{"id":209,"date":"2026-09-22T19:23:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/?p=209"},"modified":"2026-09-25T01:57:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T01:57:28","slug":"old-friends-new-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/2026\/09\/22\/old-friends-new-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Friends: New Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What made filming  Frank & Percy<\/em><\/a> especially enjoyable was working with  a cast of old friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frank<\/a>
Frank (Roger Allam) and Percy (me) meet walking their dogs on Hampstead Heath. Meet Percy’s dog Bruno and his playmate Toffee. Photo by Frederic Aranda.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"Widow<\/a>
Widow Twankey (me) and Abbanazar (Roger Allam) in Aladdin (London 2004) Photo by Keith Stern<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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ROGER ALLAM<\/strong>, I first acted with 20 years ago, when he played the hilariously wicked Abbanazar and I was Aladdin\u2019s widowed mother in the Old Vic pantomime<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Our director was my long-time collaborator SEAN MATHIAS<\/strong>, who has now happily united Rog and me on screen as Frank and Percy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sean<\/a>
Sean Mathias (Director), me (Percy) and Roger Allam (Frank) on the set of Frank & Percy. It\u2019s my own dressing-gown I bought in CapeTown. Photo by Frederic Aranda<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Ian<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What made filming  Frank & Percy especially enjoyable was working with  a cast of old friends. ROGER ALLAM, I first acted with 20 years ago, when he played the hilariously wicked Abbanazar and I was Aladdin\u2019s widowed mother in the Old Vic pantomime. Our director was my long-time collaborator SEAN MATHIAS, who has now happily united … <\/p>\n

Read more “Old Friends: New Movie”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-frank-and-percy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckellen.com\/wp3\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}