Anna’s going coconuts as she takes to the stage
ANNA GuNN leapt up with lightning speed and sliced her arm through the air, in one fluid motion, as if parrying an opponent. It was not some kind of martial arts move — the actress was, in fact, demonstrating how to split open a coconut; a skill she will be needing when she opens in Tennessee Williams’s The Night Of The Iguana at the Noel Coward Theatre this summer. Gunn, who won acclaim and major awards for her seminal television roles — Skyler White in Breaking Bad, and Martha Bullock in Deadwood — laughed and said: ‘I really have to get on with my machete training . . . Anna Gunn with a machete could be dangerous.’ It was clear from that little display of physical dexterity, in the middle of the lounge at the Chateau Marmont hotel in hollywood, that Gunn has a flair for the theatrical. In fact, she’s a top-flight thespian who has acted on and off Broadway and in Los Angeles, where she has often trodden the boards. She once played Isabella in a production of Measure For Measure there, back in 1999, for the late Peter hall. The director told his cast not to be intimidated by Shakespeare, Gunn recalled, telling them (Bard purists might want to look away now) that their accents were ‘much more naturally the way Shakespeare intended the verse to be spoken’. The cutlass action at the Chateau had to do with Anna’s upcoming role: she’s playing Maxine Faulk, the ‘affable and rapaciously lusty’ proprietor of the Costa Verde hotel, set atop a jungle-covered hill in a remote part of Mexico, in Williams’s 1961 drama, which many regard as his last great play. Maxine makes rum cocos for her guests; and needs a big blade to whack coconuts. The production, which starts previews at the Noel Coward on July 6, will be directed by James Macdonald. In addition to Anna, it stars Clive Owen as Reverend Shannon, a defrocked episcopal minister, and Lia Williams as hannah, a spinster of no particular parish, who push es her wheelchair imprisoned 97- year-old grandfather( Julian G lover) here, there and everywhere. It is Gunn’s professional London debut. Professional, because when she was 19, she did a summer drama course over here. After watching a season of plays in London and Stratford featuring the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton and Greta Scacchi, she was hooked. Maria Aitken, the acting teacher and director, wrote her a letter of introduction that landed her a key role in The Beggar’s Opera in Chicago. Gunn still has the letter, and knows its contents off by heart. Although celebrated for her screen work, theatre is her first love. And Maxine in The Night Of The Iguana is a juicy role. I confess, I didn’t see her in the part which Bette Davis originated on Broadway — and Gunn agreed that ‘normally, people would think of me as hannah’. But she’s hooked on Maxine now, and is in the process of creating a playlist for her (she’s thinking Nina Simone, and Billie holiday) — something she likes to do for all her characters. She sees the play as a ‘ beautiful story of redemption, forgiveness and grace’.
‘You’ve got this triangle of Shannon, hannah and Maxine,’ she explains. The women offer different paths to Shannon, a man struggling with a weakness for booze and under-age girls.
ONThIS particular night, there are German guests and a bus load of schoolgirls. ‘ To be a woman on her own in the Forties, running a place like that,’ Gunn muses.
‘ I’ve been to Mismaloya [ the Mexican cove where the film version was shot]. You can still only get there by boat. It’s still remote. And Maxine runs everything on her own. She has helpers, but she’s running it.’
I mention the powerful personal essay she wrote in 2013 for the New York Times, about the indecent level of abuse Gunn suffered on social media, in print and on TV, after the illogical hatred of Skyler in Breaking Bad spilled over into a loathing for her as a person.
‘It’s the double standard thing,’ she told me. ‘You’ve got this guy Walter White, who’s doing horrible things. No matter what Walt did, people kept on going “Yay!”
‘But that wife is such a nag, because she keeps telling him not to do these terrible things. he’s allowed. She’s not. I was being told: “You be quiet!” ’ Looking at The Night Of The Iguana through a 21st- century prism, it’s interesting to see how the Rev Shannon perceives Maxine as a woman. ‘he makes digs at her,’ Gunn said, ‘ and it’s what we’ve been talking about.’
She acknowledged that tremendous progress has been made, in terms of the treatment of women, in the past couple of years. ‘Awareness is the first step,’ she said.
She gave me an example. When someone’s coming to put a mic on her, on set, she tries to make them comfortable.
‘You might have a bit of joking. Like: “It’s fine — just get on in there!” Meaning: put the mic in my shirt — I’m giving you permission.
‘But the person will suddenly look up at you and go “Argh!”
‘And I find everybody saying: “Is this OK? Are we all right?”
‘This isn’t a bad thing. What we’re asking is: “What is OK, in the way I talk to you?” ’
‘It will calm down, eventually,’ she predicts.
her daughters — emma, 18, and eila, 12 — will be on summer holidays during some of her time at the Noel Coward, and will pop over to visit her in London.
As Gunn and I made our way out of the Chateau Marmont, we were back to coconuts, and tackling them on stage. ‘Maybe don’t sit in the front row,’ she advises.