DRAMA QUEEN UPS ANTE
Laura Carmichael went from playing an uptight aristocrat to a scheming liar, writes Siobhan Duck
AFTER years playing the competitive but buttoned-up Lady Edith Crawley (later, Edith Pelham, the 7th Marquess of Hexam), Laura Carmichael needed to go a little wild when she finished filming Downton Abbey.
Ready to take on a new challenge, the English actor found it in the shape of the lying, manipulative and baby-stealing Agatha in The Secrets She Keeps.
“I had been in America doing interviews and everyone kept asking what I wanted to do next,” she recalls. “And I said, ‘Nothing, really, except I would like to play a psychopath.’ Then I literally got off the plane, had the script in my inbox and said, ‘Oh, my god, this is so good.’”
The role has also seen Carmichael trading stunning period costumes for a far less glamorous wardrobe.
“On Downton, so much of it is about the look of everything and you really are there to showcase the work of other people in those costumes,” she explains.
“I loved coming in and feeling like [we were] keeping it very real. Nothing should look very manicured. And I think coming back for this season [of The Secrets She Keeps], I really didn’t want prison to look anything other than disgusting.”
Based on the thriller novel by Michael Robotham, The Secrets She Keeps tells the story of Agatha (Carmichael), an emotionally damaged loner who stalks Meghan (Jessica De Gouw) because she appears to have the perfect life that Agatha so desperately wants.
The second season moves beyond the outline of Robotham’s novel with Agatha now safely behind bars and Meghan attempting to pick up the pieces of her life.
It also invites viewers to reconsider who is really the victim in this story.
In some ways, it’s an allegory on the dangers of social media and the pressures women put on themselves to adhere to unobtainable standards of perfection.
It’s an idea that resonated for Carmichael, who found herself thrust into the public eye thanks to the overwhelming success of Downton Abbey.
“An extra theme [of interest] for me in the first series, particularly, was presenting Meghan in this perfect life and how we can all relate to what is actually behind that [carefully curated façade],” she says.
“What you’re presenting on your Instagram isn’t always perfect. I think you really see that with Meghan this year, that her life is unravelling. And she can’t keep that together at all.”
THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS
SEASON TWO NOW STREAMING ON PARAMOUNT+