What Demelza did next: Hollywood and beyond
Post-poldark, Eleanor Tomlinson has the worlds of fashion and film in her sights, finds Caroline Leaper
When filming wraps on the biggest role of your career to date, what’s a young actress to do next? For Eleanor Tomlinson, 26, this question became a loaded one when she filmed the final episodes of the hit BBC drama Poldark last month. She says she felt “energised” to start fighting for a new job.
“There were lots of tears; it was very sad, but also exciting,” she says of letting go of Demelza, the on-screen wife of Captain Ross Poldark, played by pin-up in period dress Aidan Turner (whose topless scything dominated headlines). “It’s opened so many doors for me as an actress. Trying different things now will be liberating.”
Less than two weeks after filming completed in Bristol, and a week after our interview, Tomlinson flew to Los Angeles in pursuit of auditions. She’s currently spending a month there to see how she’ll fare on the Hollywood circuit, a classic move for a British television star with hopes of finding something “more” in America. I wonder whether, for her, it will live up to expectations.
Tomlinson is quirky.
She’s sweet and incredibly well-read (her reading list for the plane journey alone spanned A Room With a View to Becoming), fiercely private to the point where she admits to only having a few friends, and she often says things that seem quite sheltered – for example, she tells me that she’s just discovered Net-a-porter, one of the world’s biggest shopping websites.
Her parents are both entertainers; her father is Malcolm Tomlinson, the Emmerdale actor, and her mother is Judith Hibbert, a cabaret and pantomime performer. Tomlinson has grown up around thesps and storytellers, and made her television debut aged 12. She is refreshingly honest about her ambitions: the kind of unfaltering hope that could be taken one of two ways in La La Land. “What I do next has to be the right project,” she enthuses. “It has to be a step up, not sideways. It’s very important that the next job is a powerful performance. I’m very passionate about it being the right thing, because I’m lucky enough to have this amazing springboard now.” Confidence is something that Tomlinson found via Poldark. The last time I interviewed her she was 21, blonde, wearing Ugg boots and about to star in a television adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley. What a difference five years – and a great dye job – has made.
“I’m going to stay ginge,” she smiles of the signature Demelza hair. “I’ve established myself as a redhead now, I could never be quite as strong as a blonde. And who cares if it’s not natural?” About a year ago she hired Rebecca Corbin-murray, the stylist who specialises in turning British breakout talents (Lily James, Jenna Coleman, Emma Watson) into glossy global stars. Working with Corbin-murray will have undoubtedly helped Tomlinson to secure her ambassadorship with Radley, the British handbag brand for which she has starred in campaigns and curated style edits, the latest of which launches on April 1. “I can’t believe there is a bag named after me,” she grins. “I never thought I’d get to do things like this alongside my job.”
Personal branding for an actress these days is integral to career trajectory. Tomlinson admits that it’s something she wanted help with, and Corbin-murray’s guidance has seen her transform her red carpet repertoire of late. Chanel, Ralph & Russo and JW Anderson are all now names on her radar and in her wardrobe. “She takes me out of my comfort zone in the best way possible,” Tomlinson says. “She says, ‘I know that you’d go for that, because you’re playing safe, but I think you should go for this’.” You’ll be amused to know that, underneath the adopted glitz, she frequently wears her Demelza corset. “I’ve kept it as a memento of the job,” she laughs. “It’s actually a modern corset, so it’s very useful. I’ve worn it on the red carpet at the British Fashion Awards under my JW Anderson chain mail dress.”
The irony that the corset has encroached on her personal wardrobe isn’t lost on Tomlinson. It is almost symbolic of a trend in her career; her biggest roles to date have been period dramas and this year, as well as 18thcentury Poldark, we’ll see her star opposite Rafe Spall in the BBC’S The War of the Worlds set in the Edwardian era. She describes working with Keira Knightley, reigning poster girl for the genre, on the recent film adaptation of Colette as “surreal”. “I love period drama, but I am looking forward to doing something modern,” she admits.
Tomlinson is ready, she says, to be a modern leading lady. And to be paid as one. She started a small fire during the last season of Poldark when she admitted that she didn’t know if there was a gender pay gap on the show.
“I still don’t know,” she says now. “But Aidan is the titular character in Poldark, and I am Mrs Poldark, I understand that. The debate continues, but I am very happy with my deal. When I started out I was not an unknown actress, but I certainly didn’t have the following that I have now.”
You can bet that she will be going into future negotiations with a different attitude. Being on a hit BBC show “has given me the confidence that, when I walk into a room, I’m no longer the unknown actress. That’s really nice in an industry that’s so competitive, to be able to walk in and be seen and not be belittled. I think back to myself as a really young girl and how terrified I was of auditions. It’s so cut-throat and mean: you get calls saying, ‘they don’t want you’. Even that terminology [hurts], to be told that about yourself. My parents always picked me up.”
Tomlinson is still a homebody. But her ideas about what’s next for her are big, and I suspect she might just be determined enough to realise them.
“Now if I get an audition I’m excited,” she says. “I pity my agents. ‘You didn’t get the job, they don’t want you’. I don’t care, call them again! Confidence comes with age and experience. There’s not a lot, I feel, that I haven’t seen now on Poldark.i think I’ve become the actress I want to be.”
Phase two of Eleanor Tomlinson’s collaboration with Radley launches on April 1. Phase one is available to buy now at radley.co.uk
‘I’ve established myself as a redhead, I could never be quite as strong as a blonde’