I have never been a beauty so I feel no pressure to have plastic surgery
me, saying: “And disable you – and maybe he could kill you.”
Gosh. More fearsome even than feisty Mrs Patmore. Da’abath was a great support last year while Lesley was filming both the Downton movie and Beecham House.
She says: “I was back and forth to India three times, but my husband came for the last one and we went on a little holiday after that.” Lesley relished playing a “posh” character for a change.
She says: “I was surprised when this came that they would think of me. I have sort of got rather stuck in the northern working class.
“That’s what I’m known for and I’m happy with that.
“But I can do different – I think I can – that’s what is fun when you have a different avenue to follow.”
Being typecast in working-class roles is, she says, “really odd”. She says: “It isn’t what I am really, I went to boarding school, I was middle class.”
Her mother was “glamorous”, she says, and had done a little acting herself before becoming a doctor’s wife. In Beecham House, Lesley plays the mother of Brit John Beecham, played by Vanity Fair actor Tom Bateman, 30. Leo Suter, 25, plays Daniel, John’s long-lost brother.
John Beecham, a former soldier and East India Company trader, owns Beecham House. Inevitably, the show has been compared to Downton Abbey.
But Lesley says: “I slightly struggle with it. It’s a family, with servants, the costumes are out of this world, the buildings are stunning.
“But after that I don’t see anything at all. It’s a different period and country. Beecham House hasn’t really been done before. It’s a time people don’t really know about.” By coincidence,
she stars alongside Bessie Carter, 25, who is the daughter of Jim Carter, who played the butler Carson in Downton, and Imelda Staunton.
Lesley says: “She’s very like both her mum and dad. And she’s hilariously funny like her dad.”
Asked what we can expect from the Downton Abbey movie, Lesley says: “I haven’t seen it yet. There’s, cinematically, some big stuff that will look good on the big screen. It was like making the series, lovely to get back in that little groove again.”
She admits to “weeping” when she filmed the last takes for the TV series. And no wonder. Downton Abbey has changed her life.
Nowadays, she can count comedy giant Bette Midler among her acquaintances in LA.
Lesley says, casually: “I went to see her in a show, and invited her for lunch. That was just lovely.”
And these days, her chances of going out without being recognised are pretty slim.
Giggling, she tells me: “I was in New York, heavily glammed up.
“I thought I was looking pretty good, but this guy wheeled down the window and said, ‘Hey, Mrs Patmore, I love your work’.”
■ Beecham House is on ITV on Sunday, June 23, and Monday, June 24, at 9pm.
I knew I’d be happier with the right one and I am LESLEY NICOL ON MARRYING IN LATER LIFE