Froggatt, Branagh channel their darker sides on new PBS dramas
Joanne Froggatt has a new role in another PBS period drama, but it’s not remotely like “Downton Abbey’s” Anna Bates.
Froggatt, praised for her portrayal of Downton lady’s maid Anna, takes on the sinister role of Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton in the two-part PBS Masterpiece drama, “Dark Angel,” which will première later this year.
Froggatt isn’t the only PBS Masterpiece star going to dark places. Kenneth Branagh discussed the fourth and final season of Masterpiece Mystery’s “Wallander” coming in May, in which his Swedish detective, Kurt Wallander, starts losing his memory and fears he may f ace the same f ate as his f ather: Alzheimer’s.
In Angel, Froggatt’s Cotton is a real-life 19th century English poisoner who is estimated to have killed more people than her better known countryman, Jack the Ripper. Cotton used arsenic and sometimes took out insurance policies on her intended victims.
When people had asked her about possible roles after “Downton,” now in its final season on PBS, “I jokingly said, ‘Something completely different, a murderer or something,’” Froggatt said. “When the script came, it was an easy decision to make.”
Cotton’s path “starts out as a story of desperation” at a time where food and resources were scarce, but she descends into “psychopathy,” Froggatt said.
She explained why Jack is more infamous than the deadly Cotton. “People couldn’t conceive that a woman was capable of this. (And) she was killing with poison where Jack the Ripper was a brutal, visceral killer.”
Froggatt, who has upcoming film roles in “A Street Cat Named Bob” and “Starfish,” said her Downton castmates were pleased with her acting opportunity and that it created an intriguing bond with Kevin Doyle, who plays Joseph Molesley.
“His next role is a serial killer. We were swapping notes on doing things,” she said. “It wasn’t just me.”
In doing research for Wallander’s three-part final season, Branagh said he didn’t have to go far to find people who have family stories of Alzheimer’s.
He said the detective would find memory loss “particularly frustrating” and Wallander’s “own particular isolationism makes things interesting if you are starting to become forgetful,” the actor and director said. In addition, the character is dealing with the “particular ways in which people dealing with dementia hide from themselves what it is or hide (it) from loved ones.”
In keeping with the tone of Wallander novelist Henning Mankell, who died last year, “We tried to be as unfussy and true (to the situation), as Kurt Wallander would be,” Branagh said. “It doesn’t wallow in Wallander’s misfortune.”
Branagh was asked if he had any thoughts about his contribution to Tom Hiddleston becoming a big movie star and, ultimately, leaving the cast of Wallander. Branagh directed 2011’s “Thor,” in which Hiddleston earned acclaim for playing Loki.
If Hiddleston had returned after starring in the Marvel films, Branagh theorized on what viewers would say: “Look! It’s Loki. He’s in southern Sweden.”