Juliet Rylance: Playing James Norton’s lover on McMafia? It was an offer I couldn’t refuse
IT’S the gripping new drama about the criminal underworld hotly tipped to draw favourable comparisons with The Godfather.
But despite its gritty subject matter, actress Juliet Rylance has revealed her co-star James Norton is actually ‘a genuinely good person’.
Heart-throb Norton, 32, plays the son of wealthy Russian exiles with mafia connections in the mini-series McMafia – and Juliet stars as his British girlfriend.
The 38-year-old actress – step daughter of director and Wolf Hall star Mark Rylance – tells today’s You magazine she found working with Norton a ‘joy’.
She says: ‘I absolutely see why everyone fancies him, but to me he is just lovely James.
‘He does an incredible mouth trumpet, which is his party trick. But, most importantly, he is a genuinely good person, and when you have a leading man who is gracious and supportive of everyone, it’s gold.’
Juliet admits McMafia, which starts on BBC 1 tomorrow night, has echoes of The Godfather.
She says: ‘What I think McMafia shares with it is that sense of how, when someone first enters the underworld, they tell themselves they are doing it to protect their family, but then their base nature comes out and they start to enjoy it and become corrupted.’
Juliet and American actor Christian Carmago have a home amid the dramatic landscape of the Joshua Tree national park in the Mojave Desert, California.