BECK IN ACTION
OLIVIA COOKE’S LOOKING SHARP IN ITV’S NEW VANITY FAIR ADAP…
1 Becky Sharp’S time haS come again
It’s two decades since Vanity Fair was last on TV (starring Natasha Little) and 14 years since the Reese Witherspoon movie. It’s back to the small screen with scripter Gwyneth Hughes’ (Hitchcock/ Hedren telemovie The Girl) adap, which fillets an 800-page doorstop into a seven-part drama. W.M. Thackeray’s 1848 novel follows tenacious 19-yearold orphan Becky Sharp (Olivia Cooke) as she charms and manipulates her way from poverty to the upper echelons of 19th Century society, defying conventions, class and the deeply embedded patriarchy. “She’s wonderful because she’s so imperfect,” says Cooke of a woman who refuses to be defined by her humble beginnings. “She’s weaponised all her talents to survive.”
2 olivia cooke haS come home
After wowing them across the pond in Bates Motel and Ready Player One, the Oldham-born Cooke has made a high-profile return. “If I hadn’t gone to America, where my accent didn’t matter – ‘What part of London is Manchester in?’ – I wonder if I would have been one of the leads of an ITV drama,” she says. It’s a cross-generational cast, with fellow up-and-comers Claudia Jessie as Becky’s kind-hearted confidante Amelia and Tom Bateman as Becky’s apparently perfect partner in life and love. Veteran stars, meanwhile, include Frances de la Tour as one of Becky’s patrons and Michael Palin as Thackeray himself, introducing each episode.
3 the modern toucheS: diScreet, But effective
Contemporary pop litters the soundtrack (Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’, Afterhere’s cover of ‘All Along The Watchtower’), while Cooke’s Becky breaks the fourth wall, Deadpool-style. “Becky is a maverick,” explains director James Strong (Broadchurch). “She breaks the rules, so we wanted to do that with the period piece, thinking of ways to bring you on to her side.”
4 the Set-pieceS: comic, emotional and epic
From Becky tackling a very hot curry to a moment of public disgrace for Amelia’s indebted father (Simon Russell Beale), the adaptation runs the tonal gamut. But a re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo, featuring all its young male characters and some 300 extras, took the gateau. “We put our cast in the middle of it,” says Strong, with a wince, “to try to capture what it was like to have people being blown up to the left and right of you, horses charging, cannons going off… I wanted the intimate view of the battle, as a horrific, terrifying experience.”
5 the themeS remain relevant
“Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having,” wrote Thackeray. His themes of narcissism, ambition and the pursuit of wealth and status resonate loudly in an age of selfies, social media and celebrity envy. “There’s this idea today of a curated life,” says Cooke. “Where instead of actually living in the moment, people take a photo of it. Would Becky be active on social media today? Potentially. But Becky is maybe the least vain person in the book. She can make herself really vulnerable, just to get whatever she wants. If she were alive now, she’d be the CEO of a huge company. Perhaps she’d run a film studio!” Gabriel Tate