STARS’ ORDEAL BY DRAMA
THERE WAS a time when the cast and crew of were unsure if the drama would ever be seen. The three-part adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel about the murder of wealthy philanthropist Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor) was supposed to air last Christmas.
Then cast member Ed Westwick, who played the key role of Rachel’s adopted son Mickey, was accused of rape and sexual assault. He has denied the claims.
was pulled from the Christmas schedules and shelved indefinitely. “This was in early December and we were still editing when we got the news that it wasn’t going to go out at Christmas,” says the series director Sandra Goldbacher.
“We were devastated because it really seemed as though it might not be shown at all at that point, which really would have been soul-destroying because so much hard work had gone into it.”
Instead the decision was taken in late December to recast Westwick – he was replaced by Christian Cooke, from Menston, in West Yorkshire – and reconvene the starry cast in Scotland for a 12-day shoot in the new year. “It wasn’t a decision that was taken lightly but it was the only way that the series could be seen,” says Goldbacher.
“We’d just heard about Ridley Scott doing the same thing (Scott replaced Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer on which helped.
“The most incredible thing about it was how generous the actors were – Bill Nighy (who plays Rachel’s husband and family patriarch Leo) said yes absolutely immediately and came for five days to reshoot, Anna Chancellor got stuck in the airport trying to get to us, Anthony Boyle flew in from New York (where he was preparing for the Broadway production of
Matthew Goode, who was filming drove through the night and gave up his Saturday.”
In total, about 45 minutes of the drama were reshot. “We were pretty lucky,” says Goldbacher. “For a start the owner of the house we’d originally filmed in in Scotland liked what the art department had done so much that he’d left it pretty much the same. But the costume designer and props department had to re-source a lot of the costumes, many of which were original 1950s pieces from Rome and Paris. The fur coat that Anna wears had been borrowed and it was a bit of effort to get that back...”
Sarah Phelps, the show’s writer, admits that while she was desperate for the drama to air – “because so many amazing people had put so much work into it” – she wasn’t sure how easy it would be to pull off.
“I did keep saying ‘but Sandra it’s snowing, how’s that going to work?’ She just said ‘don’t worry, it’s all worked out’ and it turned out it was.”
Goldbacher says they had to edit out the odd bit of icy breath from the summer scenes but otherwise the now skeletal trees actually helped as part of the story is set in winter.
Cooke, who was offered the role of Mickey 10 days before Christmas, says that while he was nervous, he couldn’t have been made to feel more welcome. “I wasn’t sure how everyone would react or what it would be like to come late to production,” he admits.
“But actually it turned out to be a really great experience – everyone was very sensitive and kind, and Sandra was clear from the beginning that I would have the freedom to give my own take on the material and do what I wanted. There was no sense that I was being slotted in to the role and had to do this scene this way or that.”
In fact, Goldbacher says it was interesting to be able to compare Cooke’s performance with Westwick’s. “They are both very good performances but very different,” she says. “And because Christian’s responses and reactions were different so other people’s performances changed with him which was really interesting to see, especially in an ensemble piece.”
So what exactly should audiences expect from this latest Christie, Phelps’s third adaptation of the crime queen’s work following acclaimed takes on and
For a start, Phelps says, it’s even darker than her previous two adaptations.
is not a conventional Christie in that there’s a big event that kicks it off where a son has been convicted of his mother’s murder and died in prison but then somebody turns up and says you know how he always said he was innocent... well he was, and everything goes from there,” says Phelps.
“I wanted with this story to write about what it means to be the perfect mother in this era, the 1950s, when we’re supposed to be triumphant because we’ve won the war and now it’s all perfect but underneath that is this huge strain of paranoia and fear.
“What it would feel like to present this perfect brittle façade to the world and never admit to the darkness lurking underneath? I wanted to ask what’s the secret at the heart of this family? What has keeping that secret done to them all? Why does this woman die?”
Morven Christie, who plays the Argyll family’s long-serving (and longsuffering) housekeeper Kirsten, says that it’s this understanding of the dark currents running through Christie that marks Phelps’s adaptations apart from previous takes.
“You look at other Christie adaptations and they’re terribly mannered and because of that they date in a way that Christie herself hasn’t,” she says. “One of Sarah’s massive strengths are a writer is her irreverence – she understands that there’s a dark heart to these books and doesn’t sacrifice plot for character or the other way around.”
Nighy agrees. “I think perhaps this is darker than we expect Christie to be,” he says. “Because it’s a story about a lot of damaged people all living in one house and the relationships in the house are very complex. There’s rather more going on here than is it Mrs Whatsit in the house with the dagger.”
It’s that darkness that crucially is the main draw for both actors and audience, adds Luke Treadaway, who has a key role as Arthur Calgary, the man who provides Jack Argyll’s belated alibi. “They’re true to Christie without feeling like Christie, which is almost part of the appeal,” he says.
is a dark story and also a complicated one – all the characters are going through their own deepseated trauma and it’s amazing to me the way that Sarah has knitted all these different stories together in a very personal way.”
Phelps herself is cheerfully unrepentant about her image as the woman who makes Christie pitchblack. “I always thought I was a quite a cheerful person but apparently not,” she says, laughing. “But the thing is I might make Christie dark, but she is dark. These are not straightforward stories: They’re clever and tricksy and very subversive at heart.”
Sarah Jones