Arch, elegant and deliciously devilish: Tatler's October cover hails the Rupert Everett renaissance
There’s no one who can make the term ‘darling’ as endearing (or believable) as Rupert Everett. With a flourish and a sweeping hand gesture, he slinks into the banquette table at Noble Rot in Lamb’s Conduit Street, exclaiming: ‘Darling, you’re early. I thought someone had taken our table.’ He speaks at such a rapid pace, in the type of voice that hints at being overwhelmed, riding the wave of promoting a raft of new projects. ‘I think the headline of this piece should be Rupert Everett pronouns: He, She, Bitch,’ he says, in his droll way.
For sure, there’s a palpable buzz around Rupert right now: that glow, that allure of an incandescent energy when a multitude of things are happening in someone’s life. A buzz as reverberant as that which surrounded him when he first embraced stardom, shining sensationally in Another Country (1984), the OG public schoolboy story, exquisitely melancholic and beautifully shot against a backdrop of stately porticos, courtyards and Eton-esque cricket fields. The buzz that accompanied the matinee-idol looks that seduced everyone, men and women, including Bianca Jagger, Susan Sarandon and the late Paula Yates. The accolades showered on his memoirs. The awards garlanding films like My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Happy Prince and An Ideal Husband. The feeling that now, at 65, Rupert is having another moment in the sun; that now is Rupert’s latest renaissance.
There’s the imminent release of his new book, The American No, a series of short stories of fabulous plots that never ended up being made into films. ‘The whole writing process normally overwhelms me, but as each story is so short, it’s like being in an AA meeting, just focusing on one story at a time,’ he says in a mock American drawl. As it is, his hysterical, fantastical prose is as seductive as his conversation, an electric mix of tales about Hare Krishnas in Soho, an acid trip before a friend’s mother’s memorial service where they end up following the wrong hearse, and a powerful vignette on Oscar Wilde, a subject very dear to his heart. ‘As a writer, you can tell your version of events. In a sense, I’ve always behaved like an actor when I write, thinking how I would attack this character. It’s a skill being able to paint a picture that comes off a page.’