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Comments from Siddig


Alexander Siddig (Hannibal) sent a letter of update to his official site today, which included the following comments about Hannibal:

So what happened next ...
The Last Legion in Tunisia. Weird country, Tunisia. Nice enough people inhabit the place but a flaccid identity. Hard to imagine it was once the heart of the great Carthaginian Empire. There are a few ruins and a statue of a camp looking guy astride an elephant outside one of the hotels in a resort called ‘Carthageland’.

...

So ironically I went to Bulgaria two days after finishing in Tunisia to shoot a documentary for the BBC and some German channel and the History Channel. I played Hannibal, the great Carthaginian hero - maybe the camp guy on the elephant was an inspired premonition of my portrayal?

Why Bulgaria? Because there’s always some place in the world that still looks like some other place used to look. And it’s cheap. Very cheap. It was brave of the producer and director to cast me, I’m not exactly built like a super-hero, but I think most people liked it. The BBC are trying very hard to present historical stuff in an entertaining way. The endless rostrum shots and artifacts and people wearing cardigans chatting about what ‘may’ have happened to ‘whom’ and ‘when’ is all very well for the campus lecture circuit, but it isn’t exactly sparkling television. I hope they do a lot more high production value shows like this one - as long as they make a serious attempt to get the history right - which I believe the BBC did. The BBC are good at doing stuff like getting the history right.


The complete letter is available on his site:

http://www.sidcity.net - the official website for Alexander Siddig

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