Interviews Archives - Page 3 of 28

Helen McCrory: ‘A good playwright works you like an athlete’

On April 10, 2020April 13, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

The actor talks about her part in launching #FeedNHS — and her role in Terence Rattigan’s ‘The Deep Blue Sea’, now streamed by the National Theatre

by Sarah Hamming | Financial Times | July 10, 2020

It’s hard to write about what Helen McCrory got up to during lockdown. Not because it was bad. Quite the reverse, in fact. In March, she and her fellow-actor husband Damian Lewis launched #FeedNHS, a scheme to provide food to front-line workers. By the height of the pandemic, it was serving 45,000 meals daily to 115 hospitals across the country.

No, the trouble is that any write-up that makes this sound remotely saintly would drive her bananas. Frank, funny and down to earth, McCrory, 51, has a fierce aversion to anything pretentious (this is a woman who, on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs, chose the complete works of Spike Milligan as her luxury book, wrapped in a Bertrand Russell dust jacket “just in case anybody sees me, from another island”).

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Damian Lewis Feed NHS Interviews Personal and Family Life Print Media

Coping With COVID-19 Crisis: Damian Lewis & Helen McCrory

On April 6, 2020April 12, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

On Feeding Health Workers After Filming Halted On ‘Billions’ & ‘Peaky Blinders’

Jake Kenter | April 6, 2020 | Deadline

Damian Lewis Helen McCrory Coping with COVID 19 Crisis

As coronavirus crashed through the TV business, husband and wife Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory were among those cast adrift. Lewis was making Season 5 of Billions, while McCrory was on the brink of going into production on Season 6 of Peaky Blinders. Now, both are holed up in their British countryside home in Suffolk. But far from quietly riding out the COVID-19 tsunami, the pair have leashed an anchor of sorts and are using their platform for a much-needed mission to feed frontline health care workers in the UK.

McCrory said she spent one day doing hair and makeup and tests for Peaky Blinders, during which it dawned on much of the production team that “something very big is coming.” She explains: “The next morning I woke and told my producer I’m not comfortable doing this anymore… Cillian Murphy did the same. Together with the producers, we approached the BBC and said we’re going to pull this now before we have to do this down the line.” Production was halted March 16, a mere three weeks ago. “That all seems like a very different world at the moment. Terribly unimportant,” McCrory reflects.

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Interviews Print Media Quiz

Quiz’s Helen McCrory believes ‘Coughing Major’ Charles Ingram and wife Diana could be innocent in infamous Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? cheating scandal

On April 5, 2020May 19, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Innocent or Guilty?

By Sean O’Grady and Laura Fox | April 5, 2020 | Daily Mail

Helen McCrory has revealed she thinks its possible the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? convicted quiz cheats could be innocent.

The actress, 51, who stars in the show Quiz based on the case, said there are still unanswered questions about Major Charles Ingram who won the show in 2001 after Tecwen Whittock coughed if he said a right answer.

Speaking to The Mirror, Helen said: ‘The fact that a lot of people at the time didn’t hear the cough… Chris Tarrant didn’t hear the cough, the person sitting opposite didn’t hear the cough, people either side didn’t hear the cough, yet for some reason he [Charles Ingram] heard the cough – really?’

While she concedes it could have been a set up, Helen, who plays Sonia Woodley QC, the lawyer who defended the Ingrams’ case, admitted she also thinks its possible Ingram was innocent.

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Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory Interview: The Chap

On November 29, 2019April 12, 2021 By Gingersnap4Helen No Comments

Peaky Blinders Season 5

by Gustav Temple | The Chap | November 29, 2019

Gustav Temple meets the star of Peaky Blinders, whose character Aunt Polly not only holds the entire Shelby family together, but also wears the most stylish outfits.

I’ve talked to your co-star Paul Anderson and creator Steven Knight about the men’s styling of Peaky Blinders. What was your experience in the costume department? Did you have any say in what you wear as Aunt Polly?

I’m a real pain in the neck when it comes to costume, because it’s really important to me. I’ve always really designed what I’ve been wearing alongside the designer, because it makes an enormous difference to how you move, how you’re perceived and how you feel. So right from the beginning when we started Peaky, I wanted Polly to have a very tight silhouette, so they were saying, ‘This is the period, it’s drop-waist…’ and I said, yeah, I’m not wearing that. We need a corset and a hobble skirt and boots up to the thigh, and everything a size too small, tailored within an inch of its life. We need massive hair, with pins I’m going to stab people with, things I can whip out of fur, I need a gun on the inside thigh in a garter. It should all make me feel a certain way.

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His Dark Materials Interviews Print Media

‘His Dark Materials’ on HBO

On November 4, 2019May 24, 2021 By helenistic No Comments

Cast and Crew on How They Brought Their Daemons to Life

by Samuel Spencer | November 4, 2019 | Newsweek

One crucial part of the His Dark Materials universe is the existence of daemons, the animal manifestations of the souls of the parallel world’s residents. As such, when HBO and the BBC started making their adaptation of the book series, how to bring these daemons to the big-screen became all important.

Speaking of these daemons, Mrs. Coulter actress Ruth Wilson told Newsweek: “They’re such an important dimension to this show, which you need to explore and get right, because they’re not pets, they’re part of your soul.”

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