'I was on the kitchen table, with my husband filming me being a crow.' Kathryn Hunter on how she played all three witches in Joel Coen's 'Tragedy of Macbeth' and why she cast a spell — literally — on Denzel Washington
The veteran British actress pulls her leg over her shoulder in one scene, while giving Macbeth an ice-cold stare and delivering the prophecy that he would be king. In another, she emulates a crow, right down to the bird’s jerky head movements. When she recites the witches’ famous “Double, double, toil and trouble” incantation, she looks bizarre enough to have emerged herself from her own stew of eye of newt and toe of frog.
We began a process of exploration of how to do three. At first there was an idea that I would have two doubles to whom I would teach my physicality, and then Joel said, “OK, let’s make it one, and maybe you’re possessed by two in the persona.” He also said that his vision for the witches was that they were like crows or standing stones that have been there and witnessed so many things. But they’re also women, and they go between these three forms.
When you have to say a line that’s so iconic, like “Double, double, toil and trouble,” do you stumble on that, knowing people expect it? Or is that something that just comes to you in the moment?
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