‘ What shocked me most? The director said nothing ’
No one on set said a word when a film star put his hand up NAOMIE HARRIS’s skirt. Depressingly, the Bond star feels ‘lucky’ that this was her only brush with Hollywood sleaze. She tells Julia Llewellyn Smith how she’s faced – and conquered – a lot worse o
It may seem as if Naomie Harris has it easy. She is beautiful, smart, successful – scooping Oscar nominations as well as starring in blockbusting Bond films. But appearances can be deceptive: Naomie has fought for everything she’s achieved and that fight began when, as a child, she underwent major surgery that changed her life. ‘When I was 11 I was diagnosed with scoliosis, which is a curved spine,’ she explains. The condition worsened quickly and aged 15 she had to have surgery. ‘During the op I had a rib removed, my lung deflated, then all the muscles near my spine cut through so they could insert a metal rod all the way up my back.’ She spent a month in hospital, after which, she says, ‘I had to learn to walk again. It was a horrific experience. But on the ward, there were children who had it far worse – some would never walk again. There were tears and screaming, little kids in pain...’
This dark time taught Naomie, 45, many lessons – the most vital being to never take anything for granted. ‘Going through something so traumatic, I learned that my health is a very fragile gift that I have to constantly nurture. So at that young age, I made the decision to do everything I possibly could to maintain it. Hence I never drank, smoked or did drugs because I wouldn’t put anything toxic in my body.’
Sitting in the kitchen of her London home dressed in a jumper and jeans, Naomie is a fizzy, charismatic character with not a hint of grandeur about her.
She laughs in disbelief when I point out she’s just had the most successful year of any actor, with parts in two of 2021’s top five highest-grossing films – the Spiderman spinoff Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Bond’s No Time To Die, its release having been delayed by Covid restrictions.
‘The Bond premiere was very special,’ she smiles. ‘It felt amazing to walk the red carpet after so long and to be part of something [everyone] seemed to be celebrating. You’re offering entertainment for everybody after what’s been a pretty s*** two years.’
I’m glad she had a great night, because I’d heard that – as part of her health regime – Naomie is always in bed before 10pm. Did she make an exception for Daniel Craig? ‘No,’ she laughs. ‘I actually left the Bond premiere early because I was filming in Spain the next day. But I do occasionally stay out late, it’s an 80:20 situation – 20 per cent of the time I’m open to what life offers me, especially if I’m out with friends. But mostly I go to bed early because I love to get up at 5.30am and have that special morning time to myself, where I get loads done before anyone else is up.’
Her next role is very different to the
Bond behemoth. Swan Song, which opens simultaneously in cinemas and on Apple TV, is a quiet, moving study of a happily married father, Cameron (Mahershala Ali) facing up to his imminent death from an incurable disease. Naomie plays his wife Poppy, who’s oblivious to Cameron’s plight because, unbeknown to her, he’s arranged to have himself cloned, meaning he will be replaced by someone who looks and acts exactly like him and even shares his memories – the original Cameron watching from afar as his clone lives his life.
The concept got me thinking, not least because I’ve told my horrified family I’d like to clone our dog when his time comes. Hearing this, Naomie shrieks with laughter. ‘Maybe scientists would say cloning is a possibility but I don’t believe in it. You can clone someone physically, maybe make them sound like them. But to have the heart and soul that makes a human being – only our creator can do that.’
Naomie was brought up in a council flat in London, by her mother Lisselle Kayla, who had emigrated from Jamaica with her parents when she was a child. Naomie’s Trinidadian father Brian left before she was born and she’s only met him ‘a handful of times’. While raising Naomie as a single parent, her mother put herself through university and eventually secured a job as a scriptwriter for EastEnders. Her mum’s
‘MY HEALTH IS A VERY FRAGILE GIFT THAT I HAVE TO CONSTANTLY NURTURE’
example – of hard work and fighting for every opportunity – was instrumental to Naomie. While her schoolfriends enjoyed weekends off, she’d attend theatre school. Her sacrifices, dedication and passion for acting eventually paid off with her first role aged just nine in the BBC drama Simon & the Witch. Despite working as a child actor through much of her time at school, Naomie didn’t neglect her studies, and went to Cambridge University to do social and political science. While the party side of uni was a little overwhelming for a non-drinker, Naomie has seen the benefits of her time there, saying previously: ‘Cambridge gives you a gravitas in terms of people’s perceptions. I’m not saying this is the way things should be, but people do perceive you differently as a result of having gone there. And I think, particularly as a woman in this industry, it helps to have that. People assume, “Oh. She’s got a brain.’’’
Afterwards, she went to drama school, where she worked hard and flourished, but then came eight months she calls ‘the toughest period of my life’. After years of getting every role she auditioned for, she couldn’t find work. ‘Even Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer turned me down. I tried waitressing – no one would have me. I remember handing out flyers in my area – nobody would take them. I didn’t know what to call myself. I didn’t think I could say
“actress” when no one would employ me.’
Despite endless rejection, she didn’t give up and was eventually cast by Danny Boyle in his small-budget zombie movie 28 Days Later – a film that went on to be one of the most profitable horror films of all time. From then on, the parts snowballed. She was witch Tia Dalma in two Pirates of the Caribbean films, Winnie Mandela in the biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, before bagging the Bond gig in 2012. However, Naomie says she only began being offered leading roles after playing a crack addict in 2017’s Moonlight, which starred her Swan Song co-star Mahershala Ali. The independent film won the Best Picture Oscar and saw Naomie nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and Bafta (she was also awarded an OBE for services to acting that year). ‘It wasn’t until I did this little film, which I only spent a few days working on, that my career took off. Now the calibre of roles being sent to me is entirely different.’ While some warned her that her career would go into decline when she hit 40, she says: ‘I’ve never worked as much or been in as high demand as I am now.’
Over the course of her career Naomie has also helped contribute to the struggles of others. In the wake of #MeToo, the flood of revelations about abuse and harassment in the film industry prompted her to recall her own experience when a ‘huge, huge star’ put his hand up her skirt during an audition. ‘What was so shocking about it was the casting director was there and the director, and of course no one said anything because he was – he is – such a huge star. That was my only #MeToo incident, so I felt very lucky given how rife that behaviour was. Now things have definitely changed: I was on a project where there was a #MeToo incident and there was no hesitation… (the perpetrator) was immediately removed.’ She won’t be drawn further on the identities of the two actors.
Another battle has come with Black Lives Matter. ‘I’d hope there’s greater awareness
[of race issues] now,’ she says. ‘But obviously injustices still happen every day.’ Still, she was thrilled that Swan Song – a film that could have picked actors of any race – cast a black couple for the starring roles. ‘That’s a prime example of the changes happening.’
As my time with her comes to an end I can see that, regardless of the challenges she has
faced, Naomie is still a sensitive soul. Appalled by the recent tragic accident involving Alec Baldwin shooting dead a camerawoman with a gun that was somehow loaded, she says: ‘After that I was on the set of The Man Who Fell To Earth [her upcoming TV series] handling guns and it was terrifying.
‘I hate guns, but a lot of my roles require me to handle one. Even before this, I refused to do a stunt that involved firing a blank because even blanks can kill. I wouldn’t fire it near anybody.’
This sensitivity also means any ‘letting loose’ of her emotions happens exclusively on set. ‘I only get angry every five years – and then only because there’s been years of build-up and then there’s a huge explosion.’
Wanting to learn how to stop bottling up her rage, Naomie recently took an anger-management course. ‘I thought it would teach me to express anger in a constructive way but actually it was for people who had an inability to suppress it, so I was surrounded by extremely angry people – and one of the things I’m terrified of is people who are angry! So it was a very interesting experience,’ she laughs. ‘It’s still something I need to work on.’
Having spent her years constantly striving, she’s now had a rethink. Ever since the year and a half she spent on the Moonlight promotional circuit left her ‘totally burned out’, she’s taken long breaks between projects. After making Swan Song she spent two months in Costa Rica. Now, with The Man Who Fell To Earth just in the bag, she’s off to Peru.
Ultimately, she’d like to stay off the beaten track for ever. ‘It’s my dream to live off-grid, to be self-sufficient, with solar panels, collecting rainwater and growing all my own food.’ She’s worked with an architect to design the house she’d live in. ‘I spent years searching for the right plot of land to build it on. When I found it I was super-excited but then I got outbid. But everything happens for a reason – I’m sure I’ll find my plot. If it happens soon, I’d live there and carry on acting. If it’s a bit later I’ll just live there full-time.’ If her acting career keeps going like this, I think Naomie’s good-life dream may be on hold for quite a while.
‘I ONLY GET ANGRY EVERY FIVE YEARS. BUT THEN THERE’S A HUGE EXPLOSION’
Swan Song is available now on Apple TV+
If someone said ‘Duchess of Cambridge’ to you, what would be the first image that popped into your mind? Mine would be of a smiling woman in a red coat, with bouncy chestnut tresses worn in loose waves. Of the 745,392,041,583,610,584 photographs in existence, I’m not sure why it’s a red coat that first springs to mind, but for whatever reason, that’s the archetype. Red is her colour. So, too, are royal blue, bottle green and fuchsia, but a red coat is seared most vividly in my memory as the quintessence of Kate.
Actually, no. A red coat is the quintessence of the Duchess of Cambridge. The quintessence of Kate is something else entirely. I like to think it’s the sheer, strapless dress she modelled in a student fashion show at the University of St Andrews in 2002; the dress that, legend has it, first prompted Prince William to turn to his friend and whisper, ‘Wow, Kate’s hot!’
I have modelled in a student fashion show. I didn’t wear a sheer, strapless dress. Had anyone suggested so, I’d have run,
Duchess of dazzle, clockwise from top left: elegant in an Erdem coat, 2016; an emerald gem by Jenny Packham, 2012, and a sunny dress by the same designer, 2011; true blue in Emilia Wickstead, 2015; a regal red coat by trusty brand LK Bennett, 2011; in baby blue, 2013, and a purple power suit in September, both by Emilia Wickstead; blooming in floral Jenny Packham, 2011; finding her sparkle in more Jenny Packham, 2013 and 2021; striking in red Catherine Walker, 2019; in high-street hero Reiss, 2012; pretty in a pink Goat dress, 2014; in her iconic Alexander McQueen coat, 2020; a green goddess in Erdem, 2014, and pastel perfection in
Emilia Wickstead, 2018
screaming and traumatised, to my dorm. This is why Kate married a future king and I didn’t.
In the intervening years, reams have been written about her fashion sense, with furious conjecture about whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This misses the point. You may not like her raffia wedges, her cut of jean, her choice of shift dress, but you cannot criticise her fashion sense. Aged 20, she had the fashion sense to shuck on a see-through dress that grabbed the attention of a prince.
Whether it’s sexist to conflate wearing a see-through dress with bagsying a prince is a moot point: the fact remains Kate was far from the only undergraduate at St Andrews who’d set her cap at William – but she was the one who piqued his interest. The point being that Kate has always known how to use fashion to achieve a desired effect. It’s just that the nature of the effect has changed – greatly – along the way. Now she’s no longer seducing a prince but a picky public. If you think her LK Bennett shoes are too pedestrian, her Bretons are unimaginative and her choice of eveningwear should be more adventurous, that’s your prerogative. Style is subjective. Fashion sense is not. Fashion sense means knowing how to wear the right clothes at the right time for the right outcome. In this, Kate rarely fails.
In the 20 years since she came into the public eye, this has rarely prevented people from opining that she’s failed. Had her 19-year-old self known that her eventual destiny would be to have her clothes, footwear, hairstyle and beauty choices picked over by perennially dissatisfied vultures, perhaps she would have taken to the catwalk in a bin bag.
Take, for example, her state visit to New York in 2014. Five months pregnant and dressed in a smart coat by the British label Goat, she was greeted by a child at the Northside Center for Child Development with a scathing ‘You’re not Elsa’. Out of the mouth of babes came a pronouncement that deftly sums up the Duchess’s dilemma: what, exactly, should a princess look like?
It’s a question she’s been exploring ever since marrying Prince William in 2011. Frozen mania may have abated since 2014, but for many people – and not just children – the archetypal princess is still a pretty, slightly otherworldly creature, forever scattered with rhinestones. Throughout her 30s, the
COMPARISONS WITH DIANA WERE INEVITABLE, BUT THEY WERE ALSO UNFAIR
Above: in British label Goat during a visit to a children’s centre in New York, 2014. Right: taking centre stage at Wimbledon’s Centre Court in Emilia Wickstead – one of her favourite designers – July 2021
prevailing criticism of Kate was that she lacked sparkle: that her outfits were mumsy, dowdy, frumpy and bereft of the magic that Diana so effortlessly conveyed. While comparisons with Diana were an inevitable part of Kate’s destiny, they were also rather unfair. Diana was an icon. Anyone would suffer by being compared to her.
Diana was a rule-breaker, whose flouting of convention won her few allies within the royal family. From the very beginning, it was clear that Kate was cut from a different cloth. She has assiduously obeyed rules of protocol as if her happiness depended on it. Which it probably does. Like many first-born children, Kate is a pleaser. If her wardrobe choices lack sparkle, it’s surely because she is all too aware of how they are scrutinised for price and provenance. Whether she is attending a sporting event, a school, a church, a
Above: Kate often recycles outfits with a clever change of accessories – as shown here when she wore this Alexander McQueen gown to a Bafta event in 2011 and again for the Earthshot Prize Awards last October, switching her belt
cenotaph, an awards ceremony, a film premiere or a climate-change conference, her clothes are carefully chosen to toe a diplomatic line.
As she has grown into her public role and been accorded more royal duties by the Queen, her style has evolved to become more assured. If her early and mid-30s saw her stick somewhat doggedly to mid-market British brands such as Reiss, Boden, Whistles, Beulah, Hobbs and LK Bennett, her late 30s have seen her less stymied by price sensitivities, and more willing to experiment with colours and shapes. It’s a bit like when a person starts a new office job: she might begin wearing smart, unremarkable shift dresses and practical shoes, only to replace them with more interesting apparel as her wages, confidence and status grow.
Today, Kate attends informal engagements in dresses by designers such as Emilia Wickstead and Alexander McQueen, showing the same support of British labels as she always has, only with fewer concerns about their price tag. For state events, she will confidently wear custom-made gowns and jewels fit for the occasion. As she should. She is a duchess, after all. Only in Britain would people carp about the cost of her clothes.
Besides, Kate is fastidious about rewearing her favourite garments in a manner that makes their cost-per-wear quite reasonable, not least given the publicity they generate for the brands concerned. After some research, I realised that the reason she’s seared in my memory as wearing a red coat is because she has reworn her trusty red Catherine Walker, LK Bennett, Alexander McQueen and
Armani coats on multiple occasions. Even her evening gowns have been recycled – most recently, a pale lilac plissé dress by Alexander McQueen (left), first worn to a
Bafta event in Los Angeles in 2011, then reworn (with a different belt) for the first Earthshot Prize Awards last October. This sustainably minded way of dressing is undoubtedly something she will carry forward into her next decade.
As she celebrates her 40th birthday,
I’ve been thinking about Sheer Dress Kate, and how she was necessarily subsumed by Nice Dress Catherine. I like to think the free spirit that rocked up on a catwalk in a black bandeau bra and matching knickers still lurks beneath the Jenny Packham swag. And I would say to that creature: don’t decide that, just because you’re 40, you have to bury the girl you were. Forty is a milestone for anyone, but for women it can feel particularly charged. When I typed ‘Why is turning 40…’ into Google, it automatically generated the words ‘so depressing?’ Googling this phrase led me to Quora, and a series of threads with titles like: ‘Today I turned 40 and have been crying all morning’ and ‘What made your 40th birthday less depressing?’ The truly depressing thing?
That these threads had been initiated by female users.
The truth is that being 40 is exactly like being 39, minus the pressure of your 30s passing. That whole ‘life begins at…’ cliché is a load of tosh, and never more so than when you attempt to apply it to a duchess with three children and a job for life. As for what
AS SHE’S GROWN INTO HER ROLE, HER STYLE HAS BECOME ASSURED
we can expect Kate to wear in her 40s, I think it will evolve rather than radically change. Kate’s role forced her to adopt a smart, measured, conservative way of dressing long ago. Whatever the stereotypical ideation of your 40s looks like, she embraced it ten years prematurely.
With her favourite labels and silhouettes firmly in place (I bow to her devotion to the accentuated waist despite giving birth to three children), her 40s will likely see her experimenting with increasing confidence. A long-time fan of Alexander McQueen, she’ll likely embrace the slightly more adventurous silhouettes from designer Sarah Burton’s oeuvre, though she’ll probably still avoid any directional prints, knowing that plain colours are more suited to her public role.
She’ll continue to take her lead from the Queen and employ tailoring in strong block colours that make a powerful impact on formal visits. She’ll remain loyal to the British designers she’s loved throughout her 30s – Jenny Packham, Erdem, Emilia Wickstead – but likely add some up-and-coming ones into the mix. She’ll continue to fly the flag for British fashion, and while she would no doubt balk at the idea, the fact remains that she is
Britain’s most powerful royal influencer, as evidenced by numerous studies. Her global reach is unparalleled and has done wonders for the profiles and sales of countless brands. The Edinburgh-based handbag brand Strathberry was only launched in 2013, but Kate’s patronage has helped it grow exponentially.
Beauty-wise, she’ll continue to display that flawless skin whose hue never seems to change, be it January or July. And no, let’s not even conjecture whether she’ll have any ‘work’ done. That’s her business, but given how sprightly her parents look (mother
Carole is 66; father Michael is 72) it’s fair to say that Kate has youthful genes.
Her thick, glossy ‘princess’ hair is currently being worn as long as it has ever been. I predict a bob in her mid-40s, but that she will still be a fan of bouncy waves. To paraphrase Diana, there are three of them in their marriage: Kate, William and a pair of curling tongs.
She’ll also embrace a softer silhouette. As she relaxes into her 40s, perhaps the olive dress she chose to wear for the family’s 2021 Christmas card is a portent of what’s to come. Kate has always dressed to please: her next decade will see her also dress with pleasure, embracing fashion for its own sake, but always in a way that’s sustainable. Sustainability will become a cause even closer to her heart, and she’ll still continue to dig out favourite coats, suits and dresses from the past.
Just maybe not that dress.