Bond boffin is the new voice of Paddington: Ben Whishaw who plays 007's new gadgets man Q will take over role from Colin Firth



Jame Bond star Ben Whishaw, who played Q in Skyfall, is the new voice of Paddington Bear

Bond star Ben Whishaw is the new voice of Paddington Bear. He takes over from Colin Firth, who graciously opted for ‘conscious uncoupling’ from the upcoming film, called Paddington, because he couldn’t find the right vocal tone for the much-loved character.



Producer David Heyman and director Paul King told me that Colin sensed early on, before they did, he wasn’t right for the role.



‘He was saying: “Are you sure I’m right?” He was way ahead of us,’ Heyman admitted. ‘Colin was brilliant, but his voice was, ultimately, too mature.’



Paddington, he says, is an optimistic bear with a sense of wonder. ‘What we needed was a slightly more open, and younger, voice.’



Ben, who gave a landmark Hamlet at the Old Vic and whose latest film, Lilting, opens here on August 8, has been holed up in a post-production facility in central London, giving an English flavour to the bear from Peru.



The actor, who played Q in Skyfall and will repeat the role in the next James Bond feature, told me he was called in to do an audition ‘quite out of the blue’, and was not all that keen to go.



‘I resisted a little bit, because I had a bad experience doing this kind of work in the past and I thought I was no good at it. But I was persuaded to go, slightly grudgingly,’ he told me yesterday.



He also confessed that, when growing up, he had ‘no relationship to Paddington whatsoever, other than that I knew he wore a duffle coat and a hat’.



Now that he’s on board, though, he’s changing his view — particularly since he has an 18-month-old niece. ‘I’m delighted that she’ll be able to see it and it’ll be my voice. She’ll know it’s Uncle Ben.’



Time is of the essence, because StudioCanal are due to release the film, which also stars Nicole Kidman, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters and Peter Capaldi, here on November 28.



And even though Ben handles the most sophisticated gadgets on the set of Skyfall, it has taken him a while to find his feet on Paddington because of the complex process of marrying his voice to the computer-generated bear.



Ben Whishaw will now provide the voice for the upcoming film, called Paddington

‘I just arrive and wear this funny helmet that has a camera attached to it. It’s highly mysterious to me,’ he laughed. ‘I just see what they’ve done on screen, which is really beautiful and very exciting.’



King and Heyman listened to dozens of voices on radio, film and TV, searching for Firth’s replacement.



Unlike Whishaw, the director grew up loving the small bear, who was created by Michael Bond and appeared in the book A Bear Called Paddington in 1958.



After hearing Ben audition, ‘I slowly found myself hearing his voice when I was thinking about Paddington,’ he says.



‘He breathes and he speaks and he sounds like Paddington, rather than the most beautiful chocolate-voiced man [Firth] on the planet.’

Theatre director Michael Rudman has written his autobiography, I Joke Too Much, to be published on August 7, and the only problem with it is that once you start reading, everything else falls by the wayside.



You suddenly realise you’ve forgotten to go to see . . . well, better not mention what show I missed.



Rudman has worked everywhere: The National, Chichester, Broadway, the West End, the provinces.

He’s touching in the book about Felicity Kendal, the great love of his life.



The title refers to the time Rudman was directing Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman with Dustin Hoffman, and the line is said by Willy Loman in the play.



But get the book! It’s gold dust if you love theatre, show people, and truly wicked gossip.



Watch out for...

Ronni Ancona, pictured, has been cast in Alecky Blythe's new play Little Revolution

Imogen Stubbs, Clare Perkins, Ronni Ancona (pictured right), Lucian Msamati, Barry McCarthy, Michael Shaeffer, Rez Kempton and Bayo Gbadamosi, who have been cast (there are more to come) in Alecky Blythe’s new verbatim play Little Revolution, which Joe Hill-Gibbins will direct at the Almeida Theatre from August 26.



The play is set during the 2011 summer riots that swept from Tottenham across London. However, Blythe told me that the piece is not all about the violence. ‘The riot was the catalyst,’ she explained.



It’s based in Hackney, around a shop that got trashed. Blythe said it looks at ‘two different sides of the street, and deals with the class tensions in inner city London’.



Blythe will also appear in the play, which will feature a community chorus from Islington and Hackney, set up through the Almeida Projects Team.



The big screen version of London Road by Blythe and Adam Cook, directed by Rufus Norris, is expected to be released by NT Live later in the year.

It’ s a great season for straight plays. I’ve just seen Brian Friel’s version of Turgenev’s Fathers And Sons at the Donmar.



Its marvellous ensemble includes Seth Numrich, Anthony Calf, Joshua James, Jack McMullen, Elaine Cassidy, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Siobhan McSweeney and Susan Engel.



Nancy Carroll, pictured, has been cast by director David Leveaux for his production of Patrick Marber's play, Closer

Nancy Carroll, Rufus Sewell and Oliver Chris, who have been cast by director David Leveaux for his production of Patrick Marber’s play Closer, which is about betrayal, sex and loneliness in London.



It will rehearse after Christmas and run at the Donmar from February for three months.

Marber and Leveaux are working closely to finely edit the drama that originated at the National Theatre in 1997.



Olivier award-winner Carroll will play Anna, the photographer who has relationships with both men: Sewell’s Larry, a doctor who visits sex chat rooms, and Chris’s Dan, an obituary writer.



Chris, one of London’s most in-demand theatre stars since appearing in One Man, Two Govnors, is in Great Britain at the National Theatre.



He will not be transferring with the play to the Haymarket in September.



Instead, he will rejoin the company of King Charles III, which moves into Wyndham’s Theatre after the hit Skylight closes. Previews for that one start on September 2.



While I’m on the subject of Great Britain, the marvellous Billie Piper will also not be moving with the play to the West End.

