Categories Fearless

The Real McCrory: Fearless Interview

A 21st Century Heroine

by Scarlett Russell | The Times, Culture | July, 2017

That Helen McCrory is starring in a new prime-time thriller called Fearless is rather apt. This is a woman no stranger to playing feisty, fiery, even controversial characters.

Her stage roles range from Lady Macbeth, Medea and, most recently, Hester Collyer in Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, while on film she has played Cherie Blair and Queen Elizabeth I. She’s perhaps most loved as matriarch Polly Gray in the BBc’s Peaky Blinders or Madame Kali in Penny Dreadful.

Her latest role is the lead in new ItV political drama Fearless. She plays the chain-smoking, vodka-swilling, but brilliant solicitor, Emma Banville, who is known for defending some of society’s most abhorred suspects. The plot follows her as she attempts to free a man she believes was wrongly convicted of killing a schoolgirl in east anglia. As she delves deeper into the case, she sees that there is much more to it than she first imagined – and that police and intelligence services around the world will do anything to stop her.

Fortunately, there is nothing fierce about McCrory in person. the 48-year-old actress sits poised and elegant in London’s Soho hotel where she has arrived, right on time, for our interview. It’s midday and so she apologises when, halfway through our chat, a spinach omelette arrives.

“Do you mind?” she asks politely. “I’ve already had a breakfast very early today so I’m having another.” While not intimidating, McCrory certainly knows her mind. Between dainty mouthfuls, she carefully considers questions before answering them in her well-spoken lilt. Sharp and astute, her self-confidence is unwavering and a mark of her successful career playing complex characters.

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Categories Fearless Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory Interview: The Scotsman

Human Rights Lawyer: Fearless

by The Newsroom | The Scotsman | June 24, 2017


Fake news, post-truth, a world where there are no facts, only interpretations, if ever the time was right for a character like Helen McCrory’s human rights lawyer in ITV’s six part legal thriller, Fearless, it’s now.

Emma Banville believes in truth and the ability of the British legal system to uphold it, but not without a fight, and the tenacious lawyer is up for that fight. Known as a champion of lost causes, she sets out to prove the innocence of a convicted killer, who has served 14 years in jail for the murder of a schoolgirl, amid a backdrop of official conspiracies and cover-ups.

“Emma is a hunter for the truth, fearless and brave. She believes in Britain’s legal system and that it will strive for a just and fairer society, and that nothing is above the law,” says McCrory over the phone from the Fearless press junket.

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Categories Damian Lewis Fearless Interviews Print Media Their Finest

Helen McCrory on her marriage to Damian Lewis: “He’s never given me reason to be jealous”

A Thoroughly Modern Marriage

by Elizabeth Day | Stella Magazine | April 1, 2017

Helen McCrory arrives hungry. We’re meeting  on a spring afternoon in  a pub around the corner from her north London home, and Helen hasn’t yet eaten. She’s got a couple of hours before  she has to pick up her children – Manon, 10, and Gulliver, nine – from school, and she fully intends to make the most of them.

‘Are you sure this is all right?’ she asks  as she orders the soup of the day. ‘I mean, really? OK, well, I think I’ll have the lamb as a main… I’ll come back for pudding.’

We sit outside. Helen is tiny: slender and upright with the poise of a ballerina. She is also wildly entertaining. At 48, she is one of those women whose face is accentuated by faint wrinkles rather than oppressed by them – and she couldn’t care less anyway, given that she is constantly in work. Actresses over 35 are routinely asked if they’re concerned about the lack of roles for ‘older women’. When I raise this, Helen deadpans, ‘Well, I hope they find work.’

For her, it’s never been a problem. She finds vanity and self-regard boring. Recently, she took on the part of Elizabeth I for the children’s TV series Horrible Histories,  and ‘I begged the director to let me have  a bald cap, a pockmarked face and blackened teeth. And he was like, “But we could make her look so beautiful.” I said, “Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

‘Ageing hasn’t changed that much for me because it’s never been, “Elle Macpherson’s not available, let’s get McCrory!”’

Helen is more interested in characters ‘if they’re different from me. That’s what I enjoy most about the job.’ Her career has been both impressive and varied – from big-budget box-office catnip (Narcissa Malfoy  in the Harry Potter films) to small-screen critical acclaim (Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders) to dazzling stage performances (her electrifying 2014 turn as Medea won her a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress).

Continue reading Helen McCrory on her marriage to Damian Lewis: “He’s never given me reason to be jealous”