102 OUR FAIR LADY

This issue’s cover star Michelle Dockery tames a rearing steed, tends a snowy owl and trains a team of Samoyeds, all in the season’s sleekest couture

Since her rise to international stardom as the aristocratic heroine of Downton Abbey, Michelle Dockery has transformed herself, yet again, with challenging roles on stage and screen. As she returns to the National Theatre, she talks to Sophie Elmhirst about the legacy of Lady Mary, and what lies ahead…

All prices throughout on request, except where stated. This page: Michelle Dockery wears satin and velvet dress, Elie Saab Haute Couture. White gold and diamond ring (right hand), £10,740; white gold, ruby and diamond ring, both William & Son. Opposite: crystal-embellished gown; matching cape, both Zaeem Jamal

Taffeta dress, Valentino Haute Couture. White gold and diamond tiara, Boodles

Every day, on her way to rehearsals at the National Theatre, Michelle Dockery boards a bus near her home in north London. Dockery likes the bus. It’s better for peoplewatching, and more relaxed than the Tube. She’s never bothered by anyone, rarely even recognised. ‘I don’t think anyone cares,’ she says, as we trundle across the city after the photo-shoot for this article. ‘I don’t think they expect to see Lady Mary on a bus.’

Dockery has just spent the day posing with a menagerie of creatures – white dogs, an owl and a majestic white horse with whom she’d acted before (she remembered him first). Now, she’s back in her jeans and boots, clutching a silver-foil-wrapped parcel of cake as if it contained the secret to existence. Dockery’s a little tired and needs a sugar hit, but wired, too, after eight hours of performing for the camera in the fairy-tale eccentricity of Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham. Earlier, dressed in a floor-length gown and standing by a window in the neogothic library, she had looked rather like Lady Mary again – the severe, vulnerable, enraging and yet oddly lovable character, if anyone needs reminding, that she portrayed for six seasons in the television juggernaut Downton Abbey. Does she miss her? ‘I do, I do,’ says Dockery. ‘I loved playing her. I have genuine love for Mary.’

If you inhabit a character for that long, they become part of your life, part of yourself. As do the people you’re acting alongside. ‘Laura [Carmichael], Allen [Leech] – they’re still really good friends… We’ve all moved on to do other things, but we’ll be part of each others’ lives for ever.’ Jim Carter, who played the butler Carson, has taken to organising an annual reunion for the Downton cast to catch up and keep in touch, like school-leavers who don’t quite want to let go. Dockery says that now it’s over, she finds herself reflecting on the show more and more. ‘Just taking a step back and seeing the enormity of it,’ she says. ‘When you’re filming, everything else around it – the success of the show, the travelling, the red carpets, the press and all of that – it all sort of happens very, very fast and you’re caught up in it… We’ve all had an opportunity to take a step back and see it as a spectator – because it’s still talked about in culture.’ It certainly is. Mostly, the discussion revolves around if and when there will be a movie. ‘I just don’t think the anticipation for the film is going to go away until we do it,’ admits Dockery. ‘So it’s really just a question of time, and getting together so many actors. It’s tricky. I’m really hopeful that something will happen but maybe it’s not meant to be. We’ll see.’

Pinning down Dockery will probably be the hardest part. She’s now in possession of one of those ferocious transatlantic schedules that means she’s constantly either filming or promoting, or doing both at once, and therefore living part-time on a plane. Her projects are multiple and radically different, from each other and, most of all, from Downton. Dockery is in the midst of a reinvention, a dramatic discarding of all those pearls and long dresses, all those months and years spent sitting delicately on the edge of a sofa. As Diana in Lee Hall’s adaptation of Network at the National, she gets to play a hard-bitten, morally questionable TV executive opposite Bryan Cranston’s Howard Beale. As Letty Raines, the lead in the American series Good Behavior, she is a reckless con-artist. And in Godless, a new seven-part Netflix Western, she charges around with a gun. Lady Mary would be shocked, and probably jealous.

Perhaps naively, Dockery thought she might have a rest when Downton was over. But, she admits, she’s not very good

‘I DON’T THINK THE ANTICIPATION FOR A DOWNTON FILM IS GOING TO GO AWAY UNTIL WE DO IT. SO IT’S REALLY JUST A QUESTION OF TIME’

This page: embroidered silk dress, Ulyana Sergeenko Couture. White gold and diamond earrings, £7,500, William & Son. Opposite: crystal-embellished gown; matching cape, both Zaeem Jamal

Brocade and pearl dress, £3,995, Emilia Wickstead. Diamond and pearl ring, £2,800, Annoushka. Leather dog leads, £30 each, Tagiffany

at holidays. ‘I’m off for a week and then I want to work again,’ she says. Letty landed on her plate before they’d even finished filming the last season – the show’s producers offered it to her straight up, having seen her play a similar character years ago in the BBC show Waking the Dead. ‘Immediately you wonder, do they really think I can do it?’ says Dockery. ‘Shall I convince them that I can do an American accent before they make their minds up?’ She’s not the kind of actor who plots her next move, or strategises about the kinds of parts she should be aiming for. ‘I think there’s an assumption that we’d get typecast after Downton, but it seems to be the opposite.’ Letty is a step far outside that role. She’s often high, has frantic sex and is constantly changing appearance, accent and personality as she hoodwinks her victims. She’s also trying to make good. ‘It’s the thing that makes her extraordinary, all of her flaws and addictions,’ says Dockery, who relishes every extremity. ‘I do like to push myself. Sometimes a bit too far.’

Dockery has always liked to jump in deep. As a child, growing up with her two sisters and parents in Essex, she used to immerse herself in different characters. ‘When I first saw [Baz Luhrmann’s] Romeo + Juliet my Mum said I spent a week trying to look like Claire Danes,’ she recalls. Long white dresses, hair pulled back in that half ponytail, an expression of impending doom on her face – Dockery copied it all. She was always pretending to be someone else, trying on different guises for the hell of it. ‘I used to lie,’ she says now, smiling at her antics. ‘We’d be at a party with my Mum and Dad’s friends and I would introduce myself to other kids and say, “Hello, I’m Elizabeth.”’

Dockery came of age in the Nineties, and duly wore her share of ‘Doc Martens, long skirts, Alanis Morissette hair’. She’d go to Camden Market on a Saturday, wander around trying to look cool and then go home again, plugged in the whole time to her Walkman listening to songs she’d recorded from the radio. It all seems absurdly remote, a hazy and innocent pre-internet age. As does the idea of Dockery in her regular Essex haunt, a club called Hollywood, which she went to religiously every Monday for its grunge and heavy-metal night. Grunge and heavy metal? Dockery nods. ‘Slipknot. And Green Day,’ she remembers fondly. ‘People would mosh and stuff. I still like Metallica!’

Music plays a huge role in her life. For every part she undertakes, Dockery puts together a playlist of songs that help her get into character. One of Letty’s theme tunes is ‘Drink to Get Drunk’ by Sander van Doorn (‘That’s just Letty’). Godless led her to bluegrass and country; and for Diana in Network she listens to a bit of Dolly Parton and James Brown (also ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’ by Ian Dury & the Blockheads). She’s writing her own stuff too – songs she’s been working on for years, which might even make their way out into the world one day, though she’s coy about the details of this new venture. But you can tell she’s excited from the grin on her face. ‘What I’d like to do is start gigging again,’ she says. ‘A few years ago I started doing some gigs and some jazz, but now I’m broadening

This page: organza dress, £7,300, Alberta Ferretti Limited Edition. Pearl and diamond earrings, David Morris. Platinum and diamond ring, £13,200, Boodles. Opposite: velvet and tulle gown; matching cape, both Elie Saab Haute Couture. Leather boots, £800, Stuart Weitzman

Satin gown, Gaultier Paris. Platinum, white gold and diamond tiara, Chaumet. See Stockists for details. Hair by Earl Simms at Caren, using Hair by Sam Mcknight. Make-up by Sharon Dowsett at CLM Hair and Make-up, using Chanel. Manicure by Ami Streets at LMC Worldwide, using Dior. Set design by Matthew Duguid. Flower design by Worm London. Stylist’s assistant: Rosie Arkell-palmer. Layla, Kyia, Kika and Anja the Samoyed dogs, and Dexter the owl courtesy of Animals Work. Caspian the horse courtesy of AB Film Horses. Photographed on location at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham (www. strawberryhill house.org)

it a little bit. I don’t want to confine myself to one musical genre.’ She pauses, then deadpans. ‘It’s hard-core rap.’ Cackles. ‘That would be funny wouldn’t it? Lady Mary, rapping.’

Dockery is protective of her private life too – there are places, understandably, where we can’t go in our conversation. Two years ago, her fiancé John Dineen died of cancer. She never discusses the loss, and there’s a sense in the aftermath of such a tragic event that she has thrown herself ever more into her work, barely stopping between jobs. ‘It’s like a relaxed state, I feel my most comfortable when I’m acting,’ she says. She likes the adventure of it, the constant shift of environment. In between filming Good Behavior in North Carolina and Godless in New Mexico she travelled around Arizona and Colorado. ‘As much as I love London, I’m not a home bird,’ she says. ‘I do like moving around. I enjoy meeting a new gang of people. That’s another thing that’s great about acting – you have these new families. And there are some people that you keep. From every job I’ve done there’s someone I’ve become really close to.’ But then comes the poignant part, when the filming is over. ‘What you get very good at is saying goodbye,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘In the beginning when I was younger I was probably a bit more sentimental about having to move on but you get used to it.’

As she’s gained experience – Dockery is now 35 – she’s also become sanguine about the unpredictability of the profession. She still fully anticipates a time when she’ll be out of work, and is quick to express her gratitude for the fact this hasn’t happened yet. Her success is hard-won, role following role when she started out, the break of Downton not happening until she was in her late twenties. ‘In your twenties as a young actress, you have this sort of impatience,’ she says. ‘When’s it my turn? Looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Had I come out of drama school and had a massive movie career immediately, I’m not sure I’d have dealt with it that well… You have to get used to that not knowing.’

Acting has been her life, but it’s not necessarily all she wants to do in the future. There’s music, but she’d also like to try her hand at directing. ‘I think it comes down to being on a set every day for seven months for these few years,’ she explains. ‘I’ve really started to learn a lot about production… I’d also enjoy not being on camera.’ Really? Dockery always creates the impression of performance being hardwired into her system, a born showwoman. In conversation she flips from accent to accent, song to joke. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I think I’d enjoy that process, being on the other side. I’ve loved watching moments in Downton or Good Behavior when a director brings something out of another actor. The feeling of working out the tone of the scene, and then getting to this place where you didn’t expect the performance to come out in this way. I’d really enjoy it.’

From what she describes about her life off-screen, she’s certainly got a knack for marshalling people into action. While making Godless, Dockery and her fellow actresses regularly colonised a bar in Santa Fe, got to know the manager who – evidently charmed – kept the place open for them on the weekends. ‘And I would take over the Djing,’ she says, laughing. This is standard Dockery practice. ‘My idea of the best night out is just dancing,’ she says. She’s deeply serious about it, too. ‘Have a quick dinner and then dance for four hours. I get really impatient. If I’m on a night out and we don’t dance I get really disappointed.’ Even if they make it to the club, she’s unstoppable. ‘I can sometimes get irritated by DJS who aren’t playing a good set. I just want to get up there! I was at something recently and I was bugging the DJ and saying, “Play Beyoncé!” I think he got annoyed with me in the end. He was like, “Just let me do my job!”’

For now, Dockery has her own job to get on with it – or multiple jobs, as she takes to stage and screen simultaneously. Being back in London, back on the bus and back at the National feels like a return home. She was last there in 2009 in a production of Burnt by the Sun – but she still knows her way around backstage, the names and faces of people working behind the scenes. Is she anxious about the exposure of the theatre after the more protected environment of television? ‘It’s the same for me,’ she says. ‘Before you do it you have these nerves about how it’s going to be.’ For someone who’s been acting for so long, and is now in demand all over the place, she still lacks a degree of self-assurance. A part comes along and her agents tell her it’s perfect for her. ‘And I say, is it? I don’t know! Sometimes I feel people on the outside are a step ahead.’ Either way, Dockery’s not about to slow down. ‘It’s my lifeblood,’ she says. ‘l’ll think, “After this part I’m going to have a month off.” It takes me a week, and I’m like, “What’s next?”’ ‘Network’ is at the Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre (www. nationaltheatre.org.uk) until 24 March 2018. ‘Godless’ will air on Netflix from 22 November.

SHE ALWAYS CREATES THE IMPRESSION OF PERFORMANCE BEING HARD-WIRED INTO HER SYSTEM, A BORN SHOWWOMAN