TUPPENCE GOES TO TINSELTOWN
TUPPENCE Middleton felt very much at home in old Hollywood, where she spent three months filming Mank, director David Fincher’s masterful homage to celebrated screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (a magnificent Gary Oldman).
each morning she’d draw back the curtains in her room at the fabled Villa Carlotta, nestled beneath the Hollywood sign, and gaze out at ‘all the landmarks we’re referencing in the film’.
Mank tells the story of Mankiewicz and his complicated collaboration with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane, which many consider one of the finest pictures ever made. Middleton portrays the writer’s long-suffering wife Sara.
Legend has it that Villa Carlotta, built in 1917, was financed by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (played by Charles Dance in the film), on whom Kane was modelled.
Sara Mankiewicz often accompanied her husband to swanky, star-studded parties at Hearst Castle, the Press baron’s palatial home on his San Simeon estate. There, she’d bump into the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Hearst’s paramour Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).
Davies was often on Middleton’s mind — not least because, at Villa Carlotta, ‘there was an old black and white photograph of Marion Davies above my toilet’. ‘every morning I’d say: “Hi, Marion!” ’ she joked.
Growing up i n Somerset, Middleton dreamt of Hollywood, even though ‘it felt so far away from West Country village life, when you’re young and want to be an actor.’
At junior school she adored elvis Presley movies. Then she became ‘intoxicated’ by Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn. Now, she marvels at her good fortune to have been part of a project celebrating the magic of the movies of the late 1930s.
I was lucky enough to see Mank on the big screen, just before the second lockdown. And it looks sensational: shot in shades of black, white and shadowy grey, and anchored by an outstanding performance from Oldman.
The action switches back and forth in time, as Fincher relates how Mankiewicz risked all — his liver, mainly; but his general health, too ... the man had his leg encased in plaster after a car accident — to write what would become Citizen Kane.
And while it’s Oldman’s film, the camera keeps drawing us back to Middleton.
There’s a moment where she’s at a Hearst soiree and her face tells us all we need to know about her relationship with her husband. ‘She was the type of woman who takes on a man like that and sticks by him,’ she said. Sara came from a relatively modest Jewish family in Chicago. ‘Then she marries this outlandish, outspoken, witty guy who’s the life and soul of the party, who drinks to excess, is hugely ambitious and lives to be social.’ She was the voice of reason ‘who brought him back down to earth,’ the 33-year-old actress told me.
Off screen, she and Oldman had fun with the other Brit actors. ‘Gary works really hard,’ she said, ‘but he’s really up for a laugh between takes. We spent a lot of time writing limericks.’
More importantly, ‘he loves a cup of tea’. And beans on toast. ‘I told him and his wife one day that I was missing beans on toast,’ Tuppence said. The next morning she woke to discover a can of Heinz baked beans outside her door.
Shooting on Mank was completed just before the first lockdown in March. Since then, Tuppence has kept busy, writing a short film — ‘a coming of age, revenge story about a 12-year-old Swedish boy’ — which she’ll direct. Ahead of Mank’s release on Netflix on December 4, she can be seen in Brandon Cronenberg’s chilling scifi thriller Possessor ( available digitally from today ). As a counterpoint to that, she’s hoping the Downt on Abbey film sequel will go ahead next year. In the last Downton movi e we saw her character Lucy (I melda Staunton played her mother) take up with Allen Leech’s Tom Branson. ‘There seems to be no middle ground,’ she sighed, from her home in London. ‘ Wholesome drama, or really disturbing sci-fi.’ Luckily Middleton can play both sides of the coin — and succeed whichever way it flips.