The Making of Sharpe's Peril |
| Last Update: 19 Oct 2008 |
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The filming at 'Kings' Chatteris' near Orchha on the river Betwa saw the initial scenes completed on schedule - but with the resurgence of some of the internal ailments that manifested themselves on the cast and crew last time on Sharpe's Challenge : on that I was unfortunately top of the sick-list but this time it seemed to hit the people who had not been to India previously worst. It was at Orchha through sharing the same hotel with them, I first struck up an association with our Indian actors : Rhajesh Khatter and Nandana Sen - the 'Maharani' in the film and a beautiful, captivating and highly intelligent Indian actress - and Amit Behl, an accomplished actor from Mumbai whose family I later met who despite the heat used to run five kilometres every day when possible to keep fit and popularly recognised as he was seen in all fifty episodes of the first India 'soap-opera' televised. I had several conversations with all of them concerning past Sharpe episodes and both complimented me on my grasp of 'Indian affairs' - especially in my habit of often quoting from Rudyard Kipling. I had by this time an 'arrangement' with the hotel staff I was staying at (due to odd departing and arriving hours and the fact the location was only ten minutes walk away for me). I paid my friend on the hotel-staff there some hundreds of rupees in advance for any unpaid night-time bills for cold beers to save anyone chasing after me with the reasoning I might be called away at any time sand have to disappear at short-notice and settle-up when I next saw them - it transpired his son worked for us so mutual trust was assumed. I got on very well with the hotel staff at Orchha - I had to change hotels for one night and got a wonderful reception upon my return, during which they inveigled me into dancing one night with one of the evening cabaret - who turned out to be a boy dressed as a girl - but they repaid my obvious discomfort by giving me a free dinner on my last night there. What it was they gave me to eat remains unknown - it was pretty spicy and I thought it might be horse - but I later discovered that an elephant had died recently and was duly carved up for the local residents and became available as a repast in certain hotels (?) |
 between Sean Bean (Richard Sharpe), Tom Clegg (Director) and Michael Mallinson (1st Assistant Director) on future proceedings. Sean and Tom take a great deal of interest in the development of characters within Sharpe scripts 'in continuity' to whom I have the greatest respect and in my role of Military & Technical Adviser I offer them support and suggestions in this which often leads to some script 're-writes'. We had at this time all known each other from previous Sharpe films since 1992. |
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