Dame Judi Dench lost her voice for days after frightening on-stage snake incident

Dame Judi Dench has recalled the time she lost her voice after a lifelong fear of snakes came home to roost while she was performing on stage. The esteemed actor and national treasure, 90, whose career has spanned an incredible eight decades, has apparently never been a friend to the slithery reptiles. As an actor, you do have to be prepared for anything, but you’re unlikely to come across snakes on a frequent basis in that particular line of work.

Or at least Dame Judi thought so—until a dramatic night in 1987 left her unable to speak for 48 hours after suffering a traumatic snake-related incident. Dame Judi landed a part in a production of William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra—a production that involved using live snakes during the performance. To get over her fear, Dame Judi told her husband Michael Williams, who died in 2001, to come up with a plan to humanise them and make them seem friendlier.

‘I came home and told Michael about the snakes,’ she told BBC Radio 4. ‘He said, “Jude, you know what you should do. Give them names”.’. The pair came up with the names Wilson, Keppel, and Betty, naming them after a popular British vaudeville act that operated between 1928 and 1962. For a while, that helped, with Dame Judi coming face to face with the snakes while playing Cleopatra, who dies by suicide via snake poison in the play.

But naming the snakes didn’t help when it came time to bow at the end of the performance, with one of Wilson, Keppel, and Betty ready to make mischief. ‘One night, [I thought] the boys carrying me off [stage after my death] kept hissing,’ she said, adding: ‘I was wondering what on earth was going on.’. She continued: ‘Then, back on stage at the very end of the play, the snake fell out of my wig as I did my bow. I was so scared I lost my voice for two days.’.

Despite this incident, the National Theatre has continued to use snakes in productions of Antony and Cleopatra and was last known to have used them in 2018. With Sophie Okonedo in the titular role this time, audience members were apparently warned about the usage of ‘live snakes’ in the theatre’s programme. Valeria Nobile, who attended the 2018 production, said: ‘I’m very sorry to say that I didn’t see Cleopatra’s death—I had my eyes covered for the entire scene!’.

Another user claimed: ‘They usually use real snakes. My friend went to see the show with a friend who had a snake phobia. She freaked out when one asp slid off the stage into the audience.’. According to a post from the National Theatre’s Facebook page in May 2020, one of the snakes apparently ‘took a turn’ on a different night and chomped on a prop man. We think we understand why Dame Judi lost her voice!.

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