COVER Imelda Staunton in Flesh & Blood
Celebrated actress Imelda Staunton, starring in a gripping new ITV drama, chats about neighbours, missing her childhood home and a secret passion
Who wouldn’t like a neighbour like Mary, the character Imelda Staunton plays in Flesh and Blood. She’s always on hand to take in a delivery, dispense tea and sympathy and even pop next door with a basket of freshly baked scones. To set the scene of Flesh and Blood, Mary has lived next door to Vivien, played by Francesca Annis, and her family since before Vivien’s children, now grown-up, were born. Living on her own has meant that Mary’s had plenty of time to help Vivien out with childcare and other household duties and over the years the family have come to rely on her. Quiet and unassuming, Mary has never looked for any notice or reward – other than Vivien’s friendship.
“Good neighbours are so important,” Imelda says. “You can have neighbours who are best mates, as I do in my own life. Mary and Vivien have become even closer since Vivien became a widow 18 months earlier.”
But – and there is, of course, a ‘but’ in this darkly witty drama – it has to be said that perhaps Mary is too good a neighbour, if there is such a thing.
“I think Mary would actually like to be Vivien,” Imelda, recently announced as the new actress to play the Queen in
The Crown, goes on. “It’s a bit unhealthy. Vivien is glamorous whereas Mary is more ordinary. When a new man, Mark (played by Stephen Rea) suddenly comes into Vivien’s life, Mary isn’t happy. It’s someone getting in the way of her relationship with Vivien. While this is petty, it’s also understandable. Mary wants to say, ‘Can you just leave Vivien alone now, please and let her get on with her life?’ I think part of Mary wants Vivien to move on and be happy. But it’s like a child saying, ‘She’s my friend not yours’.”
There is a scene where, having taken in a delivery for Vivien, Mary steams open the package. Not exactly the actions of a good neighbour! “Mary has her reasons,” Imelda smiles. “She’s protective of Vivien, feels she’s one of the family and she’s also suspicious of Mark’s motives – as are Vivien’s children. While I personally think she’s overstepping the mark by steaming the parcel open and would certainly be very bothered if a neighbour did it to my mail, as far as Mary is concerned it’s absolutely the right thing to do and is completely logical. She feels she could be helping Vivien by doing this. Her relationship with Vivien is complicated – there’s affection, jealousy and bitterness.”
Complex family and friendship relationships aside, Flesh and Blood also contains a thrilling, ‘whodunnit’
element. We know from the beginning of episode one that something bad has happened to one of the characters but we’re never quite sure what and who it involves until the end. “I didn’t guess until I’d read all the scripts,” Imelda laughs. Flesh and Blood was filmed on Pevensey Bay, near Eastbourne in Sussex with Vivien and Mary living in adjoining houses right on the pebbly beach.
“It was an amazing location,” says Imelda, “and we had the most glorious weather. Literally every day was bright,
‘I was raised above a hair salon in north London. When we moved I dreamt about that home all the time because I wanted to be there’
hot sunshine. You could walk from the sea to the houses perched there on the beach.”
Little wonder then that, in the drama, Vivien’s children are so attached to the home they grew up in. Imelda (64), too, has very fond memories of her childhood home. “I was raised above a hair salon in north London. I regarded that as home. We moved when I was ten or 11 and for most of my adult life, probably until I had my own house and family, I dreamt about that house all the time because I wanted to be there. If you’re a child of a family in the Forces you move all of the time but if you’re lucky enough to have had a home that you stayed in during your formative years, you become very attached to it.”
■ Flesh and Blood starts on ITV later this month