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Veteran British actress Judi Dench has crossed paths with the classic musical "Cats" twice in her career. She was originally cast as both Grizabella and Jennyanydots in the show’s 1981 West End premiere, but a serious injury just weeks before opening night forced her to withdraw. Her second chance came with the 2019 film adaptation, in which she played Old Deuteronomy. Although Dench finally made it into "Cats," audiences savaged the movie, while its motion-capture feline effects became an uncanny-valley nightmare and one of cinema’s most infamous punchlines.
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Dench revisited the movie’s disastrous reception in her new memoir, "Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?" She wrote: “Oh God, I can hardly bear to think about it. Andrew Lloyd Webber had waited so long for the film to be made, and it squandered all of his goodwill and talent. I heard that critics were brutal, but I never saw the final cut, so I can’t judge it myself. All I can say is that nobody deliberately sets out to make a bad film or give a bad performance. Everyone does their best, puts something out into the world and hopes audiences will embrace it and join in the fun. It’s a miracle that anything — a film, play or television show — gets made at all, let alone becomes a success, because there are so many moving parts. Sometimes things simply don’t work out: the timing is wrong, the cast doesn’t click or certain elements fail to come together. But people’s intentions are usually good. There were no villains behind the making of "Cats," and even when something fails, there are always lessons to be learned.”