Categories Frankenstein Interviews Print Media

Mothering a Mutant

Helen McCrory as Dr Frankenstein

As ITV1’s Frankenstein breathes new life into a classic story, writer Jed Mercurio and star Helen McCrory tell Serena Davies why it’s a tale for our times

Now that stem cell research is sufficiently advanced that scientists can fabricate heart muscle tissue, the creation of an entire heart, and even an entire creature, no longer sounds like science fiction. Which makes this the perfect time to update the story of Frankenstein: the tale, written in 1818 by a 19-year-old woman novelist, in which a scientist does just that.

Enter Frankenstein, a new feature-length drama written and directed by Jed Mercurio, the former doctor who made his name with the gritty hospital dramas Bodies and Cardiac Arrest.

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Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media The Queen

Great Expectations: An Interview with Helen McCrory – August 25, 2006

Drama Queen

by Lydia Slater | Evening Standard Magazine | August 25, 2006

Perched on a velvet sofa in the elegant sitting room of the Cheyne Walk Brasserie, Helen McCrory strokes her Stella McCartney-clad stomach and smiles under heavy eyelids, rather like the cat who’s got the cream. As well she might. Life has never seemed to be particularly tough for McCrory, 37, who has been winning plaudits for her acting ever since she took her first role in the National Theatre’s production of Trelawney of the Wells, and who is constantly tipped as the next Judi Dench.

But even by her own high standards, the future is looking pretty rosy. She is eight months pregnant with her first child, and has an unnervingly perfect celebrity bump – no fat ankles or swollen face, just a watermelon at the waistline and a correspondingly magnificent bronzed cleavage. “I’ve never worn so many low-cut dresses in my life. If I could just wear spangles, I would. I feel so amazingly attractive,” she gurgles throatily, with total justice if our young waiter’s saucer eyes are anything to go by.

McCrory doesn’t appear to notice him but then if you’re engaged to Damian Lewis, star of The Forsyte Saga and Band of Brothers (and arguably the sexiest redhead on the planet), waiters probably come rather low in the pecking order. “I’ve never been broody before, but when I met Damian I became very different about relationships,” she says.

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Categories Messiah: The Harrowing Print Media Reviews

TV Review: Messiah – The Harrowing

Helen McCrory and Maxine Peake help elevate Messiah – The Harrowing to arguably series’ devastatingly effective high point

by Ian | September 3, 2005 | thereoughttobeclowns

“See beyond the victim, see the killer”

The first series of Messiah is certainly one of the best, setting the wheels in motion for an effective crime series, but I’d argue that it is the fourth instalment Messiah – The Harrowing that is the best of them all. The arrival of a new writer – Terry Cafolla – releases the show from the baggage of its legacy which seemed to weigh the last series one and produces something that is really, well, harrowing.

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