Незначительные спойлеры к финалу. Подтверждение, что будет 3 сезон, и Изобел появится и в нем.
Downton Abbey's Penelope Wilton on life and lossPenelope Wilton reveals the heartache behind her success – and the joy and tragedy in the final episode of Downton Abbey.
As beginnings go, this one does not augur well. “I find talking about acting very boring, having to come out with platitudes about how terribly nice everyone is,” Penelope Wilton says firmly. “I would much rather just do it.”
While making this declaration of war on anyone who might wish to probe her views on her professional, let alone her private, life she flashes me a smile well-known to viewers of Downton Abbey. The mouth is wide and friendly, but it reveals a full set of teeth, giving the impression of a vulnerable, but determined, woman. As Isobel Crawley, mother of Matthew, her expressive face has frequently been called upon to show hidden mettle, often when crossing swords – or is it raised eyebrows? – with Dame Maggie Smith, who plays the Dowager Countess of Grantham.
читать дальшеIn the first series we saw her being patronised as the middle-class cousin whose son, by fluke, stands to inherit the dukedom. Initially, she appeared the embodiment of the modern professional woman in the midst of ladies too well bred to dirty their hands. But, in this autumn’s second series, she has been less sympathetic – frankly rather overbearing – in her clashes over Downton’s new role as a convalescent home.
A genuine smile of delight crosses Wilton’s face as I admit to sometimes disliking Mrs Crawley. Several people have come up to her and said something similar. It is proof, in her eyes, that she is doing her job well, because her character, like a real person, changes with circumstances. “People in distress behave in a stressful way,” she says. “They aren’t all sweetness and light. They don’t behave well when they are unhappy. That’s just what I’ve observed. And it makes for a much more interesting story than everyone turning into saints or villains.”
The “just what I’ve observed” is typical of Wilton’s defences. Her 65 years have been fraught with personal difficulties as well as every actor’s besetting nightmare: “people not wanting you”. But, whenever first-hand experience creeps into the conversation, she shies away like a frightened horse. There are aspects of her past which she finds uncomfortable to revisit.
Her flamboyant mother came from a theatrical family but was not an easy person. Her father, a barrister, was troubled, too. “He was captured in Africa and was a prisoner of war in Italy, but never spoke of it.” The second of three daughters, born in Scarborough the year after his return, Wilton’s convent boarding school in Surrey didn’t educate her so much as equip her with old-school manners with which to make a suitable marriage. Occasionally, she sounds faintly quaint when referring to London as “town” or to her late sister-in-law, the actress Anna Massey, as “a familiar” rather than a friend. But the politeness with which she pleads vulnerability as she veers away from the subject of loss would make the toughest questioner desist.
It comes up, of course, because Matthew Crawley, her son in Downton Abbey, returned from the First World War with a spinal injury. His legs, doctors said, are not the only bit of him destined not to work again, but now he seems to be getting better. Will it be sustained? Sunday’s final episode in the series offers – of course – “joy, heartache and tragedy”.
Whichever of those applies to Wilton’s on-screen son, she will pull off the requisite emotion, as she did magnificently in the episode when she returned from France (in fact, Wilton had time off for a stage role) to find her only child a shattered wreck. Without a line, and almost without moving a muscle, she conveyed such stoicism on first seeing him that it brought a tear to my eye. Recalling the death of a hamster (as Hugh Grant once said he did in order to cry) would not generate a face like that. “I’ve never lost a grown-up child, but I have known loss. I had…” she begins, then stops herself, so I shall briefly fill in.
During her first marriage, to Daniel Massey, she had a son born at 31 weeks who died. Alice, their second child, was born at 32 weeks weighing just 2lbs, but survived. Further attempts to have another child with Massey, and with her second husband, Ian Holm, failed. The heartbreak of not having the family that she longed for is far behind her now, as are her two marriages to actors 14 and 16 years older than herself – father figures, perhaps. Both had psychological problems: Massey was depressive; Holm suffered acute stage fright. On top of that, she had to deal with Massey marrying her younger sister after they divorced in 1984. Most recently she was devastated by the death of Anna Massey, whom she had known for nearly 40 years.
Her career, however, appears to have been one long discreet triumph from the moment she left drama school, although she says there was a thin patch “when I moved from daughter to mother”. In the Eighties, she became known for the television series Ever Decreasing Circles, with Richard Briers. Since then, her roll-call stretches for pages, and includes everything from The Borrowers and Shaun of the Dead, to Hamlet, Calendar Girls and Doctor Who. She particularly loves the stage, even if it means braving the walk home from Ladbroke Grove station at night: “It requires you to have an understanding of language.”
Certainly her diction is as immaculate as her appearance – black trousers and jumper, long gold chain, neatly arranged silvery hair, discreet make-up. As Isobel Crawley, she is a worthy opponent for Maggie Smith who, as the Dowager Countess, can make “Good morning” sound like a withering put-down. Off set, she says, they get on extremely well. Indeed, there’s a YouTube film of the two of them in which Wilton says that Smith was her childhood heroine, her acting role model, while the grande dame looks tearful and says how “humbled” she is by the admission.
“Maggie’s not at all grand,” explains Wilton. “She’s heaven. She’s very funny and has a good take on things. We just did a film together, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a Deborah Moggach story filmed in India this time last year. Judi Dench was on the film, too, and introduced us to the game Bananagram. She’s extremely good at it.”
As a dyslexic who didn’t learn to read until her later teens, Wilton, I imagine, was a disaster at the word game, but spelling is no longer a problem. “Maggie and I talk about the books we’ve been reading, but on Downton we are all so busy with hair and make-up that there’s little time off. I talk to everyone else, too, of course; so does she. Very few of us are like the characters we play. Michelle Dockery [Lady Mary] is not at all cold and haughty. I’m not bossy.”
Perhaps that’s because she’s going through a “happy stage”. As well she might be. Downton Abbey has turned her from an actor admired by the cognoscenti into a household name who can afford to pick and choose. “Of course it may mean that no one wishes to employ me again,” she says, unconvincingly. Even better news: this Saturday her daughter Alice, 32, who works on theatre projects, is marrying Elliott Hall, a Canadian novelist. “And that’s all I really care about.”
For the rest of us, who also care about what’s happening in Downton Abbey, I can reveal one secret. Isobel Crawley is unlikely to succumb to the flu epidemic in this weekend’s episode. Nor is she likely to be murdered by the Dowager Duchess. Penelope Wilton is turning down other work for next year. That must mean she’s in series three.
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/downton-...
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03.11.2011 в 15:22Чудесная новость! Очень надеялась, что третий все-таки будет.
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03.11.2011 в 16:03Собственно контракта еще нет. Пару недель назад Феллоуз и канал делали всякие заявления, из которых можно понять, что Феллоуз изначально представлял себе историю на 3 сезона. А канал, судя по всему хочет больше, чем три, так как рейтинги очень высокие, и пока они не договорились.
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03.11.2011 в 18:21ну, буду держать кулачки!
Феллоуз изначально представлял себе историю на 3 сезона.
ага, уже где-то в Вашем блоге увидела информацию.