The headline of the interview "Timothy Spall: ‘Cockroaches in your mouth and a bucket of leeches – that’s when you know you’re in a Ken Russell movie" makes it sound like a cliched attack on Ken, but it is the opposite
"Ken Russell was actually very together and organised, given that he [had] a reputation of being this extraordinarily wild man. I remember coming to rehearsal and him saying: “This is where we find you dead. Here’s the art director to discuss the cockroaches coming out of your mouth.” I said: “Excuse me? The cockroaches come out of my mouth? There is no way I’m going to have cockroaches coming out of my mouth.” They ended up using a plaster cast of my face. We also had a leech wrangler with this huge bucket of leeches. Ken freaked out and tucked his jeans into his socks because he thought one was going to crawl up his leg"
The interview is by Rich Pelley in The Guardian 8 Sept 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/08/timothy-spall-reader-interview?utm_term=631b46e4ac7897869d6041121b20fd4f&utm_campaign=FilmToday&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=filmtoday_email
