At first, I was admittedly surprised to see Richard Armitage’s name on the Bloody Scotland program. The British film and TV star is best known for his role as Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit trilogy, but he has recently turned his talent for storytelling from the screen to the page as he is now a bestselling crime fiction author. The line of unwavering fans waiting to see Richard’s book talk on Friday was unmatched by any other event at the festival, and I was, unashamedly, amongst them.
The event was chaired by BBC presenter Bryan Burnett who interviewed Richard about his debut novel, Geneva. The book follows a Nobel-prize winning scientist named Sarah Collier who suffers from Alzheimer’s. When Sarah attends a biotech conference where new technology is revealed that could provide lifesaving treatment for Sarah’s disease, she becomes increasingly aware of her rapid cognitive decline; she fears that she can trust nobody around her, not even her own memories that seem to be deteriorating before her eyes.
This unique and captivating story was born when Richard was asked by Audible, where he had previously worked as an audiobook narrator, to write a crime thriller as a ghost writer. Richard said that he refused to write under an alias and only agreed to take on the project if he was accredited as the author when it was published. He said that he jumped at this opportunity and immediately got to work to establish his writing style and came up with a writing sample which eventually became Geneva. After having worked for so many years as an actor portraying and bringing to life the stories of others, he felt like he now had the necessary foundation to create his own story.
Bryan asked Richard to read a passage from his novel, and you could hear a pen drop in Albert Halls as the audience listened, completely entranced by Richard’s husky voice. Bryan then prompted him on his writing process, which he described as being very theatrical as he likes to get into character when he is writing, putting on various voices and accents for the characters he is inventing. “Acting is the physicality of language that I now apply to my writing,” Richard explained. He said that writing dialogue is his favorite part of the process, and he often speaks out loud when doing so and even gets into fights with himself while working through dialogue sections. He added that he primarily writes in first person because he loves the “confessional quality” it adds to the narrative.
Richard continued to elaborate on his career shift into the literary world, outlining how he enjoys writing while traveling, often isolating himself in hotels while on film set locations such as Seville and Rome. He even took a trip to Geneva to explore the city to ensure his depictions of the location in his novel were accurate—a privilege reserved for established Hollywood celebrities, one that is not afforded to many working class writers.
Nevertheless, it was very clear from this interview that Richard is an incredibly charismatic author who is dedicated and passionate about his writing. He concluded by saying that while he enjoys acting, he leans more heavily towards writing because he identifies as an introvert. He said that in general he does not rely on “big rooms full of people” to provide him with validation, which was somewhat ironic considering the vast number of fans he was addressing at this sold out event.
Image courtesy of Emma MacKenzie