Viewers will once again be able to see her there in three productions. In General Jiří Hubač as a spirited Corsican woman Josefína, in the title role of the Scandinavian play Mrs. Colonel Věra as a strong and charming widow Věra and in the game Gin Game as Fonsii, which brings her luck to Martin Weller in madness in the cards performed by Milan Kňažek.
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He looks back on his richly fulfilled professional life without sentiment, matter-of-factly, with a lively interest in current events and what is to come. And of course with the necessary humor.
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Are you looking forward to the stage and the audience?
Sure, like any actor. But otherwise I don’t experience that coronavirus pause so much. From time to time I try to remember the three productions I play at the Na Jezerce Theater, but I don’t make it a problem. There are other things that one should experience, such as family or, unfortunately, illness.
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It can also be said about that forced pause that all evil is good for something. That she made us think about what was really important. I wish it would last us.
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Do you feel that people have started to treat each other better?
How who. I am angry with politicians for not uniting when a pandemic gave them the opportunity to do so by creating a common enemy. Under the previous regime, a common enemy led us to unite.
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You have been playing at the Na Jezerce Theater since 2005. Do you remember the moment when the principal Jan Hrušínský approached you with an offer to perform in his family theater?
It was a great joy. At that time, it was an offer to continue the production of the play Love of Mrs. Katta, which was downloaded at the Prague Theater in Vinohrady after fifty reruns, even though the audience was still interested in it.
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John came up with the idea for me to finish it with him. And it was confirmed that they had a bad estimate in Vinohrady, because I played another two hundred and twenty reruns in Jezerka. I was very happy for the offer, because it’s a really beautiful and deep game.
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And it takes place between laughter and tears, as you called your memory book…
After all, our whole life takes place between laughter and tears. And Katty knows a lot about it.
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Jiřina Bohdalová is looking forward to returning to the Na Jezerce Theater and the New Year’s Eve celebration of her birthday.
Photo: Ivan Kahún, Na Jezerce Theater
Even your life was between laughter and tears. Already at a young age, you experienced very hard moments during your father’s imprisonment.
That is true, but one must not succumb to it. Everything can be overcome. You must not scratch the pain and blow on it.
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Already at the age of six, you stood in front of the camera in the films Pizla and Žižla na cestách, The Golden Man and in the still popular film Madla sings to Europe. Do you remember shooting then?
You know I do. While filming Madla Sings Europe, I was in love with Ladislav Boháč, who played the choirmaster Klán, and we and his singing children. I liked him as a man at the time, so you can see that I already had good taste as a little girl when it comes to men.
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The rich man always shaved in the locker room in the morning, and I always knocked on the door, I walked in, greeted him, and as he circled the soap brush and made the beautiful thick foam, he rubbed it on my nose. I immediately ran to brag to my mother and other mothers who were there to babysit, and I said to them: He’s been annoying me again! And I meant he confessed his love for me.
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For a child, filming is primarily a game. But when did you really feel like you wanted to be an actress?
Certainly not as a child, but as a teenager. I had two dreams: to be a teacher or an actress. And both of them came true. I loved the children very much. In Ostrava, I taught first the second grade, then the first experimentally established nine-year-old, where I was transferred as a model teacher. So I was such a Comenius in a skirt.
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As an actress, you have preserved your relationship with children and projected it into beautiful evenings and film fairy tales…
As a teacher, I used my acting inclinations. For example, I read a book of Kája’s favorite fairy tales to the children, which were the favorite fairy tales of the schoolboy Kája Mařík. I read half of them at the beginning of the class and promised them that if they learned well and were good, I would read the rest to them at the end. I had no experience teaching, so I had to find my own way to engage the children. And this was my school game.
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Years later, I realized that teachers must actually be actresses as well, in order to attract the attention of all those restless little ones and be able to direct them to teaching. So acting and teaching were already connected to me then, because I was already changing my voices while reading those fairy tales. And I had no idea that Zdeněk Smetana would one day draw his pajduláky on my voice. In fact, the honesty with which I read fairy tales back then as a young teacher paid off a lot.
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Mrs. Katty has performed at the Na Jezerce Theater more than two hundred times.
Photo: Majka Votavová
You have made more than two hundred films, a lot of beautiful TV series and productions, not to mention theater and other activities…
I never counted it. But don’t worry, when I’m not here, someone will count it. The numbers never worked for me.
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Do you ever watch your movies?
But yeah, I’m happy to see that, especially now that Czech Television reminds us of what we shot then on ČT 3, I find it deserving. It also revives my memory. Sometimes I’m surprised, because I don’t remember a movie or a production at all and I look at them from beginning to end as something new.
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Do you remember the colleagues you played with?
Well, not! Anyone can envy me that I have met so many excellent actors and human personalities, both female and male. It was a huge crop, a plethora of bards.
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Whether I remember Rudolf Hrušínský, Bohuš Záhorský, Vlasta Fabianová, Zdeněk Štěpánek, Jan Werich, Stella Zázvorková. I can’t name them all because I would miss a lot of them. Both older and younger generations parade in my memory.
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Right now, I feel like there’s a bit of an eel. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it will shake and clear over time, because only the best will pass through the network of spectator interest. The viewer has a special sense of smell for the acting truth. And he can choose the best.
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Your generation was lucky even for great directors…
And not only to directors, but also to great writers. The basis of a successful production and film is in a good script. If you don’t have a strong script, more self-talented actors can’t do anything about it. That – as I say in Czech in a nice way, ie substance, story – must be really strong.
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I was lucky enough to have great screenwriters, such as Jan Procházka, Vratislav Blažek, Jiří Hubač, Zdeněk Zelenka, to name just a few of them. Today we have from the younger Marek Epstein, Petr Koleček and maybe someone else. I don’t know them so well again, and I wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
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Do you feel that humor has changed a lot in the last decade?
Certainly. There is less shame in him. It is too literal, the authors leave nothing to the viewer. And that’s what I’m saying, which doesn’t go far for any of the more core Czech words. But I feel it’s not appropriate somewhere. And I also learned from people like Vladimír Menšík that not everyone can say these words freely. Someone has the gift that it does not sound vulgar, lascivious or vulgar from him at all. And someone just doesn’t have the gift. But everyone has to determine for themselves, or rather the director must feel that it is not good in any particular place.
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The notion that vulgarization makes a film or production more popular is a mistake. After a while, people long for them to substitute the expressions themselves. As Vladimír Dvořák said in Televarieté, so that he would understand the stupid and not offend the clever. That’s how humor is supposed to be.
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What did you expect from acting?
I don’t know if I was expecting anything at all, I just wanted to play. I had been producing since I was a child, I was a child who bothered to visit with poems, and my mother was sometimes unhappy about it. But that doesn’t mean that whoever likes to produce will automatically be a good actor. Estimating talent is terribly difficult.
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How do you remember studying at DAMU?
Above all, I remember our professor of acting, Mr. Bohuš Záhorský. He was a role model for us not only as an actor, but also as a classy and intelligent gentleman who smelled even at a time when it was not at all customary. He was the first man I realized to have the same tie and socks. He was elegant in design, despite his small stature and the fact that when he climbed out of his mother, he looked old.
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He was simply from another world in the mid-fifties. I had a big handle with him at the very beginning of my acting career.
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Your professional life includes an incredibly many different activities: theater, film, television, program moderation, cookbooks, football Amphora… How do you do it all? You have to be an extremely diligent person…
For one thing, I’m really diligent, but most of all, I really enjoy it. But you’re right about that diligence. As my sister says: I’m just looking at you and I’m tired.
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I’m not forcing myself into anything. And even in the years when I could give myself peace. But I know it’s my engine. And as long as it’s well lubricated and doesn’t rub, I have to use it. That’s what one should do. Every obstacle he overcomes will fill him with a feeling of well-done work.
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This is not a phrase for our actors. It is true. We are special in that we want to work as much as possible, and if for some reason we cannot, we are unhappy. I always said with exaggeration that if it wasn’t for a really good film or production, I would have played it for free. I must like the job so much to burn for it.
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But during the coronavirus break, a lot of people don’t understand that the actors want to play so much…
That is true, but on the other hand, only actors cannot complain about the impossibility of work, because we are all in it. Hairdresser, actor, innkeeper, just everyone. And it’s not worth saying who’s more and who’s less. I have already suggested several times that people were doing so undeservedly well that something just had to come. My generation has experienced a war where we have not seen butter and a lot of other things, and many of today’s people, who are immediately upset and do not want to follow any rules, would probably go crazy.
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Even your birthday comes at a not very convenient time. How do you celebrate them?
So far only in the family circle. What would it look like if I encouraged people to follow the rules and organized a birthday party myself? So we just tap with the family. But the director of Czech Television Petr Dvořák offered me to combine the celebration of my birthday with this year’s New Year’s Eve television program.
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We start from the New Year’s Eve model with Vladimír Menšík, where acting colleagues sat in the auditorium, which is the best audience. It should take place from ten o’clock to midnight, when we wish the nation a happy new year. Of course, it will not be explicitly my celebration, but part of the New Year’s Eve evening will also be the celebration of my birthday. I’m really looking forward to it and I believe that the audience will like it as well.
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