I Don't Know If My Heart Can Handle It - Tumblr Posts
One of the scenes that I again felt was incredibly lovely in Episode 9 is the one between Stede and Ed sitting on the beach. It's very quiet and intimate, and the kiss happens, which doesn't come out of nowhere given the mood of the scene, but almost takes both characters a little by surprise. What did you want to capture most about that moment in playing it with Taika, and was there anything that you decided to bring to it apart from what David [Jenkins] had on the page?
DARBY: I wanted to make sure that the audience knew that Stede didn't really know what love was and hadn't really expected a kiss or anything like that. He was very naive to it all but was just on this rollercoaster because he enjoyed every minute of it, and he didn't know where it was going to end. I think he expected, in some ways, for Blackbeard or Ed to take the lead — which he has, in most of the things we've done on board. He's the experienced pirate, and Stede tried to give his own 10 cents by helping out with gentlemanly things and the use of cutlery and wearing fine fabrics and things like that. But there was certainly a lack of confidence in the area of... I think that's probably the same for both of them, with love.
I really could come down to either of them probably taking that next step and just touching each other in that way. But it just so happened to be Ed, because Ed felt invigorated. He felt like he had finally let go of the persona of Blackbeard, the evil side of him. Once the beard came off and everything, he's like some dashing guy from the Mills & Boon — you probably don't know what those books are.
I do, the romance novels.
DARBY: The romance novels. Yeah. So he is sitting there, but he's certainly more at ease, you can see that. Because Stede isn't. Stede's realizing that he has possibly screwed everything up and that they're going to die, and I think he's got a lot more going on in his head, and you can see that when they do the kiss. Then Ed walks away, [and] there's just this really puzzled look on Stede's face where he's taking that in, but he's taking so many other things in at the same time, which are: Is this the end? What do I do here? Have I done the right thing? Yeah. But I think I hopefully played that right.
- Collider, 24th March 22
Fuck my man, you played that so so right.