Let Christopher Walken touch a Stonehenge rock, cowards!
The actor attempted to get up close and personal with the monument while filming new series The Outlaws
TV Features christopher walken
Christopher Walken has had a long, fulfilling career that shows no signs of stopping and he is beloved around the world. He lives a life gloriously free of email. And yet, the veteran actor is still in pursuit of that one thing that will bring him true contentment. This elusive experience? Touching Stonehenge.
While speaking to Vulture recently, Walken’s co-star in British comedy The Outlaws, Stephen Merchant shares the following story:
We had a day off, and Chris really wanted to go to Stonehenge. We got there, and he went to the woman showing us around: “Can I touch one of the stones?” And she was like, “No.” I took her to one side and said, “He’s 78 years old. He’s an Academy Award winner. He’s Christopher Walken. He’s come 3,000 miles. These things have been here 5,000 years. You can’t just let him touch a stone?” And she’s like, “No. Definitely not.” It was so typically British that even someone like Christopher Walken can’t touch the stones. “Definitely not.” That’s not how we roll in England.
Despite not being allowed to approach the ancient monument, Walken still seemed to have a pretty good time visiting one of England’s most famous landmarks.
“It was really magical,” Merchant recalls. “He found it quite moving to watch the sunset with something as mysterious and exotic as that. It was a surreal moment.”
The Outlaws, which was made by the BBC and is now available on Prime Video in the U.S., follows an unlikely group of petty criminals who are serving their community service sentences together when they suddenly find themselves in over their heads with an organized crime ring. Merchant also co-created The Outlaws with Elgin James (Mayans M.C.) and directed four episodes. The show has already filmed a second season, though a release date has yet to be announced.
Along with The Outlaws, Walken recently had a supporting role on Severance, where he forms half of TV’s cutest couple alongside John Turturro. Merchant starred as the serial killer Stephen Port in the miniseries Four Lives, which aired on the BBC earlier this year.
44 Comments
Yeah, no.*
I’m a couple of episodes into The Outlaws, and it is pretty good so far. Not groundbreaking television, but entertaining. Walken is as nimble as always in his role. That said, I wouldn’t have let him touch Stonehenge, either.
I watched the first episode; it was what I’d call good, but it was also really depressing. The trailer made it out to be energetic hijinks, but the actual episode featured a lot of people disappointing their parents/children.
I think I was also expecting it to be a bit more screwball, maybe because Stephen Merchant is behind it, and instead it has delivered something more serious. But it has grown on me. I should finish it up tomorrow. Will report back on overall impressions.
I finished it, and that was pretty much my assessment as well. I thought it was a good watch, but if it never gets a S2, I won’t be disappointed. A solid 7/10.
Yeah, it’s solid and watchable. I’ll give season 2 a go (it’s already shot, should be released in the fall, I think).
Meanwhile there’s a whole article that’s linked to with no mention of the fact it’s about Darkplace. That’s how much you know the site’s changed.
When I went to Stonehenge in 1996, there was a ten-foot chain link fence around it absolutely crammed with garbage. You had to peer between “crisps” bags to even see the monument. Also, they were doing some kind of preservation work so there was scaffolding all around the stones. Talk about an anticlimax… I hope they’ve improved the experience since then.
I was there in 1987 with a bunch of teenagers (including myself), no fence, and have a picture of one of said teens hanging upside down on one of the smaller, centrally placed stones (that wasn’t me).
Ouch. I accidentally climbed on a stone war memorial in Glasgow (genuinely didn’t see the sign) and I feel guilty about it to this day.
and how are the Gorbals?
When I was there no one was allowed anywhere close to the site. We had to view it from such a distance, it might as well have been another photograph. After reading your comment, that might be for the best. That’s a disgrace and I’m judging the entire country for that BS.
Keeping filthy Muggles away from the old, fragile and priceless artifact? Yeah, that sounds horrible.
Muggles. Oh, right. Ha ha.
Yes, I forgot to mention that – the fence was a couple hundred feet away from the monument. I fully understand why they wouldn’t let people climb on (see other reply below) or even touch the monument, but they needed a better solution than that.
The problem is it’s on a mound which is part of it.
They cut a footpath into it (which had some drama) when they did the visitor centre so you can get to maybe ~40 ft from it on one side now.
I went in 2018, and the experience sounds markedly improved from yours. You definitely must stick to the path that encircles it mostly from a distance, but a part of it does get you within about 20 feet of one side. No fencing. There are headphones provided for an optional audio tour you can activate at various points. There is also a new (2013) visitor center/museum at the parking area that I found well-done and enjoyable.
This is why I don’t do “world heritage monuments”. I rode on a crammed bus in India 6 hours to see the Taj Mahal, and it was like Six Flags. So crowded it was like Times Square. No photo I took did it justice. I wish I would have never gone. These “bucket list” items are just things out of a 90’s coffee table book. You gotta spend a lot of money and time to get there, and the experience is so shitty, that if it were right across town you’d never go. For example, seeing the Mona Lisa sounds like fucking torture. And the Trevi Fountain looks like hell on earth during those 4K walking tours.
He’s just trying to get back to his home planet. Why won’t they let him go home?
Walken is lucky. I was there in 1965 and Stonehenge was surrounded by tanks!I was there with Clang and the cult of Kali to steal that ring, but still.
I understand that joke. I don’t think there is a fence there anymore.
Just finished watching The Outlaws and was surprisingly entertained by it.
At summer solstice they let a load of neopagans and hippies have a right old knees-up at the henge. Like, right inside it.And there’s other standing stones all around the country you can go fondle even if you’re not a Hollywood actor, some of them possibly older than Stonehenge.
I’m picturing if they had let him touch Stonehenge and the rock did happen to topple over, Christopher Walken would, in classic Walken fashion, shrug and cock his head with a dead-eyed “oops”.
Let the man touch them! He BUILT them, for God’s sake!
If that’s typically British, then I wish the US would take after them. The mentality that rules are bendable or breakable for the rich and/or famous needs to be tossed out of our culture.They used to let people touch Stonehenge, and the public showed they were incapable of treating the site with any respect or reverence, repeatedly defacing and damaging it. Now we had our ball taken away, and it’s for the better, no matter who you are.
Humans can’t be trusted with anything. They need to be kept in cages, with a water bottle and a running wheel. Give them some ripped-up MyPillows to bed in. Then throw the entire cage into the ocean, tied to a rock.
Imagine if say, a British Prime Minister hosted a party in Covid times despite it being against his government’s social distancing policy. Such a thing would be unimaginable because how sacred the ideal of treating the rich and powerful the same as everyone else in Britain is!
Don’t know for a fact, but I’m pretty sure it’s true that BoJo hosts illegal parties at Stonehenge and let his guests urinate on the stones
Fair point. At least there’s some outrage about it there. And arguably I’m not sure how representative Boris is.
Imagine, ahem, if an American President hosted a Super-spreader event in fall 2020 to install a theocratic Supreme Court Justice, and then suffered no consequences whatsover, except for an ironic dose of covid himself.
Counterpoint: touching them harms them if it is done too much and he is not entitled to special treatment just because he is a cool movie star.
They’re held in place by steel girders lol – you can literally buy a ticket to go into the stones and touch them all you want.Shit, every Solstice they let hundreds of us into the stones.
Yup. Chevy Chase ruined it for everybody.
And these days they don’t allow movie production at the site. A bit harsh. I mean, the film crew did set the stones up again after the scene was filmed, so no harm done, really.
If only the real world mirrored THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION. Sigh. The world would be such a better place if all tourists (hell, most of the human race) were zapped into ambergris…
Was she afraid he was going to stuff it up his ass and bring it back to the states for a young Bruce Willis?
I’m not saying they’re lying, but they’re totally not telling the truth.I lived 3 miles from Stonehenge for over 30 years, I’ve been to maybe 20+ Solstices (during which you can literally enter the stones, and touch them all you want).And the nice lady there would have mentioned immediately that the multi-millionaire Academy Award winner would have easily been able to gain access to the stones using one of their VIP experiences. It’s £47, it’s not even expensive lol.
No, you can’t. I have a friend who works there and I couldn’t get close. They don’t make exceptions for anyone. If he wants to touch ancient megaliths he should have driven half an hour up the road to Avebury. There the stones are literally inside the town green and you can stroll among them and the sheep.
Outlaws was great. Stonehenge is seriously underwhelming.
He just needs to come back on June 20th for summer solstice and the annual all night party inside the stone circle. On the solstice the sunrise perfectly aligns with the Heel stone, not bad for 5000 year old science!
Of all the risible phrases around today, “Let [something something pop culture], you cowards” has to be the most nauseating, and anyone who uses it should go on a long meditative retreat in some very quiet woods
Not one Spinal Tap Joke? I am dissapoint.