Keeley WIFE- SWAP? IT’S ALL IN A DAY’S WORK
WIFE-SWAPPING took place on the set of a TV drama... and it wasn’t part of the script, Keeley Hawes has confessed.
She told how an actor’s real-life wife had to be brought in to take her place in one up-closeand-personal scene because of fears over coronavirus. ‘I had a scene with somebody and I had to be intimate with them,’ said Hawes, who is married to 46-yearold Succession star Matthew Macfadyen. ‘We were all going, “We can’t possibly do this!”
‘So this lovely actor’s wife came in and they dressed her and doubled her for me.
‘I’m doing this scene with this actor, and at this point where we had to have this moment I stepped to the side.
‘His wife stepped in and had this intimate moment, with me just there at the side.... then stepping back on to my mark and carrying on the scene!’
Death has played a large part in the
Line Of Duty star’s latest projects, such as It’s A Sin and Finding Alice, and now Hawes, 45, feels responsible for teaching the nation how to mourn.
‘There’s a lot of death on television and in film, but there’s very little, certainly at that time, about grief and what happens next,’ she told Rollacoaster magazine.
‘In this country certainly, we’re not very good at it – if you cry, the reaction is mostly, “Oh don’t cry!” It’s that sort of stiff upper lip, no emotion whatsoever.’
There was no stiff upper lip for her widowed character in ITV drama Finding Alice. ‘Everything just comes spilling out of her mouth,’ Hawes explained.
In Channel 4’s It’s A Sin, shes played Valerie Tozer, whow loses her son to Aids.
Describing her as a very different personality, she added: ‘Valerie Tozer is totally emotionally repressed.’ See the new issue is of Rollacoaster at rollacoaster.tv. ro