Seven years have passed since Cats, but the spectacular musical flop still makes Judi Dench cringe.
Writing in her new memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, the Oscar-winner lamented the “waste” of “goodwill and talent” on Tom Hooper’s 2019 adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage show.
Dench says she has never watched the final version of Cats, in which she played Old Deuteronomy and had to wear a fur coat that she once described as like “five foxes f**cking on my back.”
”Oh God, I can’t bear it – and [Lloyd Webber] had waited so long for it to be made,” Dench wrote in her book. ”What a waste of all that goodwill and talent.”
She continued: “I understand the critics were rather hostile to the film. I never saw the final cut, so I can’t judge. All I’ll say is nobody sets out to give a poor performance or make a bad film. You do your best, offer something up and hope that people will get on board and join the party.”
Dench confided that she felt “ill at ease from the beginning – I just didn’t feel right in the role,” but said there were “no villains in the making of Cats.”
“Sometimes things just don’t work out: the timing’s wrong, the cast don’t gel, the elements don’t coalesce. But people’s intentions are mostly honourable,” she added.
Dench was nominated for a Razzie Award for her performance in Cats, while Hooper has not released a movie since the feline fiasco.