Zachary Quinto and David Harewood are Best of Enemies

Virgin Radio

12 Dec 2022, 10:00

Don't worry, they're still friends, they're just starring in a new play together.

Best Of Enemies is currently playing at London's Noël Coward Theatre in the West End.

The play is set in 1968 – a year of protest that divided America - and, as two men fight to become the next President of the United States, all eyes are on the battle between two cultural commentators: the cunningly conservative William F Buckley Jr., and the iconoclastic liberal Gore Vidal.

Zachary Quinto (The Boys in the Band, Star Trek, Heroes) makes his London stage debut playing left-wing icon Vidal, with David Harewood (Homeland, Super Girl, Ten Percent) reprising his role as the right-wing figurehead William F. Buckley.

Beliefs are challenged and slurs slung as these political idols feud nightly in a new television format, debating the moral landscape of a shattered nation. Little do they know they’re about to open up a new frontier in American politics, and transform television news forever…

Sounds fascinating. Zachary and David popped into The Graham Norton Show With Waitrose this weekend to tell us more.

"I've done the play before at The Old Vic," says David. "I'd turned it down twice because it just didn't seem to resonate. But the more I started to dig into Buckley story, it really started to become almost Shakespearean, this idea that there was this man who prided himself in his honour and decency but then used this word which had never been used on American television before [Buckley used a homophobic slur in one of the debates], and then regretted saying that word for the rest of his life. I thought that was a incredibly sad journey for the man."

"I've never joined a cast that has preexisted," says Zackary. "It was a unique experience, and definitely a bit of trial by fire in the sense that most of the people in the company had done the production before. But I really just connected to the play itself and to the character. The play is rich and complex and Gore Vidal was one of the most fascinating men in the 20th century of America."

Both actors believe the play tells a story that reveals the very beginning of the polarised political environment in which we exist today.

"Commentators on the news had never been a thing before 1968," explains Zachary, "and Buckley and Vidal were really the first non-news people to be brought in to express opinions on political happenings of the day. That was unheard of at the time. I think the relevance of why the play works so well is because you can see the journey that that set us on and where we are today. We've just created these echo chambers where people come out and scream at one another, and you just listen to what you want to hear rather than actually listen to what someone else might have to say."

We certainly want to hear more of what both David and Zachary have to say in Best of Enemies. If you do, the play is running until Saturday, February 18th. More details here.

Listen to The Graham Norton Radio Show every Saturday AND Sunday from 9:30 am on Virgin Radio or catch up on-demand here.