"The level of hate was dangerous': actor on backlash to her playing Richard III

Michelle Terry, the artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, has called the backlash to her casting as Richard III "disproportionate" and said much of the anger aimed towards her in recent months had been misogynistic.

- Nadia Khomami

The Globe faced criticism when it announced that Terry, an Olivier award winning actor and writer, would play Shakespeare's "deformed, unfinished" king in its summer production, which opened last night.

Actors and disability groups said the role could not be successfully performed by an actor without a physical disability, and that the decision contravened the Globe's ethos of diversity and inclusion.

"We're interpreting a 400-year-old play," said Terry in her first interview since the casting announcement.

"[The response] felt disproportionate to what a play can actually do, in terms of being able to really dig into the inequities of a society." The criticism followed a number of recent portrayals of Richard III by disabled actors, which were perceived to have reclaimed a character who in real life had scoliosis.

Among those condemning the Globe were Brittanie Pallett, an actor with a disability, who asked why the theatre's artistic director was "hiring themselves to play the lead when it's not their casting or lived experience".

Ben Wilson, an actor who is blind, described it as a case of "cripping up", while the Disabled Artists Alliance published an open letter, signed by more than 100 people and organisations in theatre and the arts, calling for "an immediate recast".