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As a new series of Liar hits our screens, Celia Walden meets Joanne Froggatt
She is bestknown as Anna in Downton Abbey, and is set to return to screens as Laura in Liar – characters who both suffered sexual assault. So how has portraying the victim affected Joanne Froggatt? She talks to Celia Walden about Me Too, turning 40 and her recent separation.
Joanne Froggatt is trying to tell me about one of the most ludicrous scripts she’s been sent over the years, but every time the Downton Abbey star nears the punchline she dissolves into laughter. ‘It was the script to a horror film,’ she manages eventually, ‘and I got to the point where the character’s fake boobs exploded and thought, “You know what? I don’t think this is for me.”’ Reliving the subsequent conversation with her agent only starts her off again: ‘I’m not sure what made them think of me for this role – but it’s a no.’
Why on earth did they consider Froggatt? As she walks into the Camden bar in which we meet – her tiny frame swamped by an All Saints greatcoat and Paige denim flares, her eyes childishly expectant beneath their arched brows – nothing about the Yorkshire-born 39-year-old screams ‘ham horror with detonating body parts’. But there are roles we will forever associate with her pale, clear-skinned face.
That face belongs to Anna Bates, Lady Mary Crawley’s salt-of-the-earth maid in Downton. It belongs to embattled English teacher Laura Nielson from ITV’S 2017 psychological thriller, Liar: both kind, stable and serene characters – until their lives are devastated by rape. And maybe that’s what made the horror writers think of Froggatt. Because yes, she can do evil – Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton in Dark Angel in 2016 – and cold, playing Joanne Lees, the girlfriend of murdered British backpacker Peter Falconio in ITV’S Murder in the Outback in 2007. But this woman also does tearful meltdowns, apoplexy and ‘why doesn’t anyone believe me?’ better than anyone I can think of. This woman is an Oscar-worthy victim.
‘It’s what I am: a victim,’ deadpans Nielson as the second series of Liar kicks off. More than nine million viewers were blindsided by the discovery that charming Dr Andrew Earlham (played by Ioan Gruffudd) had indeed drugged and raped Nielson at the end of season one. Instantly dubbed ‘a watercooler hit’, Jack and Harry Williams’ six-part drama worked on a clever ‘he said, she said’ premise that played on the ambiguities in so many sexual assault cases, and forced audiences to question their easy judgements.
But with Dr Earlham charged with the sexual assault of 19 women, and his dead body now discovered in the Kent marshes, how will the Williams brothers (who wrote the Golden Globe-nominated The Missing) be able to build a similar sense of jeopardy? Well, by dispatching a team of detectives to unpack the events leading up to Earlham’s murder (watch out for Katherine Kelly as steely DI Karen Renton) – pulling us into another guessing game. Only this time it’s about which of Earlham’s victims may have turned perpetrator – and who’s lying now.
‘The first series of Liar came out just before the Harvey Weinstein story broke – it was bizarrely timely,’ marvels Froggatt, as we attempt to unpick exactly why the thriller gripped the nation. ‘And obviously the Me Too movement was about changing perceptions of what’s acceptable and what’s not, and disrupting systemic ways of thinking.’
Tackling such a sensitive subject could have made filming gruelling, but Gruffudd tells me that the friendship the two struck up from the start was a huge help. ‘Some people you need to spend time getting to know on a set. Jo is the opposite: she’s so warm and open. It was exactly what we needed – a total contrast to what we were filming. Between scenes we would just chat away about anything and everything, so there was never any awkwardness.’
By making Laura Nielson more angry than vulnerable, and turning audiences against her from the start of the first series, the Golden Globe-winning actress believes Liar was able to illustrate a point. ‘Because Laura doesn’t behave in the way society tells us a victim should in either the first or the second series,’ she explains. ‘In life you hear people saying, “They wouldn’t do that, they wouldn’t do this,” all the time with victims. “They should be more upset,” or “more vulnerable”, but vulnerable in the right way.’
You see it all the time in high-profile cases like that of Joanne Lees, Froggatt points out. ‘People turned against her for seeming quite cold in the press conferences, but how would you expect someone who has nearly been kidnapped and doesn’t know what has happened to her boyfriend to behave?’ And today we see the same snap judgements being made about the British teenager convicted of falsely accusing 12 Israelis of gangrape in Cyprus, says Froggatt, when I bring
‘Laura doesn’t behave in the way society tells us a victim should’
up the controversial case. ‘How would you know how ashamed or intimidated you might feel – whether you should be or not? The mix and depth of emotions a woman must go through… And then to feel forced into saying one thing or another? It’s very easy to judge people. We all do it.’
Nothing could ever adequately prepare an actor to play a rape victim, but Froggatt has nevertheless done two rounds of research over the past decade: the first in preparation for her brutal rape by visiting valet Mr Green in Downton Abbey’s fourth season, and the second prior to filming the first season of Liar. And although the two assaults couldn’t have been more different, Froggatt feels that both women’s fury will have stemmed from the conviction they wouldn’t be believed.
‘I actually received a few letters from survivors of sexual assault after Anna’s rape aired, all of which said that they either didn’t feel they would be believed, or hadn’t been.’ Froggatt was already horrified by the statistics ( just 1.7 per cent of all UK rape reports lead to a charge or summons), but hearing these personal accounts made the reality harder-hitting. ‘That time hasn’t changed anything in that regard is so shocking.’
The actress considers herself ‘very lucky’ never to have encountered sexual impropriety professionally, but admits to having experienced ‘the usual thing for someone my age’ in a social capacity. ‘And isn’t that a terrible thing to say? The usual thing? But when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, it was almost socially acceptable – even a certainty – that when you went to a bar somebody would touch you inappropriately. I remember a man once grabbed me in between my legs in a bar, and I slapped him across the face.’ She shakes her head, enraged by the memory even now. ‘That just wouldn’t happen any more. And I do think Me Too has made a big difference in that way, which is a great thing.’
Growing up on the rare-breed sheep farm her parents ran on a smallholding near Whitby, North Yorkshire, Froggatt and her older brother Daniel spent most of their time playing on the farm or watching films. It got her hooked. ‘I’d ask our local newsagent to call in The Stage newspaper, and I remember looking at these adverts for drama school and thinking, “That’s it. That’s what I want to do.”’ It took Froggatt two years, from the moment she made that decision, to get herself a grant for Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead, Berkshire.
‘My parents thought I’d lose interest at first, but they’d always taught us to have a go in life, so I did.’ Just as well. Because at 16, she won the coveted role of teenage mother Zoe Tattersall in Coronation Street, which may be where the ‘northern working class, cries well’ label she got slapped with came from. And from there Froggatt worked consistently – until she struck gold with Downton Abbey.
You’d think being part of one of the most successful British TV dramas of all time would instantly propel you into the Hollywood-sphere. But Froggatt says Julian Fellowes’ global hit had ‘more of a snowball effect’ after it first aired in 2010. She won a British Independent Film Award for her first lead film role, in Brian Welsh’s In Our Name, that same year – she played a female soldier suffering from PTSD and struggling to adjust back into everyday life after a stint in Iraq. But it wasn’t until Downton broke America ‘that it pushed the show to worldwide success’, she says.
Froggatt has fond memories of the first
‘I remember a man grabbed me between my legs in a bar, and I slapped his face’
trip she and co-star Michelle Dockery took to LA for the Emmys in 2011. ‘We went as the producer and director’s plus-ones, flew economy and stayed with Michelle’s auntie, who lived out there. We swapped dresses, did our own hair and make-up and had the best week – such a blast.’ When Elizabeth Mcgovern’s nomination for her portrayal of the Countess of Grantham was read out, Froggatt remembers Dockery turning to her and whispering, ‘That must be insane!’ And although the following year both actresses were back at the Emmys with nominations of their own, ‘we still always say to each other that nothing will ever beat that first time’.
The following year Froggatt married her long-time boyfriend James Cannon – a former IT consultant – in a small, private Oxfordshire church ceremony. But when I ask about the production company, Run After It, the couple subsequently set up together, she bites her lip. ‘Well, we’ve actually been separated for a little while,’ she says quickly. ‘But the company is doing really well, and we have some projects in development…’ She can’t talk about those until they’ve got the green light, and she won’t say any more about her marriage, except: ‘I’m looking to the future. I’m just going to embrace this year and see what happens.’
I’m not surprised someone as private as Froggatt doesn’t want to detail marital problems that may (who knows?) still be resolvable. Certainly, the couple plan to continue to work together. But when we move briskly on to the prospect of turning 40, her tone moves from upbeat – ‘They say life begins at 40 and it’s certainly not going to be something I’m scared of ’ – to tinged with regret. And from someone so talented and accomplished, that is unexpected. ‘Yes, I imagined I’d be doing this, that and the other by the time I was 40,’ she muses, ‘but everyone has those thoughts. I thought I’d win an Oscar, be married with three kids and living in Hollywood. But those are dreams that you have when you’re a teenager. And then you go through the reality of life and nothing works out the way you expect, good or bad.’
I’m not sure if this is Froggatt’s version of ‘you can’t have it all’. Juggling a personal life with the demands of her industry can’t be easy? ‘I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the industry,’ she says cautiously. ‘I think work sometimes has to be a priority in everyone’s lives, and sometimes a relationship has to be a priority. If you’ve got kids then 90 per cent of the time they’re the priority. So, like everyone else, I’m always trying to find that balance. Last year, I did work incredibly hard: I went from job to job over 10 months. But the year before was quite relaxed, and I probably get more time at home than people with set hours in intensive jobs.’
Would she like to have kids, ultimately? ‘I’d like to,’ she says with aplomb. ‘I would. But you know, if it happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, I hope I’ll still feel I can live a happy and fulfilled life.’ She pauses. ‘It always interests me that men never get asked that question. And I know it’s because women have the “clock ticking” and all that, but none of my male colleagues have ever been asked it. Not once.’
It’s a gentle telling-off that I probably deserve. Women in a certain age bracket (myself included) do tend to get reduced to walking wombs – and it’s annoying. But if I were interviewing a man of that age I’d ask the same question. ‘It just interests me that we’re still asking women if they’ll be fulfilled without motherhood,’ says Froggatt. ‘Why do we still put that pressure on? And they should be allowed to say they don’t want to be a mum too. That’s their choice.’
Some would let this little schism sour the tone of the interview, but not Froggatt, who is back to her warm, jokey self in seconds, and even handing over the name of the facialist responsible for her eerily perfect skin. She’ll see Jasmina Vico in London ‘for this special mix of laser and redlight that she does’ three or four times a year. If it weren’t for her, Froggatt adds, the back and forths to Australia she was forced to make when filming biotech drama The Commons last year would have been even more punishing.
Right now it’s just Buckinghamshire Froggatt needs to get back to, and as she gathers up her coat and Mulberry holdall in an effort to beat rush hour, I remember one last question I need to ask. With ‘woke’ stars now branding the word ‘actress’ sexist, how would she like me to refer to her? ‘I’m an advocate of equality across all areas,’ she frowns. ‘But I don’t see a problem with me being female, and I don’t see femininity as a bad thing.’ In which case I may call her an actress. ‘And you know what?’ she flings back, struggling to keep a straight face again. ‘That’s just fine by me.’
Liar returns to ITV next month
‘It interests me that we still ask women if they’ll be fulfilled without motherhood’