In fact Harriet Walter would select this place, I believe, swishing by means of the revolving door of Arlington in Mayfair into an Artwork Deco corridor of mirrors reflecting monochrome stripes and polished tile. The environment is nearly cruelly stylish. The place else would a lady well-known for her portrayal of stony-hearted, acid-tongued ice queens wish to meet?
The waiter takes me to a desk in a discreet nook. David Bailey’s black-and-white portraits of Nineteen Sixties icons look on from each wall. The closest is of a white-stockinged, kohl-eyed Penelope Tree in 1967, photographed lounging subsequent to an open bottle of champagne, cheekbones like razors. All of it makes good sense.
So when Walter herself seems, the disorientation is profound. She appears to be like comfortable — virtually fluffy — in a powder-pink herringbone tweed swimsuit and pearl earrings. Her smile is raring and warms up the environment by a number of levels. After which there’s her voice. At first she speaks so quietly she sounds virtually timorous. It’s genuinely arduous to consider this is identical individual whose sardonic drawl ripped shreds out of her spoiled youngsters in Succession or barked orders as Brutus in a manufacturing of Julius Caesar set in a ladies’s jail. How on earth will she pull off enjoying Margaret Thatcher in her subsequent TV function, I ponder?
As normal, first impressions are deceptive. Over the course of the following couple of hours, in a gradual crescendo, all these characters, and extra, will make appearances at our desk. Harriet Walter is simply warming up.
She’s had loads of alternative currently to practise the artwork of summoning characters she’s performed again to life. Her new e book She Speaks! is a set of speeches for Shakespearean ladies, by which Walter imagines (in clean verse) what Ophelia or Cressida or Desdemona might need mentioned to an viewers had they been capable of speak frankly as a substitute of being left silent whereas their fates had been determined by the lads round them. It’s Walter’s means of redressing the steadiness of energy a bit — and of sharing a number of the theories she’s developed in 5 many years of performing Shakespeare.
Walter sits down reverse me, gesturing to Penelope’s legs. “There’s classic,” she murmurs. “They had been all of the individuals I needed to appear to be once I was 17 — and actually didn’t.” Born in 1950, Walter was precisely that age when the image was taken, about to determine that she needed to turn into an actor. Since then, hers has been a fantastically diversified profession, beginning with regional theatre, then the Royal Shakespeare Firm, the West Finish and Broadway. She’s achieved interval drama, from Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility in 1995 to the 2007 movie adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement. She’s had six phrases in a Star Wars film and 6 seasons as Detective Inspector Natalie Chandler in Legislation & Order: UK. Besides, till comparatively just lately, her title may elicit solely a imprecise nod of recognition amongst these outdoors the theatre world.
For some time, that labored for Walter: “I’ve at all times needed to not be identified as a result of I assumed that left me freer to discover,” she says. However “then that lack of fame began to be a little bit of a glass ceiling for me”. In her forties there have been components that eluded her “as a result of I wasn’t sufficient of a reputation . . . I keep in mind this producer taking me out and he mentioned, ‘You’re identified by everybody within the occupation, however nobody on this restaurant is aware of who you’re. And I wish to change that.”
Did he succeed? “No! Nevertheless it was a very good line! And sucker that I used to be, I went for it.”
It might need taken some time however issues have modified. At 74, a damehood and a run of wildly standard TV components in Succession, Ted Lasso and Killing Eve, in addition to memorable turns in Downton Abbey and The Crown, have made Walter correctly recognisable. The clientele of Arlington could also be too well-heeled to gawp at celebrities, nevertheless it’s fairly apparent that all of them know she’s right here.
We have a look at our menus. Walter doesn’t drink at lunchtime besides on particular events. Right this moment she is consuming with a journalist at a spot conveniently situated across the nook from her subsequent appointment, so she orders a Food regimen Coke. I, then again, am having lunch with a Dame on the newly reopened and renamed Le Caprice, conveniently situated subsequent door to the Ritz, so I order a glass of champagne. It arrives in a really stunning cone-shaped flute, and appears to final for ever. She asks for gazpacho, and I order the tomato and basil galette, a favorite from Le Caprice’s previous menu.
“I’ve not been because it reopened,” Walter says. “I do know Jeremy [King, the restaurateur]. He was extremely variety to my aunt throughout Covid. She lived close to his Colbert restaurant, in Sloane Sq.. He organized for her to have meals introduced out to her — so completely divine. I assumed it could be good to come back to his new place.”
Menu
Arlington
20 Arlington Avenue, London SW1A 1RJ
Gazpacho £9.50
Tomato galette £12.25
Grilled calf’s liver £29.75
Hen Milanese £26
Hokey pokey coupe £10.50
Food regimen Coke £4.50
Glass Herbert Corridor Brut £18
Glass glowing water £3
Americano £4.75
Double espresso £4.50
Whole inc service £141.16
The aunt in query was married to Christopher Lee, the Hammer horror star and brother of Walter’s mom Xandra. Walter has described her household as having lived within the “foothills of aristocracy”, however that appears like one thing of an understatement. Xandra and Christopher had been the kids of an Italian countess, Estelle Marie Carandini di Sarzano, and Geoffrey Trollope Lee. On the opposite aspect, the Walter household had been the founders of The Occasions newspaper.
Walter grew up in Kensington and was despatched to boarding faculty at 11. It offered what she describes as “a really minimal women’ training . . . be capable to play a pleasant sonata on the piano and communicate good French. And also you may marry a pleasant earl.” Later, she moved to a different faculty, in Dorset, which was higher. Nevertheless it was a great distance from London. “I take into consideration how lengthy that journey was and the way far we had been from house. And the horrible little telephone field we’d all queue as much as ring our dad and mom from, somewhat like jail.” Then, after her dad and mom divorced, “I’d solely see certainly one of them every time period.”
She should have been fairly robust, I counsel, to cope with all that. She appears to be like up a bit sharply over her soup spoon. “My sister was there, my greatest good friend was going, I had my teddy bear. You recognize, I knew my mom liked me. I used to be good at making associates. I had fairly a very good time.”
It was at college that Walter determined she needed to behave. She turned down a spot at Oxford to learn trendy languages and as a substitute utilized to drama faculties. She was rejected 5 instances earlier than getting a spot on the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Artwork, an act of perseverance she acknowledges confirmed some grit.
“I imply, I used to be by no means robust. I’m nonetheless not robust. I’m actually nothing just like the characters I play, in that sense. I keep in mind getting rejected from drama faculty rather a lot. And simply choosing myself up and going once more. However I didn’t do this in some other sphere of my life. In the event you mentioned something [negative], I’d curl up like a bit sea anemone and simply type of retract and say, ‘Proper I’m by no means going there once more’ . . . However theatre and movie,” she does a voice like a sergeant main, “Gotta do it! Gotta do it!”
Our plates are cleared and relaid. An unusually dainty plate of hen Milanese with rocket salad is put in entrance of me. Walter has ordered grilled calf’s liver, with out the bacon. She appears vaguely disturbed on the thought of discussing what she is consuming in any element. “You simply say, ‘It was excellent. And Harriet ate liver, when she claims to be a vegetarian.’” Will she thoughts being outed this manner? “I’ve liver each every now and then. However I’d solely eat it in a restaurant like this the place I knew it could be slithering down my throat. I don’t suppose I wish to noticed at some robust little bit of rubber.” She tucks her serviette into the collar of her jacket. “I’m going to do that. I don’t care.”
After drama faculty, Walter’s early work got here steadily, and by 1988 she had an Olivier Award for her performances with the RSC in Twelfth Night time and Chekhov’s Three Sisters. However wider recognition was elusive. “I used to be not for all markets in any respect,” she displays. Why? “Properly, I didn’t look proper . . . petite and blonde, like Felicity Kendal.” However there have been actors who gave her hope: “Glenda Jackson received me excited as a result of I assumed, gosh, you’ll be able to look form of angular and odd and have a non-beautiful voice. It simply gave me a broader image of what a feminine actor might be.”
In 1995, Walter was forged as Fanny Dashwood in a movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, alongside Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, who wrote the screenplay. It was an enormous vital success and, 30 years later, it’s nonetheless “somewhat a traditional”, Walter admits with a smile. Fanny is a villain, the rapacious sister-in-law who convinces her husband to chop off his sisters from their inheritance within the movie’s opening sequence, which lasts for about 90 seconds and steals the entire film.
There’s one thing of Fanny within the character that has introduced Walter probably the most acclaim currently, Woman Caroline Collingwood, whose failed marriage to Logan Roy and estrangement from their three youngsters is the backbone of the home drama in Succession. The 2 ladies share the identical crocodile smile and a reptilian gaze that appears to originate from a number of millimetres behind the eyes. The place did she study that look? “One of many causes you’ll be able to play one thing convincingly is since you’ve been on the receiving finish of it,” she says. “Notably scary individuals — you observe them very carefully as should you had been a mouse subsequent to a snake.”
She doesn’t elaborate, however she does insist that each Fanny and Caroline are usually not merely villains, that they’re, at root, sympathetic. “I’m very blissful to do these components as long as they’re humorous — not simply narrow-minded horrible bitches.”
Motive-hunting and psychological evaluation come simply to Walter — a part of the identical intuition that prompted the writing of the brand new e book. Placing her phrases and concepts into the mouths of Shakespearean ladies is the logical extension of the work that goes into enjoying them. Thus, Ophelia reveals she didn’t drown in any respect, however faked her demise to get away from Hamlet and Laertes; Woman Capulet explains how being a toddler bride made it unattainable for her to bond together with her daughter; Hermione fills us in on the affairs she’s been having whereas Leontes thought her lifeless for 16 years.
It’s an audacious train, she admits. However she has grown used to rule-breaking, placing the ladies again into Shakespeare. Even the place they shouldn’t be? “Precisely! Precisely! Enjoying the boys!” In addition to Brutus in Julius Caesar, Walter performed Henry IV after which Prospero in Phyllida Lloyd’s trilogy for the Donmar Warehouse in 2016. “I didn’t really feel constrained by gender or something, and it felt very private,” she says. “I’ve been nearer to ‘me’ enjoying Shakespeare than any half whose outer trappings are extra much like my actual ones. If it’s type of ‘enter a tall darkish girl with a waspish sense of humour and tweed swimsuit’, then, you already know, it’s confining.”
They wish to know if we can have desserts, however first Walter has a query. “What’s the hokey pokey coupe?” she asks, dry as ice, the corners of her mouth twitching archly because the waitress gamely recites the record of components. When it arrives, together with espresso, Walter affords her personal evaluation: “It’s like a Crunchie damaged up with some ice cream,” she says brightly. I’m reminded of the scene in Succession when Caroline’s son-in-law comes away from an encounter together with her muttering, “I believe I simply received stabbed . . . however I’m not utterly certain.”
“My newest love,” she confides, “they usually haven’t received it right here, is affogato. I had about three in three days in New York.” Since she married the American actor Man Paul in 2011, Walter has break up her time between London and New York. They received collectively once they had been each in a 2009 manufacturing of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart on Broadway. It’s her first marriage however not her first vital relationship. Walter lived with the actor Peter Blythe till he died of most cancers in 2004.
For 30 years she stored the identical flat in Chelsea she’d purchased after drama faculty. It was her “launching pad and hidey gap”. When Blythe died, she retreated to the nation house they’d made collectively in Dorset. “I attempted to work out why I couldn’t face spending one other evening in London . . . It was as a result of I’d solely lived with him for eight years, and I’d lived there for 30 years. And so, if I went again, it could be as if he’d by no means occurred. And I couldn’t bear that thought.” Grieving of their shared place, with all his furnishings round, felt extra pure.
I ponder what the following decade may maintain for Walter. She is about to seem on our screens enjoying her most tyrannical matriarch but — the precise Iron Woman, Margaret Thatcher. The drama, Brian and Margaret, centres round Thatcher’s disastrous remaining TV interview in 1989 with the broadcaster Brian Walden, performed by Steve Coogan. The screenplay is by James Graham and the director is Stephen Frears. She did pause on the considered enjoying Thatcher, she says: “I don’t look something like her, I don’t sound something like her and I hated her politics. . . however I noticed her embattled by a world of males. I began to see how she developed her outer toughness in response to the world she was transferring into. After which I felt she needed to keep there, which is what dictators do, isn’t it? They construct a sure uniform . . . After which they must make it increasingly more strong as a result of, as quickly as there’s a chink within the armour, they’ll lose every part.”
Walter’s Thatcher won’t be a pantomime villain any greater than the remainder of her characters have been, which is simply as properly, as the truth is way extra fascinating. As I pay the invoice, she leans in. “At this stage of life, you’re getting a lot narrower cameo roles that individuals perceive as code for ‘bitch’ or ‘sufferer’. I’m combating these stereotypes.”
Cordelia Jenkins is editor of FT Weekend Journal
Discover out about our newest tales first — observe FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Artwork wherever you hear