Ten years after the skeleton of King Richard III was found under a Leicester car park, Arthur Hughes (playing Richard III) and Director Gregory Doran mark the event.
Arthur and Gregory visited the King Richard III Visitor Centre in Leicester to rediscover the man behind one of Shakespeare’s most notorious ‘villains’.
There they saw a 3D reconstruction of the king’s skeleton, which revealed him to suffer from scoliosis, a condition characterised by a curvature of the spine. They also viewed the site upon which Richard’s remains were buried over 500 years ago, now transformed into a glass-floored contemplative space for visitors.
You can follow what happened on their visit and how they rediscovered Richard in this short YouTube documentary.
watch finding Richard
The University of Leicester Archaeological services applied for permission to exhume human remains from the Greyfriars dig site on 31 August 2012. The Visitor Centre opened two years later, next to the spot where the king’s remains were found. The remains were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral in March 2015 after anthropological and genetic testing confirmed the skeleton was that of the late king.
Commenting on the visit, Arthur said: “After spending the last nine months with Shakespeare’s Richard III, to finally be in the site where his body was found was a fantastic experience.
"As a disabled actor, I’ve spent a lot of time understanding the psychological shape of Richard III. To finally understand the physical shape of him and to know that this was a famous disabled king, is something very important, as is to be playing this very famous disabled part, which historically has – not enough – been played by a disabled actor.”
Our current production, with Arthur, is the first time that the part of Richard III has been performed by a disabled actor in RSC history. The production runs until Saturday 8 October 2022 in Stratford-upon-Avon and will be broadcast to UK cinemas from 28 September.