Now that Frost/Nixon is comfortably settled in the racks of your local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, and the touring production with Stacy Keach has run its course, Peter Morgan’s play has started to be produced in repertory theater, with the Austin Playhouse’s production in Texas apparently the first out of the gate. In another year or two, TNN’s readers might be seeing Frost/Nixon at their local community college, with the leads undertaken by student actors who were toddlers in the days when RN was still living and David Frost was not yet a knight. And who knows? Perhaps for the Nixon centennial in 2013, there will be a revival on Broadway with Dan Aykroyd finally getting to play his old Saturday Night Live role in a serious way – as, reportedly, he wanted to do in Ron Howard’s film.
Meanwhile, Michael Sheen, who played Sir David in the film, continues to line up surprising roles; the most recent is the voice of the White Rabbit in Tim Burton’s upcoming movie of Alice In Wonderland. And after reports circulated that he might play Ernst Stavro Blofeld in what is provisionally titled Bond 23 (to be scripted by Peter Morgan), Sheen issued a statement that this would not be the case. (Note to Elizabeth Drew: Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas, and Charles Gray have previously portrayed Blofeld, the arch-villain with the white cat. None of them ever played Nixon.)