lewis of the center for strategic and international study. >> my recommendation to the administration would be to take a very talented task force from the department of justice, white house, defense, national security agency, d.h.s.-- all the players that have authorities, and get them focused on working through a game plan to get the authorities right. we're a nation of laws. if we get the law right the culture will fall in and do the right thing, protecting civil liberties and privacies while protecting a nation. >> what struck me is we are at this great strategic inflection point here, where there is a weapon that potentially has the opportunity to change the nature

of warfare in the way nuclear weapons did in the 1940s. and yet in this case, you may have no warning of attack, and so certainty about where the attack came from, which makes deterrence much harder. >> we had a negotiations with the russians over their entry into w.t.o. we talked to them about intellectual property. we talked to them about financial rules, tariffs. we never mentioned cyber crime and yet they're one of the biggest havens. we've got to start making this an issue where countries think about what they're doing in cyberspace and how we might react. >> rose: also british theater actresses harriet walter and janet mcteer performing on broadway in "mary stuart". >> they were sort of born inheritors of this sort of package that had been cooked up by men, their predecessors, in their different ways, that to take those mantles on that were very male mantles. i don't know whether she wanted

powers in that sense. what the play brings out is how little power she really has and how the situation she's in-- i mean, the pope had basically put a fat wauout. it was exactly a fatwa. he said english catholics who killed elizabeth would go to heaven. so she had libertarian instincts somewhere. they couldn't last long when that was the opposition. how muchica tol thimp is a part of-- how much is religion a part of mary? >> hugely. i mean, i think in terms of answering the same question, i mean, i think that she was probably the greatest monarch we ever had and the cultural revolution that happened during her years. now we're all quite ashamed of the empire, but she did start the empire which at one time was a grand thing. it was extraordinary.

but i think history is written by the winners. so from mary's point of view, i think she was a lot more intelligent, bold, and clever. than she was often given credit for and i like to think i put a little bit of that, you know, power and sguts intelligence back into-- into the character and thought this kind of floppy girls who just runs around from man to man. >> rose: cyber war fair and "mary stuart" coming up.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: the united states is more dependent its security networks than any other nation. a successful cyberattack on the financial system or power grid would create unimaginable havoc. how do we defend ourselves in cyberwarfare. what are the rules of engagement? can the u.s. preempt a cyber attack. fullfilling a campaign promise, president obama has made cyber security a top priority. he is expected to appoint a high-level cyber czar. and secretary of defense robert gates has announced a new pentagon cyber command that will plan and train for digital warfare. joining me from washington is admiral michael mcconnell. until january he served as director of national intelligence. from 1992 to 1996 he was director of the national

security agency. also in washington, james lewis, director of the technology and public policy program at the center for strategic and international studies. he headed up a recent bipartisan report on how the nation should secure cyberspace. also with them, david sanger of the "new york times." he has written expensively about cyberwarfare. his new book is called "inheritance." not so new anymore but still worth talking about. i am pleased to have them on this broadcast. michael mcconnell, i start with you, because i talked to buthis, when i asked you what you worried about, this is what you said, at the top of your list, beyond terrorism and nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands was the issue of cyberwarfare. tell us what the potential danger is. >> charlie, the potential danger is that someone from a remote location overseas could attack

u.s. information systems, and if they focused on destroying data, it could create aica skading effect. for example, in banking or electrical power. you could potentially engineer the collapse of the world financial system by attacking remotely outside the united states through the fiber optic network that reaches inside the united states. >> rose: and do we know whether it's been attempted or not? >> there have been many attempts to exploit information or to steal information. there have been fewer attempts at destroying data. and i like to separate those two as a distinction. many people think about stealing information for competitive advantage or stealing something of wealth, of value. and they confuse it with a terrorist group, for example, who might want to destroy an infrastructure. there have been attempts, but so far, they've been relatively low grade. the concern is the cost of entry

is fairly low, and in time, tryst-- terrorist groups who are not deterred will try to attack us through those means "p" james lewis, withr we more vulnerable because we are wired as a nation? >> yes. we got tremendous advantage out of the internet and digital technology. it contributed to growth throughout the 90s, but since we didn't think about how to secure tit wasn't a concern. now, we're in a position where we are probably the most vulnerable. we're also target number one. when other countries look around at who they might want to borrow technology from, whose networks they want to hack, we are target number one. so we're vulnerable, and people are interested in going after us. >> rose: do you assume that nations who may be our friends or our adversaries are looking closely at how they can get access through cyberspace on american plans, american knowledge, american secrets?

>> there are 180 nations or so in the world. most of those nations have a cyber exploitation capability. and all of them would be interested in exploiting u.s. information systems, at a minimum for information advantage. what technology we're developing what intellectual capital we have, what weapons system we might be developing. literally every nation in the world is looking beyond its borders for information advantage. >> rose: david, how do you see it? >> charlie, what struck me as the most interesting out of this frequently when these attacks or probes happen, you don't know if it's a state actor or a nonstate actor. and because it can be done through surrogate servers in other countries, you don't even know where the attack's coming from. so what struck me is that we are at this great strategic inflection point here, where there is a weapon that potentially has the opportunity to change the nature of warfare in the way that nuclear weapons

did in the 1940s. and yet in this case, you may have no warning of attack, and no certainty about where the attack came from. which makes deterrence much harder. and so as-- once, mr. mcconnell who i think really championed this issue in the bush administration and frequently had to push this rock uphill in that administration, when he left and the bush administration left and the obama administration came in, what struck me was how much of the effort they picked up was actually aimed at offensive cyber capability, and that's the part of this that you don't hear as much from in the debate in washington, that a lot of money here is being spent on an offensive capability by the u.s. because that may be the best way to defend. >> rose: that's your deterrence? >> well, it can be deterrence, but it could also lead, as you mentioned in the introduction,

to some form of a preemptive strike. supposing you saw a virus or some kind of attack being put together in a computer in china or russia or romania or a terror group operating on somebody else's territory. there may be electronic ways to preempt that. there may be military ways to preempt that. but i think it's fairly clear to many in this business that preemption is necessary because once the attack start in the u.s., it's very hard to switch off. >> rose: and you have always made the point, david, that in cyber war, attackers have almost all of the advantages. >> they do you because they have the instantaneous advantage. you know, in the old nuclear age, you know, there would be a mountain in colorado or some place where you could see that missile arcing towards the united states, and you had a chance to make some decisions-- maybe you had bad choice but you

had some time. here, if you don't see it and stop it before the attack begins or have extraordinarily good defenses here, you really have no time. >> rose: what are the recommendation of the report, james lewis, securing cyberspace for the 44th president? >> well, the recommendations were that we need to get leadership, white house leadership. so many agencies are involved, you can't run it from defense or d.h.s. or f.b.i. we said the u.s. needed a national security strategy. this is now a real national security problem we have to keep treating it as an ad hoc thing or something only of concern to c.i.o.s. we said you needed a strategy for international engagement, and we ought to come back to the question of preemption and deterrence becausic it's a little more complicated. and finally we we said the u.s. had to recognize the market was

gog fail. if we had to wait for the market to deliver security we would be waiting a long time and the government needed to step in on research, on regulation, maybe even on building human capital, on training people. >> rose: you also called for a cyber czar d you not? >> we called for someone in the white house who could reach across all the agencies and coordinate the activities that currently are not as well coordinated as we might like. i don't like czars in washington. czars in washington end up out in the suburbs somewhere without power, troops, or money. but we need to treat this the way we treat other national security problems. run it out of the n.s.c., make sure there's a pipeline to the president, have somebody watching the agencies to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing and carrying out the policy. maybe not so much as a czar but an conductor. >> rose: mike?

>> they've done a review, and i think they're on the right path. one of the things i might offer that would be assistance to your viewers, you asked about attack and defense, and so so oa way to pick you want problem or start to think about it, there is an exploitation feature. this means breaking in to the capabilities of foreign nations to understand their capabilities and so on. we've done this since world war ii and throughout the cold war. that's done uniquely in this country. it was done by the agency i headed, the national security agency, and what we discovered was sophisticate exploitation, which is passive, is the enabler for both attack-- if you want to take down the air defense system of someone you're going to war with. it's also the enabler for defense, and that's what's been discovered. the authorities in government for doing that are maldeployed right now. so we're gog have to address this from the statute policy point of view to get the

authorities aligned with the appropriate organization to integrate the information because it's all going to eventually be about integrating the ones and zeroes, whether you're communicating intelligence for the benefit of someone, you're exploiting that intelligence for information advantage, you're attacking it in a work time context, or you're defending it for the nation, defending the banking supply-- banking industry or transportation or utilitis, or a nuclear power plant. so that's the integration challenge that we're gog have. >> rose: so where should the main level of defense be? should it be at the national security agency? >> what we'll have to figure out charlie, is how do we harness this unique capability. we invested in this over a 50-year period, since the early 1950s, to build a very sophisticate capability that most people would think of as code breaking. that ability is how you can see and understand a potential adversary. so you can harness it to attack

your adversary. you can harness it to be ahead of your adversary and defending a critical infrastructure. >> rose: tell me, david, because you cover them, the obama administration. how do they view this? >> well, one interesting element of their new strategy is that they have taken up these many recommendations to put somebody in the white house. and if you look at the organization chart of the new national security council, there is a cyberoffice there that's supposed to act as a conductor. so far, that job has not been filled, but the strategy was just written, made public ba month ago. you're also seeing now the creation of this cyber command within the pentagon. there's been a long-running tension that mr. mcconnell can tell you more about than i can, between the national security agency and the pentagon, and of course homeland security and others, about who's responsible

for various elements of this strat joe. and so they spent an enormous amount of time the past few years in turf wars, and i think when the obama administration came, in they determined that they really had to go solve that. the last issue, which i think is unresolved in the obama administration, is how you deal with the fact that there is no national frontier here, that if you are going to have-- operate abroad, you also have to, to some degree, operate inside computer systems in the united states. and i think the bush administration didn't have a whole lot of. credibility on that issue after the n.s.a. issues on wiretapping or surveillance of terrorist operations inside the u.s. i think mr. obama is trying a new-- a new approach at that. >> rose: you look at the problems that happened during the height of the economic crisis, september-october 2008, when wall street firms were

failing. do woe see the way the markets react important lessons about the danger of what could be happening if we're not careful? >> i think that was a perfect example. the effort was to maintain the integrity of the system, the data, because banking, as we all know, is based on confidence. we don't have a gold standard. we don't have printed dollars. it's an accounting system based on confidence. so the scramble was to preserve even those banks that were failing, that you had the accounting data in a way you understood the reconciliation process and so on. if a terrorist group that had the capability had attacked during that time, it would have been a-- a period of strategic vulnerability for the united states. once scrambled and loss of confidence, the crisis we went through would have been much more severe. >> rose: i think you and others have argued it probably was a-- for people who do not wish us

well, it was a lesson. they took notes and they know-- they came away wise ber what might happen. >> yes, charlie. we have talked about this in the public. we are basically providing a recipe for someone who may wish us harm in how to do that. however, this is a democratic process, a democratic country. we have to go through this debate. internally in government, there is intense competition over who's in charge. in fact, when i took the issue to the congress to try to make the point, each of the committees wanted to ask me, "who's in charge?" and the authorities are spread across government. that's the issue that the current administration's going to have to work through and resolve with the congress-- how do we use these capabilities for maximum protection of the nation by integrating all the piece parts. >> rose: jim? you know, we need to scope this a little bit. some people worry about the

chinese undermining wall street. i don't think they will because they own it. some people worry about terrorism. terrorists are definitely exploring this, but they're still really attracted to violence and bloodshed. so cyber's always going to be a second choice for them-- at least it has been so far. the part i worry about most is really the espionage part, both traditional espionage for national security and economic espionage. so if you're an american company and you're going to negotiate in china, there's a really good chance that your opposite number on the chinese side has read your briefing book. they know what your bottom line is, and that's the kind of thing i worry about now. >> rose: tell me how you think that's happening now. give me some hard examples of how that-- that we have evidence of. >> well, you know, there's-- there's evidence-- the best evidence might be the u.s. central command, which is the military command fighting our two wars. >> rose: right.

>> their system was hacked back in december-- >> rose: by whom? >> unknown foreign intruders is the way we normally put it. everyone suspects china, but as we discussed, it's very hard to prove this. someone left a thumb drive. the thumb drive had malwear on it. somebody from sin compicked up the thumb drive, plugged it into their computer and they were owned. we had unknown foreign intruders sitting on our war fighting command, reading their traffic, reading their plans. i agree 100% with the admiral-- we're lucky they decided not to scramble data. but that's a good example, and you could find examples in banks at nasa, at the department of energy, department of state, department of commerce. we've really been taken-- taken to task by these unknown foreign intruders. >> rose: mike, there you go. that's hard evidence-- i mean a hard case. >> indeed, and jim is reinforcing the point i was attempting to make earlier. all modern nations have the ability to exploit beyond their

borders, and they do in a very sophisticate way. there's a constant cyber attack for information advantage. the point he made about the chinese, they are attacking u.s. information systems daily, every day. but it's not in their interest to do something like scramble data in a bank. they need stable markets, stable currency, and so on. they have the potential to do that, but they would be detered in their own self-interest. >> rose: david sanger you said this in your book, "at the pentagon and inside american intelligence agencies officials watch as chinese computer operations sweep up what one senior official described as terror bytes. most of it is lying there in the open and the chinese presumably sift through it for anything that might give the country a competitive leg up." i would bet everything i know that we're doing the same thing. are we not? >> you know, we-- we may well be and it may not simply be that

the governor is doing it. it could be private actors. even in the case of the chinese, it's not clear how much of this is government authorized, government tolerated or done by hackers, businesses, traditional spies. and that's part of the difficulty of working out the deterrence. i'm in complete agreement. i think the chinese government is deterred from messing up our data because they, obviously, have trillions of dollars invested here. but that's not necessarily true for, say, other chinese or other russian actors or special commercial actors. in the case of the united states we also have had a limited number of cases-- or at least a limited number they became aware of-- where we used cyber capability for some fairly active war-fighting cases. there's one case in iraq involving manipulation of data on an al qaeda computer in iraq.

and, of course, as we've discussed before, charlie, there was considerable u.s. effort to focus on the computers involved in the iranian nuclear program. >> rose: jim, talk to me about privacy and how it plays a role in all of this when you start talking about public-private. >> you know, the privacy issue is one of the biggest problems we've got because, as admiral mcconnell said, as others have said, you know, we have the capability to look deeply inside internet traffic, traffic on these digital networks, and find the malwear. but when you look deeply inside, that's completely violating someone's privacy. we don't have the safeguards in place. our laws are from the 1970s. they were designed for copper wire telephones. updating those laws is going to be hard, but if we can't think of a way to make people feel comfortable about privacy and civil liberties, it will be difficult to take advantage of those fabulous capabilities that n.s.a. does have.

and until we can do that, we're going to be vulnerable. >> rose: how long is it going to take the obama administration to kick in whatever initiates it has to do something about all the issues we're talking about? are we talking about 2010? are we talking about 2011? >> if they get off to a good start-- and so far it's been a little slow-- good plan, great speech, but slow start. we're still trying to find a coordinator. if they got off to a good start they could get what we call the low-hanging fruit in a year or two, and maybe by the end of this administration, some time in the second administration, you could see some real progress but we've got to get moving. >> rose: what is the low-hanging fruit. >> low-hanging fruit is starting to talk to other countries about this. you know, we had a negotiations with the russians over their entry into w.t.o. we talked to them about intellectual property, talked to them about financial rules, tariffs. we never mentioned cyber crime, and yet they're one of the

biggest havens. we've got to start making this an issue where countries think about what they're doing in cyberspace and how we might react. we need to think of some sort of deal with the chinese. i mean, what i'd like to see-- this is espionage. how come we've never expelled an attache. we need to start setting the boundaries, and that's something we can do now. there are other things we can do. a hard one is identity, and authentication. if you remember the real i.d. act, that just unleashed torrents of physical abuse. but we're going to have to come back to this identity issue if we want to make the internet secure. >> rose: mike. >> i agree with na, charlie, and i discovered this problem when i was the director of the national security agency in 1992. i sort of had gotten an appreciation by 1994. the internet was exploding. the wider world was moving about most of the traffic. about 90% of the world's communication is in a glass pipe. so i have been focused on this for a long toim.

traditionally in the united states, we don't proact. we react. we wait until the catastrophic event and we react to it. those of us who have been concerned about this are attempted to make the argument let's take action ahead of the problem not behind the problem. i think the debate's right. i think the focus is right. my recommendation to the administration would be to take a very talented task force from the department of justice, white house, defense, national security agency, d.h.s.-- all the players that have authorities and get them focused on working through a game plan to get the authorities right. we're a nation of laws. if we get the law right, then the culture will fall in and do the right thing. protecting civil liberties and privacies while protecting a nation. so you're balancing those two and both are very, very important. >> rose: thank each of you for coming. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us.

>> rose: "mary stuart" returns to broadway after three decades. it portrays the rivalry between queen elizabeth i of england and mary stewart queen of skots. janet mcteer in history, the two queens never met over their battle for the throne, yet imagined what would have happened if they did. >> no desperate adventure determined to be your errant knight. >> it is all over! no more fools stumbling into your clutches. now the world's eyes are elsewhere. they die before they reach the altar. is it dangerous for a man to glimpse disaster? why is it so talked about?

i think i see the reason. you've been the darling of the world, and in the arms of everybody. >> my sins were human failings, and i was young. i refuse to hide them and let the worst be known so what is said of me is worst than what i am. history will not be so kind to you when they tear down this finally decorated drapery. did you not inherit much virtue from your mother. we all know the crime for which he was killed. human beings can only take so much! like an angel floating back up

to heaven. >> forgive me. away. >>. >> rose: the play has gotten rave reviews. bent brantley of the "new york times" says, "you won't doubt that both the queens it portrays are born to rule." so, i might add, are the actresses who play them. they are exceptionally well equipped not only to command an audience's attention but to make the case historically she who would be queen is of necessity a great actress. i am pleased to have janet mcteer and harriet walter at this table to talk about this extraordinary work. welcome. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: now why? ( laughter ) when we were watching that scene did you do this? >> i can't bear to see it.

i can't bear to see myself-- >> rose: because the translation? >> because in your head you're doing something completely different and you're being brilliant and then you say that's what i looked like. >> rose: in your head you are doing something completely brilliant or completely different or both. >> both i'm being greta garbor on acid. and i look at it and it's like a dog walker. >> rose: from greta garbo to a dog walker. and you? >> i look like a drunk barmaid. >> rose: enraged. >> rage. >> rose: as you did that-- that climactic theme, what's in your head? >> i think what's in my head is really the feeling of-- if you've been repressing your rage and talking yourself out of rage for 20 years, and you suddenly get the chance, or you suddenly decide to hell with it. i'm gog say what i think and just open your mouth-- >> rose: i've been waiting for this moment to tell that--

whatever. >> yeah. and who cares if they kill me? who cares. and i'll even give away my faith. i'll invoke the delve, anything, because i'm so angry. that's what's going on, and that's the reveling in the freedom of deciding to tell somebody what you think. i don't think it's really conscious when you-- if you've ever done that. you know, i think it's really a conscious sort of intelligent decision because it's not a particularly intelligent move on her part to do that. i think emotionally it's something that, you know, she just breaks. and you just have to to do it without any thought of the consequences, and that's the first academy-- having spent the first act completely controlled and trite and repressed. >> rose: and scheming. >> great fun. yeah, and it's great fun to get out there-- >> rose: and what is queen

elizabeth i thinking? >> she's thinking-- first of all i don't think elizabeth-- the real elizabeth would have behaved like that. i think she'd have been much cleverer. she wouldn't have slagged her off in public because she cared what people thought withb her so much. she was very, very self-controlled. >> rose: she would have done what then? >> the real elizabeth never met her because she knew if she did, she probably wouldn't be able to control the situation, so-- >> rose: is that based on our understanding of both of the historical characters and their personality and what they were like? >> it's got the juice of that. she took the juice of the two women and used the drama for his own message. the message is the victor took control and signed her own death warrant. she's the victor in that she's free and says what she really believes and spoken from her heart whereas the conquerer has to get back involved in the rail

politic and is despised and hated and live through it all. >> rose: and try to get rid of her guilt. >> exactly, and hate herself and all that stuff. i think the overall thesis of the play-- it's many things, but a lot of it is about the sacrifices made by those in power, how they lose their soul and integrity-- or can do-- and the person who goes to their death as a martyr maintaines that integrity and the lot of of the people and it's kind of who wins kind of question. >> rose: so the moral has to do with being true to your own self. >> i qoont like to try to run a country and keep hold of my moral integrity and please everybody all of the time. it's a tough job. but elizabeth in schiller's play does lose her soul. >> rose: could the two of you exchange these roles as i've seen actors occasionally do, like on "true west" in certain nights they alternate characters. >> we've thought about that.

>> so flattering that i could play the young mary. >> of course you could, my dear. >> rose: "my dear." >> we did think about it and had a conversation thinking it would be really good fun. >> rose: and how would it be different, do you think? >> i think i would be a more obvious, straight, down-the-line soppy mary. >> rosesoap mary? >> yes. and the great thing about janet, historically, she was quite an emotional blackmailer. she was quite a weeper. she was quite a sort of-- you know, played the pathetic person and janet just really doesn't do that, gives her so much gutss. i would now probably, if it happened tomorrow and i went on, i would probably just copy janet. >> rose: oh, come on. so tell me, how does the play differ from the history? >> oh, in so many ways. well, we probably both have different-- you get very involved in your character's side, you know. first of all, historically, mary

was not innocent. second of all-- >> rose: there was a plot to kill. >> yes, that is reason she's beheaded, or, you know-- second of all, lester never met mary. so that character is fiction. third of all, a lot of the comments about protestantism and catholicism are spoken from the point of view of germany in 1800 rather than england. it was this sort of austerity, anti-image, and the dull, dead language, all that stuff that mort morsays is true of luth rin germany but not elizabethan england which was full of imagery. so that's kind of different. and they never met. >> i think ious also, the-- i mean, some of the history books

did disagree as well. mary was definitely implicated in some of the later plots, by which time she had had a enough, and she was like, "yes, just go on, i don't care." >> rose: rid me of-- >> some people believe she was and some people believed she wasn't-- for a long time they believed she was implicated in her husband's death. but in the last certain-- however many years-- when they've been going through is all the common think was she wasn't implicated in her husband's death, which she definitely is in the play. >> it keeps changing, doesn't it? >> it sort of changes because there's not the evidence so it's basically the people looking at the facts and the grand political scheme and going that seems most likely or that seems most likely or that letter seems now to be more of a forgery than the other. >> and they did interpret letters, didn't they. they did intercept letters and rewrote them so you you wouldn't know. >> we still don't really know.

personally, i think mary wasn't implicated in the donnelly plot, the plot to kill her husband-- for the simple reason it was at a time when she was at her strongest, when she had a young son who bap the next king of england and scott land, who she had very carefully asked elizabeth to be the guardian of her son, rather than her husband should anything happen to her, which was a really clever political move. and they were writing to each other a lot at that point. >> we were quite civilized to one another for a long time. >> at that point, it was, i think, there was a sort of, you know, i think could go either way stage and as much as i can imagine at the time people in their heads, in as much as-- if mary was willing to give up being the next-- the rightful queen of england and being, say, the next heir to the english throne or her son being the heir

to the english throne, i believe members would have-- she did agree that james would be the next heir to the throne. if that had been settled, history could have taken a whole other turning, and at that point donly was killed. i don't believe mary was implicated in the donnelly plot because i don't think she was that stupid. she was very clever in many ways. she had lots of clever arguments and there are lots of her letters, which are still around, and some of the arguments she had with some of the great protestants at the time, and she was a catholic, of course, and they were very, very clever-- >> i think they had a lot in common. basically, they were first cousins once removed. they were both descended from henry vii. >> her father was-- her father's sister was my grandmother. >> and, you know, they both had that ability to lace their words in a very clever-- in a letter

that was really well formed to kind of make a little dig on the way and emotionally blackmail here and, you know, cover both sides of the question. >> but they could have-- as two women, they could have-- you know, because elizabeth was one-- one of the things elizabeth is facely covered for is stringing people along, and of course had she said very early on, "actually, i don't want to get married. i rather like being queen. i don't want to wake up mrs. anybody. i want to be queen of england. i'm top dog." and i think she probably knew that all along, morse, so the fact that there wasn't an heir in place releaseed her from that obligation. actually, had she said that up front she would probably have been assassinated truthfully. >> yeah, yeah. >> there was a little triangle of heirdom that could have worked for a brief time. >> rose: can you make a case

that your training in britain gives you skills to play these characters? >> i don't know because i did some shakespeare workshops here with some new york actors, and they were under this delusions that, you know, it was in our vains-- veins to wear frocks and goub gowns, and all. english people speak posh and no history. it's not true at all. there is a tradition we would have been aware of growing up, the peggy ashkrofts, and those people but american actors have access to those people, too. if they want to go down that line. but, yeah, i was bullied at drama school to speak in a certain way. when it was appropriate. >> rose: you used the word "bullied." >> yes because it was so anti- what i wanted it to sound

like. this commanding british style. i hate it. but anyway, it seemed appropriate even though the real queen talks very, very high, doesn't she? >> rose: you've done this before "mary stuart." you both have. is it different now? that was four years ago, wasn't it? >> yes, it was, in 2005. >> rose: what changes over four years? >> it was great. when we started to do the play we had the idea to cut it down, and partly because we did it in a small studio. but we had this idea of stripping it right back to its bad bones of the ideas and the power and the struggle and what the actual scenes are about. so once we sthartd, we started with a sort of bare palette so by the time we opened-- what we're doing is this-- and a lot of the visual things of the rain and the scene in the rain, you know, the way that works and the

-- if you've only got 10 actors, how do do you that scene well. that kind of thing. so by the time we got to this, doing it again, we had got some of those ideas and then thought, right, we can expand on them because we didn't really discover them until we actually opened the play whereas this time we know we've got them so you you can slightly make more of them. the biggest thing, i think, certainly visually, is the fact that we discovered durgs rehearsals and during the early previews how most-- that we are diametrically opposed, elizabeth and myself. so now visually, we are much more dramatically opposed. i thought-- i show up in a black frog, short hair and rug. and she ends up with black frock

short hey, and a rug. we can expand on those scenes. and i think the other thing is because we have done it before, when we came to re-rehearse teven though we-- both of us-- there were lots of aspects of the character you thought hmmm. we discovered that but did not have a chance to really explore it. >> it's a luxury, actually. with any great play that you do, you always end up on the day after it closes, you go, "oh, god! i wish i'd tried that." you you know, and if you can come back to it three, four years down the line, very sure of what was right and what was wrong about the first version with the luxury of four, five weeks' rehearsal way new cast. and we did open up the new cast, i must say. we wanted to. it wasn't fake benevolence. we wanted to start with as blank a sheet as we could so they can

join in the discovery and it could be their play as much as ours. we benefitted from that. sneakly in the back of our mibdz we knew we would end up with quite a lot working out the same but we were helping them find it for themselves and asked to reinforce what decisions we might have made rather quickly in england because it was opening in two weeks' teem. whereas now, with the benefit of all that hindsight, we're very sure of the rightness of the choices and-- it feels much more flex iblg here. it feels within the restrictions you can play more. and also the the yudience gives us quite a different feeling. >> rose: the audience gives you a very different-- their resonance is different. >> yes. i mean, they're more interactive in a funny way. they're more demonstrative than an english audience. you can feel that goes through and you can harness it and give

back. >> one day harriet and i were walking up eighth avenue going, "what are we doing wrong! i'm too tall. i'm not funny and i can't ask. and you're too short what i high voice. let's go home." >> rose: we've made a terrible mistake. >> "quick, let's go to this irish bar." i'm standing up there and being dramatic and they think i'm cracked. >> rose: did you guys hang ow together? do you have time to enjoy new york or is it when you're doing something this intense with the schedule you have, there's little time? >> seems there isn't much time, actually. i intended to do a lot of hanging out, and seeing a lot of new york. it's not my first visit so i don't have to pack in all the tourist things you have to do. i had much less free time than i thought. >> we've had lots of little glasses of cranberry juice after the show but not actual going

on-- >> rose: how long does it take you to wind down after a performance like this? >> i don't hit my pillow until 2:00 a.m.. >> and you get up at 10:00, and then you've got a few hours, and i go to the gym around 4:00, 5:00. it's not really-- we only have tuesday afternoon and then we have a show on thursday afternoon. two shows on saturday, sunday afternoon we go to matinee, monday is already our day off. we don't have a great deal of time and it is a very tiring show. >> rose: close your eyes. roll tape. >> true to your word, as you leadp lead me out of prison on your own, once it was more than freedom i wanted. oh, i wanted freedom to be a house of happiness and passion l and new life through your arms.

now, i am almost out of this world. a simple spirit laughing its way to heaven. free! i can say freely. how mighty was the weakness i have conquered. be happy if you can. you had the privilege to woo tw queens. lucky man. ( laughter ) i pray she will not pay you back with agony. good-bye. there is nothing here for me now. >> rose: the end. ( laughter ) how long will this run?

>> august 16. >> rose: and then for you? >> for me, a holiday in england, i hope. i'm not in a hurry to get back to england for the moment, but i have to get back-- i'm in the u.k. version of "law & order." >> rose: i didn't even know they had a version. >> it started this year. >> rose: and you play a...? >> i play the detective sort of the chief of the two detectives, you know. they're. -- >> rose: you played clemmen tine. >> uh-huh. >> rose: winston churchill's wife in the hbo film "into the storm." here is a clip of that. >> you once said to me, do you remember when you first became prime minister "i was born for this." you were, winston. approximated. >> too many disasters. >> rose: here the young viktoria

just released in the u.k. here it is. roll tape. >> can't i be my own mistress for a while? haven't i earned it? he's so very kind. i couldn't have asked for a better tutor. you may dream of independence but you won't get it. from now on, everyone will push you and pull you for their own advantage. just remember, you are the queen. he's a politician, and politicians, whatever their creed, also resent the monarchy. they pass through. you stay. >> rose: well done. >> being a queen again. >> rose: yes, indeed. so what is it you want us to know about queen elizabeth? >> oh, gosh. i want people to read the history because it's so fascinating. it's just such a complicated story. there are pros and cons of both-- >> rose: the debates we were talking about. >> yes. i mean, basically, i think she-- she's unique.

there's nobody like her. she had this unique childhood where she was suspected of plots against the queen and the king and she was put in the tower of london under threat of her life. and she just thought, "i'm never going to marry anybody because it leads to-- you lose control. you lose. -- you might lose your head," because her mother had lost her head, her stepmother had lost her headed. i mean it was just-- she was so bold and clever and her nerves were just unbelievable. it's actually quite hard to embody her because although schiller humanized her a lot, she just seems so out of this world strong. >> rose: as if she was born to rule? >> no, i don't think she felt she was born to rule. the crucible she was brought up in, you would either make or break somebody, and it made her. she was strong, strong as steel. and she ruled orch our country

for 45 years, on the whole, incredibly well. and brought about the most amazing cultural rebirth. >> rose: and there continue to be movies and theater pieces about her. >> yeah. because she wasn't a tyrant. that's the thing. although in this play she's sort of made out as a tyrant, she very definitely was sort of the prototype of the person with the libertarian instinct who was forced to be tough because the world wasn't-- >> rose: what was her attitude about men? >> i think she was a big flirt and she loved men but she just politically didn't want tow get married. so we don't know whether she was a virgin or not. that sort of linkage of libido and power that we have in our modern-day politics comes from somebody born an ordinary person and decides they want to get into politics and run the world. >> rose: and the power becomes an aphrodisiac.

>> these two women weren't like that. they were born inletterors-- inheritors of this package cooked up by men, their predecessors. and in their different ways, they had to take those man telz on that were very male mantles. i don't know whether she wanted power in that sense. what the play brings out is how little power show really has and how the situation she's in-- i mean, the. pope had basically put a fatwa out. he said catholics who killed-- english catholics who killed elizabeth would go to heaven. so if she had libertarian instinct somewhere, they couldn't last long when that was the opposition. >> rose: how much of catholicism is a part-- how much is religion a part of mary? >> hugely. i mean, i think-- in terms of answering the same question. i mean, i think that queen

elizabeth i without a shadow of a doubt is probably the greatest monarch we ever had and the cultural revolution that happened during her years. now we're all quite ashamed of the empire, but she did start the empire, which at one time was a grand thing. it was extraordinary. but i think history is written by the winners, so from mariney's point of view, i think she was a lot more intelligent, bold, and clever. she was than she was often given credit for, and i like to think i've put a little bit of that power and guts and sfwels back into-- into the character, and not this kind of floppy girl who just runs around from man to man. >> rose: what are you playing next? >> i have no idea. >> rose: is that good? >> yeah, it's great. i'm very happy to-- >> rose: and can you do that for two years? >> no, not two years. you go six months and then get nervous. >> i never get nervous.

>> rose: in other words you don't worry about when you might work again i don't. it's not because i'm arrogant. i think it's because if you worry about it, it won't turn it up, and i think life is very short and you have to seize the day. i think i work a lot, and any time i don't work and get time to hang out with my loved ones, it's a bonus. >> rose: opened on april 16 and member there through august 16. "mary stuart" earned best revival play and best actress. it won a tony for best costume design. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> very nice to be back. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications

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