The Naked Truth of Dame Diana Rigg: A Book Excerpt for ONE TOUGH DAME by Herbie J Pilato

[Note: Unless otherwise indicated, this article features edited excerpted material from the book, One Tough Dame: The Life and Career of Diana Rigg, which is available in hardcover, audio CD, audiobook, and Kindle.]

It All Began with "The Avengers" (and Not 'THAT' One)

Acclaimed actress Dame Diana Rigg initially found fame in the 1960s playing super spy Mrs. Emma Peel on the action-adventures series, The Avengers. She later appeared on the big screen in classics such as On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and The Hospital, only to return to the small screen with iconic performances on shows like the original All Creatures Great and Small and Game of Thrones.

Rigg's final screen appearance was in the 2021 film, Last Night in Soho, which she filmed in early 2020. She died from cancer the following fall.

However, on the stage, Rigg, a classically trained actress, felt most comfortable. Except one time.

A Closer Look

A Tony Award-winning performance once proved controversial for Dame Diana Rigg. It was during her infamous nude sequence in the 1971 play Abelard and Heloise that she was attacked by one theatre critic who complained about the size of her chest.

The performance marked her Broadway debut, for which Rigg earned the first of three Tony nominations. But American theatre critic John Simon unfairly described her feminine physique, which she exposed in a nude scene with Keith Michell.

Michell appeared in the buff from one side of the stage, and Diana from the other. In brief, Simon said she was “built like a brick basilica [mausoleum] with insufficient flying buttresses.” And while Diana once noted how there is a general tendency to overlook how several individuals are indirectly affected by thoughtless and cruel journalism,” her direct response to Simon was marked with triumphant calm: “He should have seen me after the menopause. There was no shortfall then!”

She Was a Straight Shooter in Real Life

Though, too, in her BBC TV interview with Michael Parkinson, Dame Diana Rigg did acknowledge some discomfort with being naked on stage. “I come from Yorkshire. Nobody takes their clothes off in Yorkshire...except on a Friday night.”

Rigg was told the questionable scenes were necessary for the play, for the characters to discover their sensuality. While she had to convince herself to bear it all, the actress failed to see the point of addressing the issue in public, mostly because newspapers at the time had a limited amount of space to cover stories.

While performing Abelard in the city of Newcastle, England, Rigg was amused by a telegram she received from a male postal clerk, who wondered why she even bothered to do the scene. It was indeed Diana’s love for words that inspired her to have the last laugh on John Simon’s review.

Sweet Literary Revenge

Proving her wit to be mightier than any sword, Diana Diana Rigg published her worst reviews in the book, No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews in History. With an acerbic tone, and her tongue-in-cheek and in-check, the slim but fiery tome, which she wrote in about one year, became the ideal representation of Rigg’s ever-burgeoning life and career.