HOLDING COURT
The actress dons a corset for her historic role
Rachel Weisz is known for playing strong women with sass and spirit. Now the Oscar winner is taking on another powerful role in The Favourite, in which she plays Lady Sarah, a close friend of frail, unhappy Queen Anne. Rachel tells us more about the film. It’ s rare for a film to feature three lead women as complex as this. What did you make of it? It’s very unusual! What’s interesting is they’re in competition with each other, but there’s love, envy and rivalry. There’s a cliché in cinema of women being bitchy to one another and this film plays with that, but it goes way beyond it because what you discover is that there’s a real love story between the Queen and Sarah. It’s not quite
Casablanca, but there’s a real, real love there. Did you know anything about the history in this film? Nothing. I’ve heard of Queen Anne architecture, but I knew not a jot of the true history. I think what people are saying is that Anne has been misunderstood and misrepresented – possibly by male historians – but she had more nous, political savvy and strength th than has been credited to her previously. You’ d worked with Olivia Col man briefly on The Lobster. What did you make of her performance as Anne? It’s staggering. She can just walk that line between the absurd, the ridiculous and the extremely funny, and have pathos os and tragedy at the same time. She can flip you from one to another in the course of a second. It’s an extraordinary gift she has and so unique.