Cattrall does Christie

Sex And The City’s Kim Cattrall talks to James Rampton about her role in Prime’s Agatha Christie murder-mystery The Witness For The Prosecution.

With total global sales estimated at four billion books, Agatha Christie is by far the best-selling novelist of all time – and it is easy to see why. Her work is the perfect mix of people and plots, all wrapped inside an intriguing whodunit.

A new British adaptation of Christie’s top-selling story, The Witness For The Prosecution, captures all those elements.

Directed by the acclaimed film and television director Julian

Jarrold (The Crown, Kinky Boots, Becoming Jane, The Girl, Appropriate Adult) from a

script by Sarah Phelps (And Then There Were None, The Casual Vacancy, The Crimson Field), this gripping two-part drama is set in an atmospheric, brooding post-World War I London.

An astonishingly wealthy, glamorous widow called Emily French (Kim Cattrall) is beautiful and bored. Accustomed to getting her own way, she swans around London high society, enjoying champagne, lively nightclubs and affairs with her favourite hobby: younger men.

However, one day Emily is found brutally murdered in her sumptuous townhouse. The finger of suspicion immediately points at Leonard Vole (Billy Howle,

Cider With Rosie), a young chancer to whom the heiress bequeathed her enormous fortune.

In court, Emily French’s devoted housekeeper Janet McIntyre (Monica Dolan) is

adamant that Leonard violently killed the heiress. Leonard, though, convinces his legal team – solicitor John Mayhew (Toby Jones) and King’s Counsel, Sir Charles Carter (David Haig) – that his partner, the mysterious chorus girl Romaine (Andrea Riseborough), can prove his innocence.

Cattrall, immortalised forever as the sassy Samantha in Sex And

The City, a character she played on TV for six years and in two movies, outlines how she views her character in The Witness For The Prosecution.

“I see Emily as being incredibly idealistic especially about love, as many women of that time were,” says Cattrall. “Her world has begun to suffocate her and she dreams of having a beautiful romance with someone different to her. “So when she meets Leonard Vole, she’s looking for someone to have fun and adventures with.” The actress, who won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for Sex And The City in 2002, goes on to explain that, “For her age and her time, Emily is very much a feminist. “First of all, she goes out at night hoping to find exciting partners and new friendships. This story is set in the aftermath of the First World War when a whole generation of men have been lost. “So it’s hard to find a man anyway and most of the men that are left are either very young or much older. “When Emily meets this gorgeous, vulnerable young man, he is different from anyone around her and her interest is piqued.

“This is not simply about an older woman preying on a younger man. It’s more than just her gratification; she wants an adventure.”

Cattrall, who was born in Liverpool in the north west of England and has also starred in British dramas such as Any

Human Heart and My Boy Jack, considers why Christie still strikes such a chord around the world.

“I think she always wrote very complex characters and she did something as a writer and a playwright that kept her one step ahead of her audience.

“If you are one step ahead of your audience, then you’ve got them. When they are on the edge of their seat, sitting back thinking, ‘Who did this and why?’, then that’s when they’re engaged.”

She adds that, “We have made The Witness For The Prosecution

our own. But at the same time, we have been very faithful to this amazing writer. She created some terrific parts for women and that was not fashionable back then – so good on you, Agatha.”

The actress is particularly delighted to be involved in The Witness For The Prosecution as

she is a life-long Christie fan.

“I’ve always loved Agatha Christie and I always loved murder mysteries,” Cattrall reveals. “My mum was a big murder-mystery buff and there was always an Alfred Hitchcock or Agatha Christie in the house.

“I loved the great murder-mystery films from the 1940s and the great masters who were making them. But never did I think I would be one of Christie’s victims.”

“She created some terrific parts for women and that was not fashionable back then – so good on you, Agatha.” – Kim Cattrall