For previous installments in our series of fan fictions about the actors who play Sherlock Holmes, click here.
Year: 2013
Place: London
Smaller place: Ye Olde Mitre
Smallest place: A table for three, with the two friends seated next to each other, sweetly, and the reporter across.
REPORTER: How remarkable that you two know each other!
NICOLE: Yes! Because he died, or so we were all led to believe. You should have seen the look on my face when I glanced up from my desk and there he was. I fainted clear away.
REPORTER: And, are you two?–
NICOLE: Oh! No, no, but we’re very close. Most of the time he just injects me with cocaine and then we wander the streets of London in elaborate disguises, solving crimes.
REPORTER: Are you…are you an actual detective then, Mr. Brett, or are you just an actor who played Sherlock Holmes?
JEREMY: (waves hands dismissively, smiles coldly for a fraction of a second, face returns to immobility)
NICOLE: So many people forget that Jeremy wasn’t just Sherlock Holmes. Did you know he was that darling Freddy in My Fair Lady? Why on earth did Eliza wind up with that awful, grumpy Henry Higgins, in an era before Cialis, when she could have had the devoted affections of an age-appropriate and ridiculously handsome man?
REPORTER: That’s true, isn’t it.
NICOLE: It really is! He was this glorious, sexy man who never tormented her or barraged her with insults or shout-sang entire songs about her failings as a woman. But, there you have it, it wasn’t meant to be.
REPORTER: Jeremy, can you tell us more about your friendship with Nicole?
JEREMY: (nostrils flare, he stands up abruptly, takes out his violin, saws at it briefly)
NICOLE: I’m afraid we do have to go. For the last three weeks, we’ve been infiltrating an opium den where an ex-Mormon has been hiding out while pretending to have red hair and sending coded letters to a Spanish woman. It’s absolutely thrilling.
JEREMY: And then, perhaps I will sing to you.
NICOLE: (dreamily) Yes.
JEREMY: And then do outreach work for individuals like myself, who are bipolar and bisexual. Either, or both, of course.
NICOLE: Of course.
(they climb into a hansom cab, he reaches out and taps the roof with his walking stick, they are off)
Tags: fan fiction, jeremy brett, my fair lady, sherlock holmes, television
Can we please be best friends forever? 🙂
Looking forward to the Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Downey Jr, and animated mouse versions.
Basil of Baker Street is the only detective for me.
The mouse, correct?
I love everything about you, Nic.
I had a recent, very elaborate dream involving me being on the run from Unknown Assailants with Jonny Lee Miller and we had to Fight Our Overwhelming Passion in order to Save the World, and also his shirt managed to somehow get all ripped and wet “HEY STELLA” Marlon Brando style.
So what I am saying is, I fully support this series and hope it continues.
Four enchilada tacos to you, Nicole.
You seem to be writing posts entirely just for me. I AM MORE THAN OKAY WITH THAT.
BRETT 4 LYFE.
Jeremy Brett is my favorite forever forever forever.
HOLY SHIT JEREMY BRETT WAS FREDDY?!?!?! HE WAS SO EXCITED TO BE ON THE STREET WHERE I LIVE THAT ONE TIME
I love this. I love it. I LOVE IT.
FREDDY WAS THE CUTEST WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THAT GNARLY OLD MAN WHO MAKES YOU BRING HIM HIS SLIPPERS WHY???
I have feelings about My Fair Lady.
In the play she marries Freddy and they open a flower shop and it loses money for several years until they hire an accountant and start selling asparagus and peaches too.
THAT is the kind of verisimilitude I like in my stories.
Also his family doesn’t object because they’re so stunned that his sister has taken a job FOR MONEY instead of rotting in genteel poverty that they overlook him marrying a young lady of uncertain ancestry.
And she still fantasizes about seducing HH, but acknowledges that if it requires that they get stranded on a deserted isle, it’s obviously not meant to be.
I guess I’m saying that the play is awesome, you should read the play, and then insert “The Street Where You Live” at an appropriate juncture, because that is the best song.
I also love how GB Shaw kept getting letters from directors and theatre managers going “Hi, we LOVE your play and want to put it on, except we were kind of thinking of changing the ending so Eliza and Higgins get together, that cool with you?” and he would send back TEN-PAGE TL;DR SCREEDS about how NO THAT WAS VERY NOT COOL WITH HIM and way to MISS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE FUCKING PLAY and then he died and Lerner and Loewe were like “…I think what he was trying to say is that Eliza and Higgins should get together!”
I love the play, it is a delight and the entire point of it is that Henry Higgins is a misogynist douche (HIS MOTHER EXPLICITLY SAYS THIS) who seriously mistreated Eliza, and I hate hate hate that the musical was like “yes but also at the end what happens is…they kiss? HAPPY ENDING YAY!” (it is not a happy ending)
OMG. OH MY GOD NICOLE NICOLE THIS IS THE BEST THING YOU’VE EVER DONE, EVER I LOVE YOU OMG.
Seriously, I literally gasped out loud when I saw this, I just…omg. I need to go breath into a paper bag now, then I can come back and actually READ this. God, I love Jeremy Brett so so much.
“(nostrils flare, he stands up abruptly, takes out his violin, saws at it briefly)”
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss no one can nostril flare or sneer coldly/sexily like Jeremy Brett could!
OMGOMGOMG!!
(I’ve been on a Jeremy Brett/Sherlock Holmes binge rewatch. This is TIMELY!)
I read somewhere — maybe the introduction of an edition of Pygmalion? — that Shaw got tired of being asked what happened to the characters afterwards (like, could he confirm that Eliza marries Henry Higgins, plz? kind of thing) and was all “SHE MARRIED FREDDY AND LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER WITH HIM ARE YOU HAPPY NOW THAT YOU ASKED?” (Yes, thank you. That’s a much better HEA.)
When I was little I didn’t like Jeremy Brett, but now that I am older and wiser I don’t think anyone could possibly match him.
Also I would just like to say that, in My Fair Lady, the voice on the phonograph belongs to Peter Ladefoged, Actual Awesome Phoneticist, my former boss, and sweet, sweet man, may he rest in peace. He died in 2005 on a trip to record an endangered language in India. He reportedly tackled Noam Chomsky into a pool at a party once. (Linguists!)
Linguists! Is it recorded what Noam Chomsky had done to deserve being tackled, or was it more a spur-of-the-moment thing?
I believe it was a pool party, and Noam Chomsky was refusing to go in the pool, because he had too much East Coast School Dignity to swim with the UC people. My memory of this is so fuzzy that I may well be actually making it up. I will consult with former colleagues and try to get back to you.
PLEASE KEEP THE JEREMY BRETT .GIFS COMING THEY ARE GIVING ME LIFE RIGHT NOW.
squee
I promised myself I would never go back to school unless I really needed a degree to achieve my dreams. Law school? Never. A PhD? Not in literally a million years. But I would study for years, cut off from friends and family, working late into the night with only infomercials for company, if I thought I could learn to swirl a coat like that.
This one is the best one. I just giggled and blushed AT MY DESK ALONE.
Okay so what you need to know about me is that because of a lot of things, my taste in dudes has suddenly gone from “GIVE ME ALL THE MUSCLES” to “GIVE ME ALL THE CHEEKBONES AND JAWLINES” (from Thor to Loki, if you will.) SO ALL OF THESE .GIFS ARE PERFECT, JUST PERFECT.
Way too late to post this (*shakes fist at time zones*) but god damn, I love Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. So many productions focus on Sherlock being a jerk but with Brett and his charisma, you really get why Watson would want to hang around with him.
The gorgeous JB also played Maxim de Winter in the BBC’s 1979 version of Rebecca. The production values are terrible but oh my! – that voice! YouTube away!
Oh, it’s not too late! I plan on keeping this post open all day just so I can look at the gifs whenever I need a pick-me-up.
Series? Series!!
I think this fan video is extremely relevant. Violin solo!