Meet the real stars of the Olympic opening ceremony, a cow called Gabriella (who’s a bit of a diva) and a goose called Gordon…
I have already previewed Danny Boyle’s rural idyll element of the opening ceremony, which to me was like Eurovision meets “Its a Knock-Out”. Kenneth Brannagh, dressed as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, standing on a plastic model of Glastonbury Tor, reciting lines from the Tempest summed up the colossal mixing of metaphors for me.
Never mind the animals involved had as much pedigree as Brannagh as this article reveals:
Forget James Bond, Kenneth Branagh and the Queen – the real stars of Danny Boyle’s Olympic Opening Ceremony were a cow called Gabriella and a goose called Gordon, not to mention 40 sheep, two billy goats and a sheepdog.
Today The Independent tracked down the animal actors from the ceremony’s bucolic opening scenes to a secret countryside location where they are enjoying a well-earned rest and reflecting on their new-found fame.
But have any of them let it go their head? “Gabriella,” a one-year-old Bedford cow with a lovely temperament but a weakness for the camera, “is a bit of a diva,” said trainer Jill Clark. “She’s been in Le Mis.”
Jill and her team at 1st Choice Animals, one of the industry’s leading providers of animals for film and TV performances, spent a year preparing the animals for the ceremony and were with them every step of the way – right up until the big night itself, when they dressed up as 18th century farmers and took to the Olympic arena to supervise the animals. After the show, they had to muck out the stables in the Olympic Park, while the animals themselves were whisked away to their homes before the ceremony had even finished.
Some of the animal actors were veterans of the screen who took the demands of fussy directors in their stride. Gordon the goose, for instance, has been directed by Steven Spielberg in War Horse, so Danny Boyle must have been a pushover. For some, including the sheep, who appeared at the Olympic Stadium under the watchful eye of their sheepdog Jess and farmer Chris Tucker, it was a debut performance.