A classy Edwardian sister aFrcitday
Hayley aTWell let out a sigh of relief that she hadn’t been turned into a caricature of a Clever Woman. The actress is starring as Margaret Schlegel in producer Colin Callender and the BBC’s adaptation of e.M.Forster’s 1910 novel Howards end.
It’s the story of the idealistic Schlegel sisters — Margaret (known as Meg) and Helen — and how they connect with society above and beneath them. Meg, the elder sister, has an emotional intelligence and a desire to interact with, and learn from, people in all walks of life.
atwell, 35, was struck (as was I) by how writer Kenneth lonergan and director Hettie Macdonald had refused to sex up the drama.
‘I wear virtually no make-up and her sexuality isn’t a driving part of her character,’ atwell said of Meg.
‘Usually you’re not allowed to see a brilliant woman in a TV drama — unless there are conditions,’ she explained, as we chatted between takes in the garden of one-time University Challenge host Bamber Gascoigne’s 500-year-old manor house in West Horsley, Surrey.
‘She’s not allowed to be naturally brilliant. Or it has to be a very sexual power. Or, if she’s really clever, she’ll be written to come across as a b **** . a “bossy” b **** , even. Or someone aggressive, with a gun,’ she said, carefully shaking her head so as not to dislodge her wig.
‘There’s this: “I’m clever, look at me because I dissect and destroy men . . . that’s how clever I am!” kind of thing. That’s actually not very clever. It’s cruel.’
It’s atwell’s best screen role. She finds Meg’s natural layers of self-doubt; she’s quick and clever, yet not conscious of it; she can deliver a line firmly — sharply, even — but bracketed with kindness.
atwell commands the fourpart drama, which also stars Brisbane’s Philippa Coulthard as Helen and Matthew Macfadyen as Henry Wilcox.
He is a corporate raider, outwardly tough but fragile at heart, who pursues Meg when his wife, Ruth (Julia Ormond), keeper of Howards end — the house that becomes a mystical symbol of the beauty of a fast disappearing world — dies.
The novel is a classic because we are still stuck in our class system, no matter what we’re told to the contrary.
THe working poor are represented by leonard Bast (Joseph Quinn), a clerk who yearns for culture to give him a leg up, but who may have to leave his wife Jacky (Rosalind eleazar) to achieve his aim.
Those who know the tome or saw Merchant Ivory’s 1992 film, with emma Thompson on Oscar-winning form as Meg, will know what becomes of the characters, but I won’t spoil it for those who don’t.
Coulthard was a virtual outsider when she joined the company. She had shot a Dr Who spin-off in australia and was commuting between Brisbane and la (filming a TV drama) when she was told she’d won the role of Helen: the part that helped catapult Helena Bonham Carter to fame.
‘I did feel such an outcast,’ she told me. ‘How am I here?! Because everyone is so experienced, or has been to drama school. The same drama school! everyone seems to know everyone else.’
Coulthard’s first effort at drama was a poetry class at the Bazil Grumble art centre in Queensland. She told her surgeon father and dentist mother she wanted an agent. ‘I was ten,’ she added.
luckily for the ‘outcast’, atwell put her at ease. ‘She’s a great guide, explaining the way an english set works, about going out at weekends and to be careful going clubbing.’
Interestingly, atwell’s own guide was emma Thompson. They met filming the 2008 Brideshead Revisited and have remained firm friends.
‘emma said read lots of physics books because Meg’s a smart girl. I didn’t go as far as that — I have been trying to learn some sonnets,’ atwell said. ‘But sometimes, learning my lines feels a hard enough challenge for me.’ Howards End will air on BBC1 next month.