Remembering Tim Curry

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Support for NPR and the following message come from 20th Century Studios' The Dog Stars. Director Ridley Scott returns with a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller, starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce, now playing in theaters and IMAX.

**David Bianculli** (0:16)
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Tim Curry, the British actor who starred in the original stage and movie versions of The Rocky Horror Show in the 1970s, died Tuesday. He was 80 years old.
In Rocky Horror, Curry played flamboyant extraterrestrial mad scientist Frank N. Furter, who believed in sexual freedom and fluid sexual identities.

**Tim Curry** (0:39)
Come up to the lab and see what's on the slab. I see you shiver with anticipation.

**David Bianculli** (0:51)
The film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, based on the hit London stage musical, became a cult hit, and in midnight movie showings, Tim Curry's aggressively outrageous starring role found a loyal new audience. Fifty years later, The Rocky Horror Picture Show still figures in some local midnight screenings around the country, and a revival of the original stage musical continues its Broadway run through February. And though it was Tim Curry's most famous role, it was by no means his only one. He also played Pennywise in the original ABC miniseries version of Stephen King's IT, an uptight professor in the TV series Kinsey, co-starred in the movies Annie, Clue and The Shout, joined the Muppets as Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, and played King Arthur in the original Broadway production of Monty Python's Spamalot. And he recorded several rock albums in the 1970s and scored one hit in England with I Do the Rock, a song that was very much of its time. And its time was 1979
In addition to singing, Tim Curry also went into the recording studio as an actor, providing voices for such animated features as The Rugrats Movie and The Wild Thornberries. After he suffered a serious stroke in 2012, which confined him to a wheelchair, Curry relied on voice acting for the bulk of his roles the remainder of his career.
Terry Gross spoke to Tim Curry in 2005, when he was about to star in the Broadway musical, Monty Python's Spamalot, playing King Arthur. The show was directed by Mike Nichols. Here's a song from the cast recording. This is a self-help spoof called Find Your Grail.

**Terry Gross** (3:48)
How did you get the part of King Arthur in Spamalot?

**Tim Curry** (3:55)
Sort of sideways, really, I guess. I've known Eric Idle a long time, one of the original Pythons, and he now lives in Los Angeles, as do I. And so we see each other quite a bit. And in fact, the summer before last, we were hoping to do a film together, which he had written and was going to direct, which was a kind of demolition of every Miramax movie ever made, called The Remains of the Piano. And that never quite happened because the money...
It's a good title, isn't it?

**SPEAKER_6** (4:35)
Very good. Very good.

**Tim Curry** (4:36)
I was going to play the Reverend Whoopsie. And Robin Williams was going to play Vanessa Regrave in Howard's End. I loved his lines, which were stuff like, You, I haven't met you before, you shall have the teacup when I go. No, no, no, you shall have the grand piano. No, no, you shall have the house.
So that never happened, but he said, I think it looks like we are finally going to get to do the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
And we're going to call it Spamalot. First of all, I thought that was just terribly funny. But I also thought, oh, well, you know, I'll believe it when it happens. And then suddenly Mike Nichols was directing it, and they put David Hyde-Pearson, Hanka Zaria, and I, and a couple of other people on a plane from California. And we came into New York and we sat down and read it with a bunch of other people from New York, some of whom are in the play. And it just went like gangbusters. And I guess the next day I was going to be King Arthur.

**Terry Gross** (5:52)
So Spamalot incorporates some classic Monty Python bits in it. That I assume a lot of people in the audience probably know by heart. What kind of response do you get when you get to the classic parts?

**Tim Curry** (6:05)
It's quite interesting because the audience always sort of contains some core of Monty Python fans who see stuff coming, you know, and react with great whoops of joy. And then settle down to see it unfold. I mean, they're hugely welcoming and then they really want to see it happen. I mean, happily, they're not talking along with it, because that would, you know, that would need a spanking.