Phyllis Logan’s run to the Alps from Downton
The actress who stars as Mrs Hughes tells Simon Button about the film version and a new role
RETURNING downstairs at Downton Abbey for the film version of the beloved ITV drama has been a joy for Phyllis Logan and, despite a three-year hiatus, she found it easy slipping back into the character of housekeeper Mrs Hughes.
“The minute I donned my corset I was back in 1927,” she says, letting slip that Julian Fellowes’s movie is set a couple of years after the TV series ended. But that’s all she’s at liberty to say since plot details are as fiercely guarded as the Crawley family’s honour. “But it’s very much how people know and remember Downton,” Phyllis teases. “It’s the same characters, the same house, with some new visitors coming in. And of course chaos ensues, only on a bigger scale because it’s a film.”
Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith, Joanne Froggatt and Jim Carter are among those reprising their roles in the movie, due out next September.
“It has been wonderful working on it, although a bit short-lived because when we did a series it took six months and this has been just a fraction of that.”
With the film wrapped, the 62-year-old actress is now playing American novelist Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented Mr Ripley, in the stage thriller Switzerland.
Logan went straight into the Downton movie after playing Highsmith in Bath and is now playing the writer again in the West
End. Does she enjoy flying so close to the wire?
“Not really,” she says in a gentle Scottish burr that suggests it’s not a major hassle. “I would have liked a slight gap between them but, of course, it’s better to be working.”
Her co-star in the two-hander is Calum Finlay who plays a young emissary from Highsmith’s publishers who journeys to the Swiss Alps to try to talk the ailing American novelist into penning one more Tom
Ripley tale.
Phyllis was drawn to playing the “mean and horrible” writer because “she doesn’t give a flying whatsit about what other people think about her. As an actress it’s all about giving it welly and going for it without giving a damn what the audience might think of you.”
Highsmith was a rare female voice in the thriller genre. “Yet she managed to transcend that and she had a great ability to get into the psyche of human beings,” says Logan.
She was also obsessed with snails. “She used to take live snails in her handbag when she went out to dinner – not, I must add, to have them cooked. She was eccentric and she did have a nasty streak but I think that was born out of feeling rejected in her life from her childhood onwards.
“She famously revealed that her mother tried to abort her by drinking drain cleaner which is not a very nice thing for your mother to tell you.”
Growing up in Paisley near Glasgow, Logan had a much happier childhood. After graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy the butler Carson, Logan was thrilled when Carter’s wife Imelda Staunton was cast in the film.
She’s not permitted to say who Staunton plays but raves: “They’re such a lovely couple, she’s such a brilliant actress and it’s a feather in our cap having someone of that stature coming into it, although Jim laughs that they’re trying to save on taxis as they can both travel in together.”
Logan also played a super-powered alien in last weekend’s Doctor Who series finale. “I was thrilled,” she says. “To be part of the iconic first woman Doctor Who season is brilliant and Jodie Whittaker is fantastic.”
AS WITH Mrs Hughes, the actress felt she “hadn’t quite had enough of Patricia” so she’s excited about revisiting Switzerland even if she only gets Christmas Day off. She’ll be spending it at home in Chiswick, west London, with her actor husband Kevin McNally whom she married in 2011 after 17 years together, and their 22-year-old son David who has just finished university.
Being married to a fellow actor is a boon. “I can’t imagine what it would be like not being married to an actor. We know all about juggling schedules and it’s nice to be able to go over lines with each other. The show in particular has been a big learn and he has been a great help.”
McNally guested on Downton Abbey as miserable misogynist Horace Bryant. “Of course he’s nothing like that in real life,” Logan laughs, “but I was miffed when they didn’t tell me they were offering him a part.”
She laughs again. “But it was great fun. We got to travel to the set together and as I said to him it was like Bring Your Husband To Work Day.”
Switzerland is at the Ambassadors Theatre, London, until January 5.