Glenda Jackson stars in Elizabeth is Missing
After more than 25 years away from our screens, Glenda Jackson tells TV Times about the role that tempted her back
After making her professional stage debut in 1957, Glenda Jackson went on to become widely regarded as one of the finest actors of her generation.
Then, in 1992, the double Oscar-winner made a muchpublicised career change, becoming a Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, a job she did for the next 23 years.
After standing down from Parliament in 2015, it was clearly going to take something incredibly special to coax this living legend back on to our screens after over 25 years away, and BBC1’S deeply moving drama Elizabeth is
Missing is just that project.
The powerful one-off, based on Emma Healey’s bestselling debut novel of the same name, sees Glenda play Maud, a woman with dementia who becomes concerned when her best friend Elizabeth (played by Eastenders star Maggie Steed) suddenly disappears without a trace.
As Maud desperately tries to find Elizabeth, her condition worsens – to the anxiety of her daughter Helen (The Virtues’ Helen Behan) – and she becomes increasingly haunted by flashbacks to when her older sister Sukey (Gentleman Jack’s Sophie Rundle) also inexplicably vanished in the late 1940s.
Can Maud solve both mysteries despite her growing confusion?
Here, Glenda, 83, joins TV Times for an exclusive interview, where she reveals why she was so keen to tackle this complex role…
You made an acclaimed stage comeback in a 2016 production of King Lear. But what was it about Elizabeth is Missing that made you want return to the small screen? The book is just remarkable. We met a doctor from Dementia UK and she said it’s one of the most accurate representations of Alzheimer’s she has read. It was fascinating to be part of that, because this is what’s facing us all. We’re looking at a society in which people are living much longer. And the care for them isn’t there in proportion to the need. So I just thought it was up to the minute and so human.
Tell us about Maud and her quest to find Elizabeth…
Well, it traces back to Sukey’s disappearance. There are things in all our lives that are major for us at the time. But we still live on. Sukey going hasn’t necessarily informed all her life up to this point. But everything is exacerbated by the dementia. It releases things – and it’s something over which Maud has no control.
How did you prepare to play someone with this disease?
Well, the book was immensely helpful, the script was very good and I didn’t have to worry about being old because I am! Also, when I was an MP, I visited old people’s homes and day centres, so it is something I’ve seen first-hand. One of the most startling things for me was that the individual with dementia frequently didn’t recognise their own family and, even more terrible, those family members didn’t recognise them because the personality changes were enormous. I asked the doctor we met why people who have been mild all their lives like Maud suddenly become ferociously angry or aggressive. She said that, essentially, it’s frustration. I understood that very clearly.
Do you hope Elizabeth is Missing will enlighten people as to what it’s really like to live with dementia?
What I would hope is that the need – which society is facing now, and will increasingly face – will push up the priority to find the funding to provide the care for our ageing population. It seems to be a big black hole around which none of the political parties are making any kind of stand.
How did you find being in front of the camera again? Were there any nerves after so many years? Not as far as I was concerned. But I don’t know how frightened others were of me perhaps falling over! The most amazing thing to me was the technical changes that have taken place in filming. It was just so different in my day, when it would take hours to set up cameras. Now you can instantaneously see on a screen what you’ve been doing in the scene – not that
I ever watched it! But it was extraordinary.
Has it given you a taste for doing more TV and film?
This was a really interesting story to do, so yes. But the minute I’ve finished a job, I think that’s the last work I will ever have!
I’ve always had a taste for more, though. I guess I live in hope that something nice will come through the door. I do get offers but they’re not particularly exciting!
Do you miss the excitement of the Houses of Parliament? Excitement?! It can be one of the most boring places in the world! Although it certainly hasn’t been boring over the last couple of years. In one way, I am relieved there is a General Election coming up, but whether we will be in exactly the same place after it is over we’ll have to wait and see..!
Caren Clark