Keeley Hawes on Shakespeare Retold - Memorable TV Features

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SHAKESPEARE-TOLD - Keeley Hawes
A chat with Keeley Hawes about her role in Macbeth one of four dramas retold in modern dress.
Keeley Hawes experienced a rollercoaster of emotions while playing the murderous Ella Macbeth in Peter Moffat's adaptation of Shakespeare's dark tragedy. Taking on the role of a woman who has lost her baby was her greatest challenge. "Most of my scenes are emotional in one way or another but the scene with the baby was actually quite disturbing.I'd just had a baby, three months before, and although being a mother helped me get in touch with the right feelings, I had to separate myself from it all because I was talking about a tiny baby and I had my little one at home. I was quite emotional anyway because I'd just given birth," she reveals.
Peter Moffat's Macbeth is transposed to the enclosed and heated world of a top restaurant kitchen. Keeley plays the maitre'd, alongside her co-star James McAvoy as her husband Joe Macbeth, the chef who has tasted success and is spurred on by his ambitious and troubled wife. Despite the play's darkness, there were amusing moments. "We all laughed a lot," says Keeley. "You get that many boys [her co-stars] in a room and you're going to laugh. Everybody got on so well. It has to be kept light when you're talking about stabbing people to death or you're being showered in blood, otherwise it could all have been quite depressing. There'd be fits of giggles – it was all quite light-hearted."
Fancy attracts the attention of three very different men – lowly Dick Dewy (James Murray), parson Maybold (Ben Miles) and rich farmer Shiner (Steve Pemberton). “I spoke to Nick Laughland, the director, to find a way through. We wanted people to like her and understand her confusion. She has her father to look after and needed money to support him, which is something people had to think about at that time. But when it comes down to it, you want her to follow her heart. “We all had great fun together and I think the casting is brilliant. Steve Pemberton is a fantastic actor and he made Shiner a likeable man, when on the page he is slightly repulsive. Doing scenes with him, James and Ben I could really feel her dilemma.” Keeley enjoyed the chance to work on the island of Jersey. “The set at the Hamptonnes museum was so easy to work on. You could shoot 360 degrees all around, without having to worry about lampposts or high rise office buildings. I didn’t know Jersey before but it’s very pretty. It also meant I could have my son and daughter and husband out to visit. “We filmed in the summer but the drama covers every season. I was very impressed when the crew covered the place with fake snow. It looks cold and absolutely beautiful but it was the middle of summer. I think they’ve done a fantastic job.” Keeley found herself having to master a new skill – playing an antique harmonium. “It’s the most bizarre instrument, you have to pump it with your feet while playing. It’s really most ungainly. Luckily we had an expert come in to do the close-ups and I memorised what she did as they cut to my face. So when you see me I am playing but no noise comes out, thank goodness! “But I’d much rather play the harmonium than sing, like James Murray had to do. It was a breeze for me, really, lots of fun and we laughed all the way through. I hope that comes across.” Playing a schoolteacher was another fun scene for Keeley “I’ve played a prison teacher before in The Canterbury Tales and in Spooks I also had to do a little bit of teaching with kids. It’s always amazing because the children respond to you as if it’s real. The local children in Jersey were very formal and always called me ‘miss’. They were lovely. In fact all the extras from Jersey were the nicest people, patient and interested and interesting. And they looked so good, with fabulous character faces.” Putting on a corset was familiar for the actress, who also starred in Tipping The Velvet, Our Mutual Friend and Wives and Daughters. “I’ve done so many costume dramas and whenever you put the corset on you stand and behave differently. You have to. Fancy is a bit posher than the rest of the girls but only because she’s come from Exeter and brings dresses with her. But we didn’t want her to stick out like a sore thumb. “She wears a lot of linen which was really beautiful, and I only needed a small hairpiece at the back of my head because my hair was quite long anyway, while my make-up was quite natural. But at the end of the day it was still good to put the jeans on and relax.” Keeley got her first taste for performing at the Sylvia Young stage school and her feet have hardly touched the ground in recent years. Her other credits include Karaoke, Cold Lazarus, The Beggar Bride, The Blonde Bombshell, Complicity, Othello, Lucky Jim and Spooks. She filmed Michael Winterbottom’s forthcoming feature film A Cock and Bull Story when she was seven months pregnant with her daughter Maggie, now one year old, from her marriage to her Spooks co-star Matthew Macfadyen. Keeley also has a five-year-old son Myles from a previous marriage. “They had to shoot me from the neck up for some scenes in A Cock and Bull Story, then I went back to work three months after Maggie was born. It’s been lovely to have time with the children since but I’m ready for new projects in the New Year.”

As the Macbeths head for destruction, what motivates this feisty woman? "I think the loss of the baby means that she's very damaged – although that's no excuse for what then happens! Because of her job and the status she has within the restaurant, she has to be seen to be holding it together at all times. So when she brings up the subject of murder, things must be at their lowest. She just feels that she's got nothing else to lose. She's lost her baby and is disturbed that Joe and she have not talked about it or expressed any of their emotions. Also, they feel like they're not appreciated or respected for what they do at the restaurant. It almost sounds like there should be some sort of excuse for what happens, but there's no excuse really," stresses Keeley.

Will viewers understand why Ella's tortured psyche drives her to the ultimate crime?

"Hopefully," says Keeley. "I watched it and I didn't come away full of hate for her. I had a shred of sympathy for her; and it's not like she runs off into the sunset. The whole thing is a tragedy."

It was Moffat's script which tempted Keeley back in front of the cameras so soon after giving birth. The star of Spooks and Tipping the Velvet explains: "I was thinking about going back to work when the script came through the door and I couldn't believe how fantastic it was. I thought it was so cleverly done and when reading some of the lines, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I love the play, too – it's something I've aspired to do. I'd also seen Hawking, which Peter Moffat wrote (starring Benedict Cumberbatch) and thought that was brilliant."

Keeley had no qualms about appearing in "the Scottish play". "I don't really have any of those superstitions about it," she says with her infectious laugh, "and nothing went horribly wrong."

Keeley's research included watching Dame Judi Dench in the role she was about to play. My husband (Spooks co-star Matthew MacFadyen) bought me the DVD so we sat and watched it," she explains. "I also went along to a successful restaurant called Locanda Locatelli. We had lunch there and then went into the kitchen where I met a fantastic lady, the wife of the head chef, who was the Ella of that restaurant. You could see the relationship working in a Michelin-starred restaurant. It was fantastic to have had the opportunity to meet her and see what it is like running a restaurant."

Despite Ella's prowess as a queen of cuisine, running a restaurant has never been on Keeley's career menu.

"Nobody would come!" she laughs. "My husband is the chef of the family; he's a brilliant cook. Actually, it makes you quite lazy when you have somebody that's so good at cooking under the same roof. It's all beans or spaghetti when I'm left to run it," she confesses. "When Matthew was performing at the National Theatre for eight months he was out most evenings and by the end of it I was at a total loss. He'd have to make something on the Sunday and leave it in the fridge for me to have for the next few days. How pathetic! Otherwise," she adds candidly, "it's a cheese sandwich! I just don't find it enjoyable making food for just one."

While Keeley was wringing her hands as Ella, Matthew was starring at the National Theatre in both of the Bard's Henrys. "I was up to my neck in Shakespeare," she declares. "But I think it's brilliant that Shakespeare adapts so well – all of the plays seem to. I did a modern Othello a couple of years ago which translated so beautifully. It's great to keep them alive."

Keeley is also convinced that modern adaptations such as Moffat's help to bring the classics to a wider audience.

"I did one of the Chaucers – The Knight's Tale – and they were a huge success," she adds. So I think it can't fail and I think schools will probably be able to use them. There's no downside to doing it."

Keeley is a huge fan of period drama and has starred in The Moonstone, Our Mutual Friend and Wives and Daughters.

"I love period drama," she says enthusiastically. "I did Under the Greenwood Tree (based on the Thomas Hardy novel) very recently. Just after Macbeth, I did a thriller called The Best Man, which ends up being quite violent, so it was such a joy to slip into a corset and run around in fields and talk about love! I think we do them so well in this country."

Keeley studied at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, where she became friends with former Spice Girl Emma Bunton. Another contemporary was Denise Van Outen. While still at the school, she was spotted in London's Oxford Street by a modelling agency scout, who decided her tall, slender frame and gamine features made her a natural choice to stalk the catwalk. It wasn't long, however, before the cabbie's daughter wanted to flag down a different fare – and her career meter began ticking over when she came to prominence in the Dennis Potter drama Karaoke, and as the young Diana Dors in TV's Blonde Bombshell. Since then, her portfolio of roles has rapidly expanded to embrace film, TV and theatre.

"I hope to be still acting when I'm 70 on TV, film and theatre," she explains. "When you think about such fine actors as Maggie Smith or Michael Gambon, they do all mediums. I think it would be quite sad and a bit dull just to have to stick to one. I like all of them."

She does not have an ideal role. "You can say you have, then suddenly you get something like Macbeth coming through the door and then that's the ideal role. I think that's what is great about what we do. Your next role, hopefully, is always the ideal one. That's what keeps it exciting."

She'll shortly be helping to tell A Cock and Bull Story when she stars in the Michael Winterbottom comedy on the big screen. There's also the likelihood of another drama in February. It has been a busy year for her and Matthew. "We're going to try and take time off until just after Christmas. When you have a break, you appreciate the work when you go back," she says.

In the meantime, viewers can see Keeley, in her role of Ella Macbeth, as someone who definitely can't stand the heat – but what a way to get out of the kitchen...!

We also have an episode guide for Shakespeare Re-Told here.