjoy them.

RA’s increasing success at making it look easy does not mean it is easy. I think what that moment reminded me was that everyone, no matter how skilled or successful, struggles sometimes. And there is nothing wrong with that.

~ by Servetus on May 4, 2013.