Miriam Margoyles adds to pressure on RSC over BP relationship

Miriam Margolyes has backed Mark Rylance's Royal Shakespeare Company boycott over BP, according to a report in The Guardian.

The RSC has been criticised for accepting sponsorship from the oil company in the past and earlier this month environmental protestors from the group Extinction Rebellion held a demonstration in London against arts organisations that accepted money from BP.

Last Friday Mr Rylance wrote a comment piece for The Guardian in which he announced that he would no longer be one of the RSC’s associate artists, a role he has had for 30 years.

Now Margolyes has declared that she will not appear in any RSC productions. She told the BBC on Wednesday: “Mark Rylance is absolutely right in his stance and I support it. I would turn them down as long as they are supporting something that is doing harm to the world.”

As far as the Herald is aware, Margolyes has never performed with the RSC. According to her CV, Margolyes appears to have only been in one Shakespeare stage production – playing the nurse in Romeo and Juliet in 2001, directed by Peter Hall in Los Angeles.

Other actors who have previously been critical of the RSC’s association with BP include Jasper Britton, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Kristin Scott Thomas and Zoë Wanamaker.

Click here to read our previous story on the issue.