Colin Morgan as Merlin in the BBC’s The Adventures of Merlin.
In November of 2013, I was madly scribbling my way through a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) draft of my second novel, A Matter of Time, anxious to hit that 50,000 word goal in the 30 days allotted. I was also high off my recent trip to London, in which I’d not only gotten to visit many famous Regency places I’d read about, but in which I also met and received a high-five from Colin Morgan, the British actor who played Merlin (brilliantly, I might add) on the BBC show of the same name.
I’d had, uh, more than a passing infatuation with the show and its two lead characters, Merlin and Prince Arthur, for nearly a year. I was neck-deep in a fandom, and loving every minute of it. I still do, and still hold great admiration for the acting talents, and yes, the visual appearance of Colin Morgan and Bradley James. So it only seemed fitting, as I typity-type-type-typed my way through chapter after chapter, that I add in characters that might bear more than a passing resemblance to those two fine men. I put them in as a lark, figuring it would amuse my best friend, who was reading what I wrote as fast as I sent it to her. I’d take them out later, surely.
Bradley James as Prince/King Arthur in the BBC’s The Adventures of Merlin.
But…but…instead of whittling the characters down, I expanded them. Made them the perfect foil for the occasionally-a-little-too-broody Deveric Mattersley. I gave them names: James Bradley, the Duke of Arthington, and Morgan Collinswood, the Marquess of Emerlin. I added in a few Merlin Easter eggs for anyone who’s seen the show. And I fell in love with them all over again.
They are minor characters, to be true, showing up only occasionally in A Matter of Time. But never fear – each will, at some point in the future, star as the hero in their own book. Because I love them too much to let them go. Here, just for the fun of it, is a small excerpt in which Eliza James meets the Duke and Marquess for the first time:
After a few moments, two gentlemen—one a tall, lanky fellow with a mop of black hair, the other a bit shorter and more muscular, with sandy blonde hair and a square jawline—approached.
“Lady Amara,” the blonde one said. He nodded toward Deveric’s sister, but his sky-blue eyes fixed on Eliza.
Wow, they really knew how to grow them in the Regency.
His exquisitely carved lips parted into a snaggle-toothed smile that somehow rendered him even more appealing; men with perfectly straight, obsessively white teeth always seemed unnatural to her.
She peeked at the taller one. He was perhaps not quite as classically handsome as the blonde, but his wide-set blue eyes crinkled as he greeted Amara, his lips cracking into a grin that revealed dimples to die for.
So – what do you think? Did I do them justice? And if you read A Matter of Time, I’d love to hear what you think – and what kind of women you feel the two men ought to end up with (sorry, Merthur fans – in my future novels, they’re getting the girl!).
Here’s a very brief blurb:
A modern-day Austenite’s dream comes true when she lands in the arms of a Regency duke, only to discover some fantasies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be when he proves less than a Prince Charming.
Next we caught the Tube to St. Paul’s. Upon emerging from the Tube exit, we were looking around for the cathedral, but didn’t see it initially. We spied some sort of smaller building, but were sure that couldn’t be the church. Hubby then turned around and laughed, because tucked down the street between the tall buildings was our first peek of St. Paul’s – and it was definitely not small.
St. Paul’s is magnificent. I’ve always loved the huge medieval cathedrals – there is something about them that just sings to me. The architecture, the artwork, the religious devotion inspiring their construction – all of it works something in me whenever I step foot in one. I loved St. Paul’s. No pictures were allowed inside, but that’s OK – I was too busy gawking over its grandeur to worry much about that.
I swear he was happy. He just dislikes selfies.
One of my goals I had set before even arriving in London was climbing the stairs in St. Paul’s to its top. All of the stairs. There are 259 of them. I know for many people this is no big deal, but I’m not exactly a small woman, a young woman, or a woman in particularly good shape. At least I had the good sense in the month and a half before our trip to kick up my walking regimen, getting up to five miles a day before we left. I’m sure that’s why I actually made it to the top of the Cathedral, but it wasn’t easy going. Brett and I stopped in the whispering gallery, and then climbed the additional steps to the very top. The view of London was fantastic, and I can tell you every step of that climb was worth it.
Gate near St. Paul’s. See hubby peeking up at dome from which we’d just descended?
As I stood at the top, I tried once again to imagine what it must have been like for people from centuries past to stand in that same place and look out over the city, especially considering the other buildings would have been much, much shorter. In truth I have no idea if people in the Regency period were allowed up in the Dome the way we are today. I assume so, but I suppose I need to look into that. If they were, I guarantee you a future hero and heroine will spend time whispering to each other across the Whispering Gallery, and then will steal kisses while surveying the city from upon high.
Heading back to the hotel, we chilled out for an hour or so before walking down to Leicester Square. I’d booked a table in a Mexican restaurant on the Square – sure, a total tourist trap, but I was trying to appease my husband with Mexican food, since I was about to drag him to a play in which he had no interest so that I could ogle Colin Morgan.
Ah, the ever-so-masculine Mangarita
We were amused by the idea of a “Mangarita” listed on the menu, so hubby ordered one of those, while I ordered the regular frozen version. Can you tell which is which?
We still had a bit of time to kill before the play, so we wandered around Leicester Square and back down to Trafalgar Square, where we stumbled across some sort of protest – and two bagpipe players. It was delightful to stand among the hub-bub of the evening and take in all the people – and the lights. I took a pic of the National Museum in the background, and lamented that we would not be able to go in it on this trip. We wandered back over toward the theater, and I was delighted to see Her Majesty’s Theatre and the Royal Theatre at Haymarket along the way.
The National MuseumHer Majesty’s TheatreThe Theatre Royal, HaymarketPiccadilly Circus
Then it was showtime, baby… on to Mojo, seeing Colin Morgan, and what would become what I dubbed the Best High-Five Ever! You can read all about that adventure here.
I’ll admit that I was mostly excited for Day 3 of our trip because we would be attending Mojo the play – and seeing COLIN MORGAN!! – that evening. But I was also fired up to visit the world-famous British Museum and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Even hubby was pretty excited, as, like me, he loves museums and large cathedrals.
Unfortunately, the day dawned gray and rainy. Although given it was the first time we’d had rain since we arrived, I shouldn’t complain. Plus we had mostly indoor activities sketched out for the day, so besides being a bit of a mood dampener, the rain didn’t deter us. Upon arrival at the museum, hubby and I immediately split up – I wanted to search out any Regency-related artifacts I could find, whereas hubby headed to the Greek and Roman displays. Sadly, many of my pictures didn’t really come out, but I enjoyed examining Regency jewelry and buttons and watches and clocks. There were fewer items from the early 19th century than I’d seen at the V&A, I think.
Regency dishes celebrating the defeat of NapoleonLord Byron, who reminds me of singer John Mayer – and actor Tom Hanks.The Prince Regent. On a box.Scottish brooch, @1530s.
After the Regency displays, I sought out the medieval sections of the Museum, still feeling affection for my former area of doctoral study. I loved studying the various artifacts. I stumbled across a display of pocket watches and clocks, and also one of money. It was fun to search out those from my period of interest, but also to see pieces across time and geographical space. and eventually found my way over to the other side of the Museum myself, in which I looked at ancient Greek vases (and thought of my step-dad, long a classical Greece enthusiast), then raced through rooms full of marble statues as I sought out the mummies. My favorite was the cat mummy display.
Medieval chess set.A citole – predecessor of the modern guitar. @ 1300.Ivory carving from the Ottonian period (10th c Germany) This gorgeous piece I actually got to handle. I believe it was 12th century.The famous Sutton Hoo helmet.Bank of England one pound note, 1821.Astronomical table clock, 1779.Silver and gold coins from the Georgian period, 1797 and 1804Mummified cat.
Unfortunately I ran out of time – we knew it was going to be a time-crunched day with all we wanted to do, so we’d agreed to spend only two hours or so at the Museum. Two hours are not enough – not nearly enough – to see everything. I know there were numerous displays I’d missed, but frankly I was happy (and a bit overwhelmed) with everything I’d taken in that morning, so after zipping in briefly to see the infamous Elgin marbles and a few other ancient items, we headed out in search of some lunch.
Panoramic view of the Elgin marbles.
It had stopped raining by that point, so I took advantage of that to snap a few pics of the exterior of the museum. We wandered briefly around the neighborhoods near the museum, searching for a Greek restaurant, but ultimately ended up at a chain pizzeria – the same chain at which we’d eaten the first night. Whatever. I didn’t care, and it’s what hubby wanted.
Panorama of British MuseumHubby deciding which pizza to order.Entrance to Soane Museum
After a filling lunch, we walked to the Sir John Soane Museum. Hubby totally indulged me here, as I’m sure he wasn’t particularly interested in this Regency architect’s home. I was, though, as John Soane bequeathed his home and its contents to the England, and it is essentially an extant – if a bit unusual – Regency house. Pictures inside were not allowed, but I still enjoyed seeing the various rooms, and bought a guidebook so I could later remember the interior. Sir John Soane’s home lies directly across from the Lincoln’s Inn Fields, another large, beautiful green space in London, so I snapped a quick pic. Had I been on my own, I would have lingered much longer in the home, but I could tell hubby was chafing to get over to St. Paul’s…so off to the Tube we went!
Beautiful houses on the way to Sir Sloane MuseumLincoln’s Inn Fields
Getting to fly in the economy plus section of the airplane was a nice bonus (somehow it was cheaper than economy!), but flights are always tough on us because we can’t sleep on airplanes. Heck, we can hardly sleep even when we’re nestled in our own beds at home. Still, we were delighted to actually arrive early at Heathrow and make it through customs and all that remarkably quickly. By about 6 a.m. we were already ensconced in a cab and making our way from the airport to Mayfair.
So what were our first impressions during that cab ride? Well, both of us commented on the distance between us and the driver, and the fact that there was a complete plexiglas wall separating us. No getting to know your cabbie here, I guess – which was just as well, considering how tired we were. It did feel slightly odd to be driving on the left side of the road, but given we were on a divided highway and all the lanes directly around us were flowing in the same direction, we quickly stopped noticing it. By and large we were surprised at how much everything looked…the same. Until we got closer to London and started to see bigger buildings – especially the large grand stone ones that suddenly had me feeling I’d stepped back into another era.
Although I had no clue at the time where we were, I did recognize Harrod’s as we drove past. Suddenly we were driving past Hyde Park and just as quickly we were there – the cab dropped us off in front of the Holiday Inn in Mayfair. Now I’ll grant you the Holiday Inn neither sounds nor looks Regency, of course. Many Americans teased us for staying in an American chain (at least I’ve assumed it’s American). And the outside of the hotel was, well, rather drab – although the inside was quite nicely furnished. But who cares? We were smack dab in the middle of Mayfair. The Green Park tube stop was literally about one minute away. London was all around us!
As it was far too early to check in – it was 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning – we just dropped our luggage and, in spite of being tired, headed right out to explore. The minute we hit the streets I was completely energized again. I was in London, baby, and I didn’t want to waste a minute! Since it was also too early to go pick up the London Passes and tube tickets we’d ordered ahead of time, I grabbed my London map and we set out on foot. Luckily for us, the weather was absolutely beautiful – clear blue skies and just the hint of fall coolness in the air.
Green Park. I thought these three trees looked like a good trysting spot…
In spite of being awed by the large buildings all around me, the first place we actually headed to was… Green Park. And it was exactly that, lush and green, even in November. It was delightfully simple and serene. No big structures. Not many people around. I was rather amazed, actually, to find such a hushed spot in the middle of a huge city, especially when I knew it was so close to Buckingham Palace and other major notable spots. Hubby and I strolled leisurely, and I enjoyed snapping pictures. Then we found ourselves in front of the Palace.
Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace? Less than an hour or two in England and we were already standing in front of one of the most famous buildings in the world? One advantage to being out and about so early on a Sunday morning was that very few other people were out and about so early on a Sunday morning. We could take in the magnitude and majesty of the building at our own pace. Which we did, although our view kept getting interrupted by old cars – really old cars – racing by in front of the palace. The variety of cars was amazing, and it was oddly amusing to watch them race pell-mell around Buckingham Palace at the end of Pall Mall (see what I did there?). Turns out we’d arrived on the day of the annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run!
Along the edge of Green Park
After a bit we decided to head up to the famous Hyde Park that appears in almost every Regency romance novel. I desperately wanted to see Rotten Row and the Serpentine – names familiar from books but of things I’d never seen. I still could hardly believe I was about to see them now – that I was in LONDON, and that all of these places were real, right in front of me!
Wellington Arch
We passed near the Wellington Arch, but couldn’t go under it, as that was the route the antique cars were taking. And then we were at Hyde Park corner. I could see Apsley House, home to Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington who triumphed over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. I could see the park. I could see a large, gorgeous, white building that used to be St. George’s Hospital – a name I’m also sure I’d read about before.
I just wanted to stand and soak it all up. It was extraordinary – the sights, the sounds, the smells.
Apsley House
All the people. The old, majestic buildings lining the streets, occasionally interspersed with something more modern looking. I just can’t properly convey the feelings that were running through me at that moment. I’m pretty sure my husband’s main feeling was “tired”, but he gamely set out with me through the entrance into Hyde Park.
Hyde Park Corner Entry GateRotten Row
And then we were there. Walking along paths people have walked along for hundreds of years. Paths where numerous romantic trysts certainly occurred (perhaps just in fiction, but hey, what happens in Hyde Park stays in Hyde Park). I could see Rotten Row – THE Rotten Row (corrupted from Route de Roi, the route of the King). I stood for a moment, trying to imagine carriages and curricles making their way up and down the path as the ton did their version of “scooping the loop” back at the beginning of the 19th century. It was the place to see and be seen. In the 21st century, what Rotten Row and the sidewalk path next to it mostly had was… runners. Lots and lots of people running along the pathways for exercise. Which made sense – if you’re going to work out, why not pick a gorgeous and relatively quiet park with well-laid out paths to do so? Still, I couldn’t help giggling a little, wondering what promenading members of the peerage would have made of today’s fitness buffs.
Hyde Park is big. Bigger than I had expected (odd, that, since everything else was closer than I had expected. I guess that’s the challenge of trying to experience something through a 2D map). While I had this desire to explore each and every inch of it, truth be told I knew it was only early morning on what was bound to be a long day with LOTS of walking, and I wanted to save my feet a bit for exploring the city. So we strolled as far as the edge of the Serpentine, and then meandered back to Piccadilly. I thought we might get back to Hyde Park later in the week, but we didn’t. In hindsight I do wish I’d explored the park a bit more – but in reality, I wish I’d explored EVERYTHING a bit more, and we only had so much time…
Ostensibly I went to London to do Regency research for future romance writing. And I did make an effort to see lots of Regency-era things (blogs about that coming soon!). But everybody, including my husband, knew the REAL reason I wanted to go so badly this fall was to see Colin Morgan, who’s currently starring in the play Mojo, playing at the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre. Anything else was just gravy.
My obsession with Mr. Morgan is a relatively new one. A friend started raving last spring about the series “Merlin” that she’d been watching on Netflix, and how much she loved the title character.
Given that I’ve always had an interest in and an affinity for the Arthurian legends – although it’d been years since I’d read anything – I decided to give the show a go. I quickly fell in love with it. It didn’t hurt that the two lead figures – Merlin and Arthur – are played by the quite handsome actors Colin Morgan and Bradley James. But plenty of other shows have handsome actors. What hooked me so deeply was the caliber of the acting, the sweetness and intensity of their characters’ friendship, and the principles the show espoused.
Merlin and Arthur
I have to admit at the beginning I wasn’t sure about Mr. Morgan, this actor my friend couldn’t stop raving about. Yeah, he was cute – but he was so YOUNG! And Mr. James, with that snaggletooth, caught my teenage girl’s affections at first. I still admire Bradley James, think he’s quite handsome, and would love to meet him in real life. He seems like he’d be a lot of fun.
But there’s something about Colin Morgan… some kind of intoxicating charisma he has that few other actors have (at least for me). Maybe it’s that he comes across as more reserved, more introverted, possibly even shy. Maybe it’s his lovely voice. Maybe it’s that he seems, at least from interviews I’ve read and watched, like a genuinely nice guy, but one that holds much of his life close to his vest. I don’t know – there’s an allure there I can’t quite pinpoint.
To my surprise, I started blogging about the show. I started a Pinterest board. And I couldn’t keep my mouth shut on social media, so soon all my Facebook and Twitter friends knew about my obsession. My husband mocked me for behaving like a 14-year-old girl… again. He knew I’d gone gaga in the 1990’s over young Elvis Presley (who, sadly, being long deceased, I had no actual chance of meeting), and then was quite the Twimom in the latter part of the last decade – the initial reawakening, actually, of that silly part of me that does indeed behave occasionally like a fan-struck teenage girl.
But this is the first time I truly considered myself part of a fandom. At 41 years old, happily married and with two kids, I’d become… a fangirl. I clearly wasn’t/am not the only one. My girlfriends and I swooned over Merlin. We scoured the internet for news and pictures of Colin when he was playing Ariel in the Tempest over the summer. When we heard he was starring in a new play, Mojo, this fall along with a number of other big name actors such as Brendan Coyle, Rupert Grint, and Ben Whishaw, my friends and I joked about going to see it. Until one friend stopped joking and announced she was going for real. Then my other friend said she knew it was crazy, but she never ever did stuff like this and she was going to go, too. And the lust for London, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, burned anew.
I started talking up my husband, asking if there were any way I could go with them. I knew it would be expensive. I knew it was crazy. But I really, really wanted to. Unbelievably and extremely luckily for me, he told me he’d ALREADY been planning a trip – he had a paper to give at a conference in London in November, so he’d been working on getting childcare arrangements so that I could come, too! Unluckily for him, I’d spoiled his grand surprise, but I. WAS. ECSTATIC. I was going to LONDON! Sure, I was also going for the research I first mentioned, and I pretty much fangirled out about all those Regency places, too, but this blog is all about the Mojo experience, baby!
The Harold Pinter Theatre
Now I admit it was a bit of a tightrope to walk, wanting to freak out about seeing Colin Morgan while not offending my beloved husband. For the most part he was quite patient with me, and I in return did not hang around the theatre as much as I probably would have had I been there with girlfriends. We did, however, walk by it on Monday, the day after arriving, and he kindly took a pic of me in front of the theatre. We ate dinner at the Pizza Express right nearby and hoped for a random star sighting, but no such luck. Oh well – I was still giddy just being there.
On Tuesday afternoon, we stopped by the theater around 5:00 p.m. to pick up our tickets early, before dinner. Peeking down Oxendon Street toward the alley, we saw a few people hanging around. Were they stage dooring already? Waiting for people to go in? I have no idea.
After dinner, we headed back to the theatre. I spied two girls standing down near the stage door, so we went down to quiz them about what they knew regarding stage dooring: how many people were generally here? When did the actors typically come out? Who was regularly appearing? In truth, I wasn’t thinking I would get to stage door – there’s only so much a woman should put her poor husband through, and we had to be up early the next morning for a day trip outside of London. My hubby has never really been a theatre person anyway, and here I was, dragging him to a play featuring only men, knowing that the reason his wife wanted to go was to ogle another man… I mean, really, the guy deserves an award for his patience with nutso me.
Anyway, the girls were Americans, like us. They were there to see Rupert. They answered my questions as well as they could, not knowing much more than I did. The funniest part of my interactions with them came when we were asking who had come out and greeted fans in recent days. They said one night it’d only been the two famous ones. “Colin Morgan?” I asked, and they BURST OUT LAUGHING. One girl said, “He’s not famous.” It cracked me up. I guess one girl’s obsessions is another one’s ‘Who?’ But, yes, girls, he IS famous – maybe not as much in America, but he very well could be. He’s got that, pardon the pun, mojo working in his favor!
Around 6:40 we headed in the front doors of the Harold Pinter Theatre. There was already a small crowd inside, even though seating wouldn’t begin until 7:00 p.m., but it wasn’t too bad. After plunking down the £4 for the program, I walked over to wait by the left side entrance, where our seats were, and chatted with the usher, who was quite friendly. I asked if she had interacted with the actors much, to which she replied, “No, not really – mostly we see them from afar, unless they need something and come up here.” I don’t remember what else we talked about beyond her mentioning that the cast did like to play volleyball. “In the theatre?” I said. “Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes we have to move things around for them.” I confessed I was there mostly to see Colin Morgan. She said he was quite good, especially in the second act.
Distance to the stage.
Soon an Irish girl started chatting with me about how excited she was to be there, too – hooray! Another fan girl! And clearly there were more of us lurking about, as once we got to our seats (which were fantastic, dead center in the stalls on the floor 9 rows back, but then again I’d bought early and paid dearly for them!) I started chatting with the two women to my right – one was a young woman from Southern California who was there to see Ben Whishaw, and the other was another American, probably closer to my age, who said she loved anything Jez Butterworth wrote, but that seeing Brendan Coyle wouldn’t hurt, either. It was hard to contain my excitement – I was actually sitting in the Harold Pinter theatre! I was close to the stage! And I was about to see all these famous people live!
Then the theatre got dark and the curtain went up. And there was Rupert Grint – Ron Weasley to me – on stage. It was bizarre and surreal to see these famous people appear, one by one, right there, on the stage, live!
And here is where I overstepped the fangirl boundaries, much to my shame. I tried to snap some pictures with my iPhone (I thought it might be the only proof I’d have that I’d been there, that I’d seen Colin Morgan live). At intermission, two audience members chided me and an usher came over, telling me I had to delete the photos, which I did immediately. I am a fangirl, people, but I am also by and large a people-pleaser and rule-follower, so I felt awful. I was so contrite. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t. I was just an obsessed American fangirl wanting a picture of Mr. Morgan.
Hubby and I.
O.K., onto the play Mojo itself. What did I think? It was a bit hard for me to follow at times, both because the rapid-fire conversation spoken in accents to which I wasn’t fully accustomed was sometimes difficult to understand, and because the play used lingo and expressions with which I wasn’t familiar. The story line didn’t always make sense to me, either – I wasn’t quite sure how these characters related to each other and didn’t understand the dynamics between some of them.
What I WAS sure of and what I DID understand was that the acting was brilliant. Really, every actor is very, very good – I was impressed with the explosive verbosity of Daniel Mays, with whom I wasn’t personally familiar (although I understand now he’s quite a theatre mainstay). Ben Whishaw was dynamic and dangerously charismatic, all over the place physically and emotionally with his character. Rupert Grint was quite good and funny and played well off Mr. Mays, and Brendan Coyle was a delight to see as a rather brash father figure to the motley group. But it was, of course, Colin who stole the show for me.
Colin Morgan as Skinny Luke. Photo from Mojo website.
I’d read a few reviews and knew his acting was receiving high accolades (not a surprise), that as Skinny he was nothing like his Merlin character, hardly recognizable, and exquisite in his performance. Yes, yes, and yes. I loved how he threw in this tic of squeezing his eyes compulsively. My husband hadn’t noticed, but for me it added to Skinny’s nervous, jumpy character. He was funny and sad at the same time. He cried – real tears – on stage. This always got my friends and me while watching Merlin – his ability to cry, to display such emotion – and it was the same watching him on stage. The final moments with him were both expected and unexpected in the way they were done (refraining from spoilers as much as I can here), and I think everyone in the theatre was moved. Brilliant!, I wanted to shout. I didn’t, though, still feeling quite chastised from the photo debacle.
When friends asked afterwards about the play, this was my short answer: “The acting was excellent! The play itself was just meh.” With apologies to Jez Butterworth and with full awareness that maybe I just didn’t ‘get it’, that’s the reaction I still have. There were hilarious parts, for sure. Perhaps it was accent/lingo barriers, perhaps it’s because I was admittedly distracted by trying to focus mostly on Mr. Morgan, but I had a hard time getting the relationships between some of the characters and understanding why some of them behaved as they did. But that’s O.K. – I don’t have to get the play to get the fact that I witnessed really excellent acting by all involved. Also, yes, the 14-year-old in me was awestruck by Colin Morgan’s naked legs in the first act and his bare shoulders in the second. There, I said it. The man is buff, although I’d still like to fatten him up with some pasta or something, as he is, true to his character, quite skinny. 🙂
As the actors left the stage, the curtain came down, and the lights came up, I asked my husband what he thought. “I didn’t like it,” he answered in his no-nonsense style. But I didn’t expect him to, really. It was O.K.; he’d come for me, and for that I was eternally grateful.
But not as much as for what happened next. As we were leaving, I said, “Can we just peek around the side to see?” I assumed it would be a mass of people there and so it would be obvious that stage-dooring wasn’t an option. To my delight, it wasn’t – there was a ring of people around the barrier, but only 1 person deep at that point, so without really asking hubby, well, I skipped on down ahead. I actually found a small space between two women – not enough for me to be belly to rail, but enough for me to stand and be able to reach my program right over the barrier gate – an excellent spot! Hubby came to stand beside me, and soon the space filled in behind and around us. It still wasn’t, I think, a HUGE crowd – maybe 3-4 people deep in spots? The two women to my right, with whom I struck up a conversation, said it was NOTHING like Saturday, in which the crowds had been massive and during which they hadn’t been able to even get close. So they’d come back that night, hoping to meet Brendan Coyle and Rupert Grint. They were happy to know that my appearance, as someone who’d just seen the play, meant the production was over for the evening, as they’d been waiting for a while. We made small talk for a bit, and I chatted with hubby. I handed him my iPhone, as he agreed to take pics so I could concentrate on the actors.
The first to appear, and quite quickly, I might add, maybe only 10 minutes after I got out there, was Rupert Grint. It felt so odd to see one of the Harry Potter stars out and talking with people. Yes, I’d just seen him on stage, but there was still obviously a barrier there – he was up doing his thing, acting, and no one (not even crazy American photographing lady) was going to go up and bother him. Here, he was smiling politely and signing autographs and even snapping a few pics with fans. I asked hubby to video it – and soon I had my first celebrity autograph ever! I spoke a bit with him, and was delighted!
Mr. Morgan 11/5/13, by @katri_leikola
Next Brendan Coyle hopped out the door and started more toward the other end of people. Very shortly after he appeared, Colin Morgan came out quickly and headed toward the people right in front of the door. People had been excited to see Rupert and Brendan – the noise rose noticeably when they appeared, but I can tell you gasps went out when Colin Morgan emerged. I remember literally hopping up and down and shaking my arms and saying something like “Oh…oh…oh…”, to the point where the people behind me said my reaction was the best (I think that’s on the video). I watched him start making his way down the row toward me, not believing it was really him and he was really there.
He looked relaxed and happy, that intoxicating dimple and those unbelievable cheekbones on full display. He moved quickly, signing and making little comments, some of which I could hear, many of which I couldn’t. As he was getting closer, my husband said to me, “You need to think of something to say to him!” “I know, I know,” I said, jumping up and down again. Finally he was there – COLIN MORGAN WAS THERE – right in front of me, signing my program. I said something like, “You were fabulous, Mr. Morgan.” As he looked up at me briefly, I added, “I came all the way from Virginia to see you!” To which I think he said, “Did you? High five!” And the man raised his hand and HIGH-FIVED me! “Thanks a million, cheers,” he said as he moved along down the row. I turned to hubby in shock, almost darting away until I realized, whoops, Brendan Coyle was right behind Colin Morgan and I was missing it! So I turned back around and spoke briefly to him – embarrassed again that I had done a stage door no-no in turning away from the other actors once I’d spoken to Colin Morgan. Had I just dissed BRENDAN COYLE? Oh my God Oh my God. On the video it doesn’t look so bad, but I wanted to apologize; I was just so bewildered by getting a high-five that I blanked for a second.
After Mr. Coyle, we did turn to leave since no other actors were out, backing up a bit to let some of the people behind us get to the front. Then I stopped and said to husband, “Wait! Keep videoing! Colin Morgan is still here!” He did as Colin Morgan worked his way down the row. Just as I said, “Maybe we should switch and try to get some pictures,” Mr. Morgan turned and zipped back into the theatre. He didn’t even go to the other side of people; just went back into the theatre with a small wave. Maybe he’d finally gotten cold, being out there in just a T-shirt. My husband had said he himself was freezing, but I, dressed only in a sweater and jeans, never noticed the temp.
All-in-all, I think Colin Morgan was only out for maybe 2-3 minutes, not long at all. But I, I had managed not only to talk to him and make eye contact, real eye contact, but I’d gotten a high-five (here’s a video from someone else who was there, in which you can see my arm)! I got to touch his marvelous hand and hear his delicious voice!
This middle-aged fangirl’s day, year, life was made!
The fabulous hubby!
Eternal thanks go to Husband of the Century, for taking his wife to ooh and aah and geek out over another man, for going to the play with me, and for videoing the whole encounter so that I could relive the moment again and again…and again. Although he might now only be Husband of the 99 Years, since once we got home to Virginia, he took a look at my program and offered to throw it away, saying we didn’t really need it anymore, right?
And a final note… Mr. Morgan, I’ve read that you dislike the internet, so I’m sure there’s no way this little blog will ever come to your attention… but if I’d had more time, what I wanted to do was invite you to come see a play at our American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. I’d love to get your impressions, and would be happy to take you to a show and dinner beforehand at this delightful cafe, Cranberry’s, which is right around the corner and serves up scrumptious vegetarian and vegan food – and also has peanut butter.
So – what do you think? Did I do them justice? And if you read A Matter of Time, I’d love to hear what you think – and what kind of women you feel the two men ought to end up with (sorry, Merthur fans – in my future novels, they’re getting the girl!).
