The lady’s maid who has it made
The woman who made plainness beautiful in the hit TV series Downton Abbey tells Elizabeth Grice how her looks have kept her in work and out of trouble.
How tiny she is; neat and alert as a bird. And how steely. Joanne Froggatt’s bright, expectant stare is a little unsettling. She seems to have been born knowing her own mind and wanting to explore the contents of other people’s.
As whey-faced Anna Bates in all 52 episodes of the dear-departed television drama Downton Abbey, she was never just sweetly subservient. There was an obstinacy under her lady’s maid deference that gave the part its edge.
In the wider hoo-ha about how Downton made the names of hitherto unregarded actors, it’s generally forgotten that Froggatt’s acting career had been on an upward curve for 20 years when she joined the household of the aristocratic Crawleys.
Her trustworthy, honest and frankly dowdy character was pivotal to many of the key storylines – as it is in the new Downton Abbey film, which opened yesterday in New Zealand cinemas – and she invested the part with a dignity and finesse not normally associated with below-stairs life.
‘‘There was quite a lot of me in Anna,’’ she says. ‘‘Probably more than in most characters I’ve played. I am a very loyal person and I think I’ve got a strong moral code. I’m conscientious, I work hard, but I like to have more fun than Anna. I love my work, but I’d certainly prefer to have more than half-a-day off every fortnight.’’
It’s lunch break during rehearsals for a new play and she’s spooning soup out of a paper cup. As Anna Bates, she made plainness beautiful. As the serial killer Mary Ann Cotton in the television twoparter Dark Angel, she made it sinister.
‘‘My work has never been based on being a great beauty,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m very happy with the way I look. I’ve made a pretty good career for myself playing the girl next door, the plain Jane that people don’t expect to do something, the girl people underestimate.
‘‘I don’t have any great vanity when I’m playing a role. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest if I look horrendous. But would I ever leave the house looking like that? Over my dead body. I feel naked without a bit of foundation and mascara and my eyebrows on.’’
You can’t imagine another actress speculating so matter-of-factly about whether her perceived plainness might have protected her from sexual misconduct that others in the industry have suffered.
‘‘A certain kind of person presumes that if you’re playing a sexy character, that’s you,’’ she says. ‘‘I’ve not played characters that are deemed to be sexy. I don’t know if that’s helped. I haven’t had any personal experience with stuff I’ve been uncomfortable with in a sexual way at work.
‘‘I’ve been grabbed in a bar, grabbed on a Tube, been touched where you don’t want to be touched. But, thank God, not in a working environment.’’
Froggatt is sure of herself, proud of her track record, but grateful that opportunities in film, television and theatre keep coming. Friendly, unstarry and polite, she will chat with fans but if they overstep the mark – by taking a photograph without asking – she asks them to delete the picture, then offers to pose with them properly. ‘‘I am not an animal in a zoo. I am approachable.’’
Pragmatism rules. ‘‘If people don’t watch what I do, I don’t have a job. If you resent public attention, you have a very miserable life ahead, and what’s the point of that? You have to be grateful for the things you’ve got. Most people are lovely.’’
Froggatt is from Yorkshire, born in Scarborough and brought up near Whitby, with wild moors on one side and grey sea on the other. Her parents had a 4-hectare smallholding, raising sheep and making yoghurt and cheese from their milk. While they were working, her elder brother took her to see films, the beginning of a fascination with worlds beyond her own.
Her parents, Ann and Keith, took her acting ambition in their stride. ‘‘My dad said, ‘You’ve only got one life. You spend a lot of it at work. Try to do something you love.’ ’’
At 13, she went to stage school in Maidenhead, seven hours’ drive away. At first, she was homesick and suffered the further misery of not being understood because of her strong Yorkshire accent. Her father offered to bring her home but she stuck it out, and after a week, she ‘‘loved it’’.
At 16, she landed the role of a teenage mother in Coronation
Street and has supported herself by acting ever since. Froggatt briefly considered changing her surname to something less earthy. Then she realised that casting directors would at least remember it. ‘‘It’s not the most glamorous of surnames, but it’s where I come from and part of what I am.’’
She’s similarly protective of her accent, eroded now to a soft indeterminate northernness by her peripatetic life. ‘‘It happened quite naturally. I didn’t ever want to consciously change it because I still wanted to be me, the amalgamation of my own experiences and my own journey in life.’’
That journey included roles in the prison drama Bad Girls, Dinnerladies, A Touch of Frost, Spooks
and Robin Hood. She appeared at the Old Vic in All About my Mother and at the Royal Exchange in
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
She played the sister of Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006) and the following
year was Joanna Lees in Murder in the Outback, another dark real-life story. For her film debut as a
soldier in In Our Name (2010), she went unpaid, the only way she thought she would get to play a lead. It won her best newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards.
Then there was Anna. After receiving a Golden Globe for best supporting actress and three Emmy nominations, it was predictable that more Annas would be dangled in front of her.
‘‘I did stay away from working-class northerners for a little bit,’’ she says, drily. ‘‘Not that I’ve got anything against them, but I didn’t want to play their character all the time.
‘‘And I loved Anna. I wanted her to stand on her own. I didn’t want to do some carbon copy of her.’’
When the television cast disbanded in 2015 after four eventful years, Froggatt spoke of ‘‘an element of grieving’’. Then last year, against all logistical probability, the original actors were reunited from the four corners of the Earth to make the film. ‘‘It was so surreal. Everyone who was there at the end is there in the movie. It was like a lovely school reunion.’’
In the movie, Anna is in a good place. She and Mr Bates have a baby boy, now 18 months old. ‘‘She is passionate about helping with the running of Downton, about keeping the legacy going.’’
During Downton, Froggatt married her longtime boyfriend James Cannon, an IT boss whom she’d met in a bar ‘‘in the oldfashioned way’’.
They live in a village in Buckinghamshire and have jointly started a production company, Run After It. Cannon writes scripts. They have five television projects in development.
Though she looks much younger, Froggatt is 38, approaching the age when actresses start to worry about the dearth of substantial parts and she admits that having another string to her bow may be useful. How would the two jobs fit with family life? ‘‘If a baby comes along, a baby comes along,’’ she says. ‘‘You just make it work, don’t you, like every other woman in the world.’’
One of the next times we will see her on screen is in the second series of Liar, the television miniseries in which she was praised for her performance as Laura Neilson, a schoolteacher who believes she has been raped.
‘‘It ended up being one of those water cooler shows,’’ she says. ‘‘I care about what I do and it’s always a thrill when it goes well. Touch wood.’’
The day of actually having to look for work seems some way off.
Downton Abbey (PG) is screening now.
I’ve been grabbed in a bar, grabbed on a Tube, been touched where you don’t want to be touched. But, thank God, not in a work environment.