Excerpts from interviews

From a Chicago Tribune Interview, 1988:

On playing Sherlock Holmes:

But play him Brett does, in a supremely high style. ``Of course, the performance is over-the-top,`` says Brett with a laugh. ``But I`ll tell you what it is, I`ve played him as a kind of romantic hero . . . because I don`t feel adequate for the part. You know, you have all these marvelous ideas in your head and all that comes out is this awful `you.` ``
Avoiding being bored with ``you`` seems to be a driving force for this son of a World War I hero and an Irish Quaker mother. He originally wanted to be a singer, but his ``glorious soprano didn`t break so well.`` Then came aspirations to be a jockey or a dancer. ``But I got too big to be a jockey. As for dance, after I went to my first ballet, I suddenly realized that the man spends all his time lifting the woman in front of himself, and I thought that`s a bit deadly.``
**

As Watson bellows Holmes’s name repeatedly over the falls, we see Holmes clinging to the hillside some distance away, watching his friend. At one moment it almost seems as though he is about to respond with a cry of ‘Watson’, but then he stops himself.

Brett explained:

‘That was deliberate. It wasn’t in the script but I just wanted to show that Holmes had affections for Watson and for a fleeting second they almost get the better of his practical mind. But they don’t. [Large Brett grin.] It is a moment.’
( from ”Bending the Willow: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes" by David Stuart Davies)