Judi Dench has won an Oscar (and received seven nominations), picked up two Golden Globe statuettes, received three Emmy nominations and collected 11 BAFTA Awards — and now one Golden Raspberry Awards nod for her performance in the critically panned “Cats.”
During an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Thursday, host John Wilson informed the legendary British actress of her Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actress for playing the part of Old Deuteronomy in Tom Hooper’s recent live-action adaptation of the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
“Worst Supporting Actor? Oh, am I? Oh, very, very good,” Dench said, laughing. “As the Worst Supporting Actor? Oh, well, that would be good.”
She added, again, with a laugh: “Well as far as I know, that’s a first.”
Released last December, “Cats” was both a box office bomb and ripped to shreds by critics and fans alike. And Dench isn’t the only “Cats” cast member whom the Razzies have nominated for their parts in the film, with Rebel Wilson also up for Worst Supporting Actress, James Corden for Worst Supporting Actor and Francesca Hayward for Worst Actress.
The film got a total of seven nominations for the 40th annual Razzies, which are set to take place this Saturday, including Worst Picture, Worst Director for Tom Hooper, Worst Screenplay and Worst Screen Combo for “Any Two Half-Feline/Half-Human Hairballs” and “Jason Derulo & His CGI-Neutered ‘Bulge.’”
Dench also told Wilson she still hasn’t even seen “Cats” and “was aware of the response (to the film) only slightly,” adding that she’s “not big on reading reviews anyway.”
“No, I haven’t seen it,” she said. “I didn’t read anything about the response to it, nor have I seen it.”
She added, “I once had a cat like that called Carpet… and I didn’t realize that I was playing Carpet, I thought I was playing a really kind of, you know, clapped-out old, mangy old cat who didn’t have much fur and was at the end of her life. I didn’t realize I was this wonderful show cat.”
Dench said she used to read reviews, “but then somebody said to me, ‘You read one good review and read one bad review, and then what do you do?’ So the best thing is to just, I think, get on with your own kind of instinct and do it as well as you can and hope for the best.”