Written by Vicar of Dibley co-creator Paul Mayhew-Archer, who has the disease, Onwards and Sideways sees the actors play a couple who bond over their diagnoses – a devastating subject but laced with humour too, they say Ahead of production on their first job together, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney didn’t undergo the standard “chemistry read” to make sure they got on.
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Which is remarkable, given what their characters would have to do to each other in Onwards and Sideways. In the Norfolk-set BBC film directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Ifans would have to nearly throttle Linney while in the grip of night terrors, she’d have to collapse in his arms in a weeping mess having bankrupted herself with a gambling addiction; both situations arising from the neurological condition afflicting their characters: Parkinson’s disease.
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