Move from Downton to stacking shelves Down Under was a real thriller for Laura
Brit Laura on relishing her darker side in stalker show
PLAYING a supermarket shelf-stacker Down Under is about as far a cry as you can get from Lady Edith in Downton Abbey.
So perhaps it was no wonder Laura Carmichael, 33, best known for playing the middle daughter and unlucky-in-love Marchioness of Hexham, was hardly recognised while filming new BBC thriller The Secrets She Keeps in Australia. Well apart from one time. “I was at yoga class and someone asked me if we had gone to school together,” she said.
“I don’t really look much like Lady Edith when not in period costume.”
She looks even less like Lady E in her new project, a taut psychological thriller that starts on BBC1 on Monday.
Gone are the sumptuous clothes and stately home, replaced by poverty-stricken supermarket worker Agatha Fyfe who, as well as wearing a supermarket uniform and having her hair dark, is pregnant, meaning Laura had to wear a prosthetic belly.
Agatha tries to befriend yummy mummy Meghan Shaughnessy (Jessica De Gouw) who uses the supermarket and seems to have it all – two children with a third on the way, a beautiful house, highprofile sports presenter hubby and her own blog. Cue an envious obsession which rapidly escalates into full-blown stalking.
Of course, not is all as it seems in this thriller adapted from the novel by Michael Robotham whose setting has been changed from London to Sydney.
The series picks apart the facade of Instagram, which offers users the perfect lives of others.
Laura has an Instagram and does post photos of herself and her starry travels but she admitted, just like us, she often feels jealous at other people’s posts – despite her own success.
She said: “It’s part of that culture, what we’re all led to do now. To put out a perfect version of yourself that we know is not really true. That’s something we all live with.”
“Those pressures have always been there but it feels as if they’re ramped up because the way we share information about our lives is much more complicated now.”
Social media is often much harder for women – to look good and to adhere to certain social expectations, but to also deal with the trolls who lie in wait.
Laura said: “It does feel like it’s around a lot – it’s that Instagram world that I can 100 per cent relate to, and I am terrible at it.
“Some people can do it really well and are very authentically themselves. I worry about the wording of a caption. I don’t want to offend anyone.
“But more than ever, we’re exposed to a glossy version of how we all wish to be perceived – we have to be really careful with that.”
Laura, whose boyfriend is Downton co-star Michael C Fox, who played footman Andrew Parker, had been looking for a challenge after the cinema spin-off of the hit show last year – and she certainly found one in her new BBC series.
The actress – who had shared her desire to play a psychopath, stating “that would be really fun” – landed the script for the Australian psychological thriller last year, having spent time in Sydney with family.
“My boyfriend’s brother lives there so I had just been, which was another weird thing about this job, as when I was there, I was like, ‘God, Sydney is great. I would love to come back’, she recalled.
“So when the script came in, it felt serendipitous. I was fascinated by somebody being so obsessed with another person and by the fact that the story plays out between two pregnant women.
“It was intriguing to see how the
I loved the edgy script and was intrigued by Agatha
LAURA CARMICHAEL ON HER NEW TV SERIES
desire to be a mother could lead someone to do some dark and dangerous things.” “I loved the edgy script and I was instantly intrigued by Agatha. It felt unlike anything I had seen before. “Agatha is tough, volatile, headstrong, burdened and impulsive. To Agatha, Meghan has it all – the perfect life with the perfect family. She wants what Meghan has.” Single White Female in 1992 followed the same path of someone wanting what the other person has. But Laura reckoned her new series delves deeper. She said: “Agatha is this dark character but unlike lots of thrillers, it focuses on her emotional journey. So you understand the trauma she’s been through and what has led her to where she is...
“It felt unique to have this about two women and their desires to be mothers and the need to be the perfect mum and how that flipped into being something quite dangerous.”
Despite the series being about secrets, Laura admitted she’s terrible at keeping them.
“I’m such an open book”, she said. “I’m the worst liar. I completely am a person who feels like I need to share all of my secret.”
Something that isn’t a secret is how much of an enthusiast she is of the thriller genre.
Laura said: “I’m always drawn into them. They’re completely absorbing when they’re at their best.
“I remember watching The Killing when it first came out and I didn’t leave the house for a week, I was so absorbed.”
Laughing, Laura admitted she got totally lost in the Danish drama which starred Sofie Grabol as Inspector Sarah Lund and her now famous woollen jumper.
Laura said: “I took it very personally, like I was the one working and needed to find the killer before I left the house. “I’d see friends on the weekend and go, ‘I’ve been involved in a murder case I’m afraid, that’s why I’ve not been around’.”
Making this new series gave Laura a slight taste of the self-distancing we’d all have to do in 2020.
The Southamptonborn actress said: “I didn’t really know anyone. I could go into the workings of it at home and not have the usual distractions.
“But I would let go at the weekend. I had some great friends there.”
Now, three months of lockdown later, she is looking forward to getting back to work.
Laura said: “It feels like it will be an edging out slowly but in terms of thinking about the future, I guess for me it’s fantasising about what I’d want to do next – but with no leads yet.
“It was a joy to do something so different, so I want to do something different again next.”
Of course, like the rest of us, she’s hoping Downton creator Julian Fellowes used his time wisely to write a second film.
Laura was a doctor’s receptionist when she was invited to audition for Downton Abbey and had no idea how big the show would become when it first aired on ITV a decade ago on September 26.
She said: “Downton was the biggest audition I’d had but I thought I was going in for a tiny role and had no idea of how massive it would be. We had no idea what it would turn into and I feel very lucky to be part of it.” The Secrets She Keeps starts on Monday, BBC1 at 9pm.