 Felly, rydw i'n meddwl i'r rŵn i ddim yn gweithio i'r rŵn, ac yn ddim yn gweithio i'r rŵn o'r gweithio i'r rŵn o'r gweithio i online. Rhywbeth yma, Rhywodraeth Mwyloedd, rwy'n cymddiad y Rhywodraeth Rhywodraeth, a rwy'n meddwl i'r cyfeirio'r cyfnod i'r llwyffydd. Rhywodraethau yma, RSL 200, oedd yna'r partyn o'r Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth Cymru, a'r Llywodraeth Llywodraeth. Mae'r gyrraedd yn cyfnod yn ffyrdd yma, ac mae'n mynd i'r gwybod i fynd i'r dechrau bwmfa bwmfa bwmfa'r gyrraedd. Mae'r gyrraedd yn cyfnod ar y ffyrdd cyfnod ar y ffyrdd cyfnod, a'r gyrraedd yn cyfnod ar gyfer y ffyrdd cyfnod ar gyfer y ffyrdd cyfnod. If you'd like to learn more about the RSL and the work we do, please sign up to our newsletter. You'll be the first to hear about some very special events we have coming up, including the next in our RSL 200 events. But before that, tonight we have the pleasure of being in the company of RSL fellow Andrew O'Hagan and his great friend, the actor Gillian Anderson. You may want to end of my introduction and then you go to the next one. In this extra special discussion, Gillian and Andrew will study some of their favourite literary characters and explore why literature matters so much to them. What makes Miss Havisham, who Gillian played in Great Expectations, distinct from Wallace Simpson, who she brought to life in any human heart? How does it feel to give physical form to words on a page? Leading the discussion this evening is Andrew O'Hagan. Andrew was born in Glasgow and grew up in Ayrshire. He has three times been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Grant's best of young British novelists in 2003 and has won the Glenfiddic Brighter of the Year Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is editor-at-large of the London Review of Books and is contributor to Esquire, the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, say it again, and has served on its governing council. I'm very pleased to pass over to Andrew now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Molly. It's so wonderful to see all your faces tonight. It was Charles Dickens who said, I have been in the theatrical profession all my life as a writer. My wife, he said, is in the theatrical profession. My children are in it. My dog has been on stage since it was a puppy and my pony, my chased pony, also goes on. He said, he took it for granted that the relationship between literature and acting was fundamental in our culture. So it's a joy to be under the auspices of the Royal Society of Literature, the most interesting, the most searching of our institutions representing literature. And to be able to talk to, to my mind, the most interesting actor of her generation, Gillene Anderson. Please give it up for her to see it tonight. Now, I'm not going to waste any of our time on biography tonight. It would take me 15 minutes, at least, possibly half an hour, to go through even a summary of what Gillene has achieved as an actor. You all know her story, born in Chicago. She's lived in London for a long time, and she has travelled the world representing this incredible panoply of characters over the course of her career. Women with strength, mystery, will power, secret heart, and expansive motivation. I mean, I want to get right into with you, Gillene. I mean, right at the beginning of what we understand to be her career in the X files, you were there doing something which we hadn't quite seen before in my submission, which is to show a sidekick who wasn't a sidekick. That's to say a female agent who didn't, as it were, show herself to be the hysterical or difficult one in that partnership. But in fact to be the rational, scientific one, David Duchovny's character was the more romantic, extraterrestrial believing irrational character. And if you look back at the history of sci-fi television, we hadn't seen that before. Were you conscious right from the beginning that this was a female character that was quite new to television? No. You just found that? No, no, no. I don't think I was conscious of anything at the time. I think that I was conscious that I was potentially going to have a job, and I wasn't even conscious that the job where I had to get the job would tie me to something for a very long time. Something obviously happened over those ten, eleven seasons where in fact from season nine, you're the central force in the drama. Your character, agent Scully, becomes, if you like, the central consciousness in that. I think it happened earlier on. It happened during the course of the series. And certainly I would say that the creator Chris Carter had, that was part of his plan in a sense, his mastermind. But it was really the duo of them, I have to say, moving forward. The dynamic between the two of them had never really been seen before. Maybe the thin man films or something, but there was something very unique about that as well. Her trajectory was really, as much as anything, the trajectory of me growing up in front of the camera and being completely naive and just showing up in survival mode and trying to do what I was being asked to do on a daily basis. Anything that came above and beyond that, it was almost a gift from the writer in that he allowed the audience to project onto her. One, we've never seen anything like it before. Two, she was unique even in and of herself. But she was also something that could be projected upon by people. We see it right up to the present day with Jean Milburn, is that you never allow yourself as a performer, I suggest, to become anybody's, any male fantasist's version of a woman. You find the strength somehow in the character. Of course I can't suggest to you that you've always been planning to play these roles because that's not how it works in anybody's career, not for a writer or for a performer. But there's something in your DNA, I suggest, that attracts you to women who absolutely define themselves, not against male definitions of who she should be, but find something in herself, a power or a direction that comes from the character herself. The comic engine in Jean Milburn is that it's almost a reversal of what you expect a parent to be like in that situation. Again, I'd have to say, to be fair, that was very much, it is in the writing in Sexhead, very much Laurie's writing in terms of where Jean sits in relation to the men in her life. I would say the thing that I brought to her was actually more neurosis than was even on the page because it was important to me that Laurie not being a woman of a certain age, that we get to see a woman who is properly struggling and having to contend with all aspects of what being a woman in her 50s, a woman, a single mother, and negotiating herself as much as she is a relationship with her kids and trying to maintain an awakened sexual existence and also her career. I think that's where we get to see both her weaknesses and her strengths in contending with herself and both her failings and successes in those relationships. When sex education was offered to you, did you feel it was a risk for you? Are you conscious that you've got a persona as an actor in the way that strong actors do? We think we know who Clark Gable is. We think we know who Rita Hayworth is. Are you conscious that you're able to say that some of the roles you're accepting run counter to who? No, I would say the only risk that I saw with Jean was for my two teenage boys. Whether having a mother who was playing a character like this was going to seriously damage them psychologically, but also damaging them at school, one were it not to be successful and then their mom would be on this creepy failing show on Netflix, or if it was successful having to contend with that. I think that was really my only concern. I didn't get it at first. I have a tendency to appreciate much more subtle ironic humour, and it was so broad that at first I thought, this isn't for me and nobody's going to like this. So I tossed it in the bin, but I'm very glad I was convinced to pull it out. I mean, take a risk in a sense of, for all the things that I might have been afraid of, but also comedy. Even if one, as an actor, I have found, it's very, very different acting comedy as it is drama, and it's actually, I find it harder. It may just be me and not having had that much experience of it over my career, but I find that one has to be unbelievably specific, and very often you can tell your body how to do, you know, you can attempt to do something comedically, and very often it can just not land, it can just not work. You can be trying everything, and yet it doesn't quite, or there's something that's not, and I know that having worked with... Give us a clue. We'll work it out between us. Johnny English, sorry. Rowan Atkinson. Rowan Atkinson. I'm so glad you're here. Having worked with Rowan Atkinson, I can say, you know, I experience him, and I don't know whether he speaks about this, but I'll speak about it for him, but he is tortured by that specificity, you know, and, well, to take up, to take up, to take up, trying to, you know, and I could very easily fall down that. Well, he said himself that that's strange necessity for expression and restraint that exists in the comic actor going all the way back. I mean, it's something I would suggest. I mean, you can do all the training you like, and there's a lot of technique there, but there must be something instinctive. You're quite funny in yourself, so you must be able to mine that. You seem to enjoy playing this part. I do, I do. I have a weird thing of being, you know, like, way too serious that it's inappropriate and too goofy for my own good, you know. Somebody called me on it recently. I was working with an actor that I'd never worked with before, and he completely, he said, you never know what you're going to get with you. I was dumbstruck, and then I thought, he's fucking right. He's really, he is, and I don't, I... Anyway, I digress, sorry. That's a source of it. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is our overture. Let me tell you how this is going to work. We're going to look at seven characters. This evening is all about character, specifically because literature, the Royal Society of Literatures is our host this evening, is often about the creation, the maintenance, the investigation of character, so it seems to have a great idea to bring in somebody who has the experience and the magnitude of talent that Gillian has, and we're going to look at seven. We've already mentioned some of them, but we're going to look at Scully, the ex-files, Lily Bart, from the House of Moth, Stella Gibson from the Fall Margaret Thatcher, from the Crown, Feel Fee to Boo, Blanc du Boire from a streetcar named Desire, Jean Milburn, who we've mentioned, and therefore of time, Eleanor Roosevelt, who Gillian has just played in our forthcoming, I mean, April, I think, forthcoming, TV series co-starring Viola Davies and Dakota Fanning. Now, we did start with... Michelle Fiverr. Oh yeah, Michelle Fiverr. We've mentioned the ex-files, the thing, before moving away from that, I just want to ask you about the construction of character in that, and how important, because I know you started to direct on the show, and did you feel that... I'd be just interested for a minute in this relationship between performing and directing, and did you feel that directing was a way of going further with the character, or was it to do with the whole picture? No, and I've wondered about this quite a lot, which is that for some reason, while I was working, and there are certain roles that I take home where I feel like I want to get involved in the process of expanding and making it expanding. For some reason with Scully, and I don't... I wasn't involved in that, and I think I was partly... It was so clear who she was, I was being reminded all the time who she was, and I didn't get involved in that, whereas I think David very much got involved in his trajectory and wanted to do certain things, or wanted to see the character go, and I kind of left that to the writers, possibly a bit too much, and so I didn't really have that experience on that show, and so that was really all... everything that transpired was all them, and it wasn't until later in my career that I realized that I might have a voice, and I might be able to contribute, and I might be listened to sometimes too. Being listened to seems to me to be one of the driving engines, as an audience member, looking at the work. When you look at Lily Bart in A House of Mell, an absolutely beautiful film still, it's dating so well, I watched it again this week, and you see this is really a look at sexual... of women in a world of corrupt men, that these men can make money for each other and help each other out, and aid each other in Wall Street, but when Lily does it, she also has to have sex with them, and if she doesn't, then it's incredibly forward-thinking and political that film, it seems to me. There's a beautiful moment where she turns down the proposal of marriage for Mr Rosdale, and as she turns away, you managed to do disgust on your face without a single word being said. I've been looking at that just in terms of character, I'm thinking, how do you do that? How do you manage to give the inner life of a character outward expression? Can you address that even in relation to that part? Tell us about the journey with that character. Well, I do know that I have found that I cannot use real life, not direct real life stuff for internal lives of characters. Sadly, and ironically, very often when I've been in the midst of playing a role, something in my life on the outside has mirrored it in one way or another simultaneously, which is really unfortunate, but it makes it then even harder to use it as a tool to get to a place or a choice. With Lily Buettis, it's a very long time ago, I do know that I was terrified. I do know that this was the first, well, because it was the first time I had been a fan of Terence Davies. He's quite an obscure director, and it was not house film, and I happened to know his work and was slightly obsessed with his work, so I was very excited to work with him and flattered to have been given the job. I felt like I was proving that I had an opportunity in a platform to prove that I could do something other than Scully. At that point, the X-Files had become so big. Is that a worry, Gillene, the idea that whatever point in your career or for any actor, especially women, I suggest to you that there will be pigeonholed and restricted in the roles that they're allowed to play, that a big, successful TV actress is going to be stuck? I think it's less so now than it has been in the past, and it's also less so in the UK than it is in the US. I've spoken about this before, and it's also one of the reasons why I chose to move to the UK instead of staying in the States was that for a very long time, actresses have been allowed to move between theatre, film and television effortlessly and not judged for doing TV and not punished for going back to do theatre. So I wanted a bit of that in my career and by being here I've been able to have that. Since then, it's also become more acceptable in the States to have career similar to that. In terms of characterisation, can you just give us a minute on this question of the relationship in terms of formation of character between a performer and a director? Because there you are with Terence Davies, I mean, not only art house, but a director of great stillness and concentration who'll let the camera linger as he does in the house of mouth on a stream for a good few minutes. Well, there was in long day closes, I remember being in college and seeing long day closes from art house, theatre, movie theatre. The camera was still on a carpet with a light reflection coming in through the window and an image. I don't know how long that camera remained on that carpet, but I went. I was weeping this, he really does have the ability to express emotion, transition, width. I think there are a few directors that do this. Andrea Arnold does this really well and it's quite rare to be able to stay. But Ramsay just letting the camera sit. But also knowing where to put it. I've thought about that with Andrea's work that under another director's hand, a camera for a long time on a windowsill would make you switch the channel. But for some reason Andrea knows the sweet spot of where to put the camera that makes you riveted and you understand what she's saying. You're understanding the transition that she's trying to invoke. But that must be quite odd from the actor's point of view given that you don't necessarily know. No, and you can't trust it. And the amount of time that I've thought this director I'm working with is genius. I mean this is amazing. And then it's shine. Let's have a wee look at Stella Gibson in the fall. I mean that was to many of us. I love the whooping. It's just great. Let's talk about the writing there first because again we could do an hour on this alone with suddenly this character arrives on screen, on the small screen in this case who seems fully formed. She seems to have a huge hinterland, unspoken, a huge background, a depth of experience which you brought in. You just walked in with it, it seemed to us. Now I'm not going to ask you how you do that although I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I mean it's the most impossible thing to get to but what I want to know is at the script stage did you look at that and say I can find her? I mean to me this is a constant example of the difference between good writing and not so good writing. I don't even know how to describe it. It's really hard to put into words. I do know that when I looked at the four scripts that I'd read so many scripts up until that point where it just, you know, as a reader let alone as an audience member your force fed characters and motivation and emotion and his scripts, Alan Cupid's scripts are so spare and yet I got everything about her. I remember being on page six and having thought before being told this was a series I don't want to do any more series I'm not going to do any more series and then page six I was in, I could have, you know and I can't tell you and I'd since gone on to do something else to kind of create something myself where I, maybe it was before that but the juxtaposition of what I, what else can be out there and his script was so, was such a huge chasm between the two and yet I don't know how to put it into words I don't know how to give notes to a writer who's not getting there or who doesn't understand whatever to say you know, you just, I end up just saying Is it if you understood what an actor can do? He left you the space to do it? Yes, but also somehow it embodies and I've only been able to speak about it in terms of it being alchemic that it almost felt like she was on the page in as few words as it took to have her on the page but it was almost like a, but also he really works on his, you know, he'll spend a year or two manifesting in his head and I think it's the same with an artist I think it's the same with a Clemente or with a Bryce Martin where they work on a single painting for a year and when they're done it's one colour it is one colour and yet or with Rothko you stand in front of it and yeah, it's what is and it's the same with his writing It's undeclared depths that are just embedded there's a wonderful moment just a home in one thing in the fall wonderful moment where Stella does something without any explanation, without any indication it's an expression of her inner psychology and desire she takes an attractive young man back to her hotel room Foxham and then doesn't, we use this for a number Men have been doing that on film for years but women weren't allowed to do that I mean the amount of time, the amount of times in all of the press that I did for the whole three seasons within the first three questions from a journalist it was about that because they couldn't handle it in 2019 or whatever it would have been in season three it was remarkable and I found that, I found that as fascinating as anything else people couldn't get over it this intelligent, sexy woman takes a man, has a brilliant moment of sex and says, right that's you for all really good, really good as far as, you know, talk about it that's how liberation works ladies and gentlemen we're racing on because we've got a lot to get through Blanc du Bois now, one of the things that I think I must ask you when it comes to character is the question of tradition because some roles it's not true of Stella it's not true of a brand-newly minted character that you've made before Arari's but what about a character who's been minted long ago and who has been played famously as Blanche was, of course on screen and on stage many times what's your relationship with that do you ignore it in your formation of the character or do you draw it in I mean this has happened to you a few times famously more recently in all about Eve I remember talking to you at the time and you said I'm not taking any interest in Betty Davis' performance famous performance as Margot Channing you had to find it yourself can you just talk us through that well, I mean exactly right and part of it is fear of some part of my brain mimicking something or not starting from a clean slate and now taking on things that I don't necessarily agree with once I have then done my own work on it and I think having worked with Benedict Andrews who was the director of Streetcar I found working with him so rewarding and such an amazing experience for this, particularly for this play which I've been wanting to do for no less than 30 years and when we got into the rehearsal space we really really started from scratch and we started from scratch and we dug such a deep hole in getting into all the different layers of Williams' text Can I just interrupt and ask you why you wanted for 30 years to play that particular character I did a monologue from it for an audition but I didn't remember that until I had spoken in an interview about the fact that I'd always wanted to play Blanche du Bois and my mum sent me an Ewell and said because you did an interview for such and such for this thing when you were a teenager and I'd completely forgotten and it's again, it's almost like it might be a little bit along the lines of a string theory which is that it's already happened in a way something that is incredibly profound in your life and so to what degree are we moving towards that end because it already exists and I might sound a little bit mad at the minute but to what degree are we manifesting out of out of thin air because it did feel, I can't tell you why because it's already there the language is there, she's there as a character but I already identified as a 16 year old young lady I already identified with Blanche and I knew that she lived inside me but why? I could see it at the time and it seemed, if you don't mind the suggestion at some level not in a crudely autobiographical way necessarily but at some level intensely personal you and I made a short film based on, it was a prequel to the play actually which you directed after we did the play and that piece, that film, beautiful I think showed a heavy investment in your part in the deep history of the character in the brokenness going way back as it was before the events in the play you were interested in the mess, the brokenness and it seemed to me as I watched you direct it and play it of course that there was something in it about her vulnerability which just was a touchstone for you somehow Yes, yes Is that what it is? but also the degree to her she's barreling forward full speed ahead as self-destruction at a brick wall at the same time that there's also part of her that knows that she's heading in that direction and she wants to be saved she's not necessarily able or willing to save herself and to do what it takes to pull herself off of that train but she knows that there's a chance that somebody else It was pretty mesmerising that what she had was in her suffering she had incredible strength and spirit desperate for survival leaning into survival but somehow falling short That tension is fascinating and somehow that tension exists inside me and I feel like it almost still does exist inside me even though I feel like more than blanch I win at the end of the day so far I keep winning and jumping off the train but there is something definitely about that Could you introduce us to that space though Gillian? It's the hardest thing to talk about in a way but there's Tennessee William He's written a classic, it's an accepted classic we know the words, we all quote them it seems set in concrete and then you come in and say it's not set in concrete, it's liquid I'm going to insert myself these are the lines this is the situation the director and the company are going to go somewhere with this Can you just describe that creation? I think that's the director that's another thing that happens in starting from a clean slate at least in my experience is what that allows you is if you're with a good director which Benedict was that you can be led to those places and I had no idea where we were headed I had no idea how she was going to end up sitting in that world how it was going to sit in relation to this revolving stage that we were on or any of it and he slowly, slowly pulled at all of us and guided us at the same time towards who we became as these characters and I couldn't have it could have been different under a director a different director's hand I don't know if that was the blanch that was always inside me and that's how she would have I would have manifested her the matter who the director was as a side issue during that process she described of being led by a director towards that clarity have you ever thought in the middle of that journey this isn't working this director's wrong certainly not with blanch no no I mean in other parts throughout your career I've certainly thought he she doesn't know what the fuck they're doing I've thought that and how does the character creation survive what am I doing here why did I say yes oh my god they start ringing people now is that is that something that you have to learn to cope with as an actor you have an idea of a character you're on this track now you've never walked off a production as far as I understand have you no it's not necessarily so much that it's about because I'm happy to be led and very often I show up I mean I just did a film in Pittsburgh and you know I mean sometimes I know exactly with historical characters obviously you know what you want yourself to be like as them as the final you know but and you have to trust yourself like with Thatcher you have to trust yourself that at the point that you've got all the bits on and the hair and the clothes and everything and that it's all going to come together that the walk and the movements and everything that it's going to you know but and then there's the version where which I just did which is where I don't get quite so specific I mean that had to be so specific Thatcher and always something I just did where kind of a loony character not particularly well drawn out in the script when knowing what she was going to look like because I've done a lot of fittings no clue who she was but had to trust and chose to trust other than some things that I've made up in my head that I was going to wait until actually I was kind of there on set with them to see how she turned up you know and sometimes that happened and you know fortunately I think it went alright in the end Oh totally I mean one of the things we were obsessed with obviously the RSL text writing how much of it is embedded in the art of literature I'll talk about that I mean sorry I'll ask you a question I mean it's just really a prompt I know that you care about this because perhaps of all the actors that I know and certainly among your generation you're actually properly engaged with the question of literary character you played Lady Deadlock we talked about Lily Barth you've got a relationship with text as it were arriving at a character out of a famous text can you just give us a little bit? Yeah I mean I know with Lily Barth that you know I really really studied the novel and same for Bleak House because there's only so much that a screenplay can hold and particularly with something that is not multi-series but a single film like House of Murth you know there's going to be so many things that that the film is not going to be able to encompass that are in the book and on the one hand you have to be able to immerse yourself in the novel but let go enough that you don't then ring the director every five minutes and say why isn't this bit in it and why isn't that bit and I think my character would do this and same with the crown you know working on the crown is very much it's not a biopic about the prime ministers you know it is about the queen and about the crown and everything is through that lens and so so you can do all this research and work you know your buns off but the the parameters of what you're working within are only those six episodes are only those slices of her life you know and so even though you may have immersed yourself entirely in you know the her dealings with unions or with the IRA or with whatever it might have been you don't get to go there you know you don't really get to you seem to like to absorb the history of the kind of societal pressure I mean for me I feel like if I didn't do that even though it's not touched on within the text of the screenplay I would feel like when I'm doing the character to service but also that the character would feel thin even in just doing the research and filling in all that stuff is the Rothko that was the layers I remember this specifically I mean it was a huge part but it was a very important part in the adaptation of war and peace or Madam Shearer you know the Salonist and there she was at the top of the show it's not like you wanted to study the Napoleonic war but you needed to understand what the historical pressure in that room was and you just found that it didn't come into the script it wasn't something she said it was something she was at some level just another layer but let's get to Thatcher because it's one of our famous seven characters and of course we've been talking about text a lot as seems right but with Thatcher what we must discuss is the physicality of the acting suddenly you were doing something with your mouth doing something with your head leaning into people in a different way I'd never seen anything like that from you before of course there's the lookalikey aspect and there's the big hair and all the rest of it but more importantly you did something to your physical being in that part you dropped your voice can you just tell us how you found all that because it wasn't obvious that you would it must have been tough and I think that is one of the things that is the scariest thing and it's similar with Eleanor Roosevelt which is but before again I guess that's the same with all of them whether they are historical characters literary characters or brand new contemporary characters which is that in order to say yes to something I have to know that it already exists inside me is no point in going searching for it because you know and so given that given that when I asked myself that question could I be do I think I could play that chair for whatever reason I thought that I could and so then it's about knowing that we're not going to use prosthetics knowing that there's a lot of differences between her and I what are the aside from the givens which are that you're going to have the helmet and you're going to have a body suit to make my girth a little bit bigger and the shoes and knowing that I'm going to study her mannerisms and her walk and etc etc knowing that I'm going to study the voice to the best of my ability and find a place where it exists somewhere between her voice and my voice so it doesn't sound too over the top or too unreal or whatever then there is the you know how to sit inside of her so that when I'm inside because it's one thing to look afterwards and go oh you look like her or that's her profile or whatever but to actually feel like her from the inside that you are embodying that well that's the mountain to climb I suggest to you because in a way the way I put it to you is how do you be morally because you know that's the challenge right hugely divisive figure you've got to play it as a human being this isn't a question about do you agree with the politics or not this is somewhere else but it's how do you take on the moral being of a character some people think is despicable morally and other people think was great it's the same that you have to when Forrest Whitaker played Idi Amin he actually got to a place where he absolutely thought that he was that he was doing the right he believed that Idi Amin was that's worrying he's worrying and I don't think you necessarily need to go that distance but you do need to get to a place where you understand why they are making the choices that they're making you understand it based on what you now know of their childhood of their upbringing of their relationship with their partner growing up in Grantham and having their father as an alderman all the bits that made up who she was being you know Methodist and hugely impactful on the decisions that she made as a politician and how the family worked inserting yourself and understanding what makes somebody tick is the first step towards understanding how they then get to make those choices so that you can you can play that scene making those choices within the scene and it feels it feels genuine it feels like you are embodying well it was lovely to watch you and Olivia Coleman in those scenes because there's two extremely powerful individuals both of them regal in different ways and there's a kind of struggle going on as to who is the more powerful who is the more correct of course you can see in the performance as I think I mean it's a judgement I guess you and Pete and the whole crew had to make but how are we going to how are we going to make her look because in some of those scenes she's working against her own best interest you can see that she's fucking it up she's not popular with the Queen in those scenes and therefore the audience too might be like well she didn't care she knew she was right that's what she would have said yeah and did you ever at any point think oh Christ I'm playing somebody who in every day life I may have objected to or does that not come into it can't do because that would be a bar to playing yeah I mean I know I'm very keen to play a murderer yeah I've never been really given I don't believe I've ever murdered anybody the mate is young what are you doing mate always ready for killing you know you have to give yourself out you just you have to so Eleanor Roosevelt I mean did that present I mean that is something entirely different because you can say all that but I just you know one doesn't have to fall in love with her I completely fell in love with Eleanor I knew she was an extraordinary woman because as extraordinary woman as she was and so it was just I mean just the delight in doing that research and I mean we're getting a bit of an acting master class from you know I'll move to ask you what are the things about Roosevelt that you gave your clue how to do her how to find this extraordinary woman other than the lines that are there in the script obviously you know again it's about to me it's about it's about the research it's about going back to childhood it's about understanding you know the thing about Eleanor that you know she was her self-esteem was unbelievably low for the majority of it I mean for her entire life you know she was raised essentially by her grandmother she lost her mother and then her father when she was 8 and 10 her mean grandmother raised and then sent her away to go to school and actually sent to the UK to go to school that was run by a French woman who essentially kind of saved her life and taught her taught her the kind of woman that she could be you know and she became that woman but um sorry I'm so in love with that is it hard sometimes to leave a character behind? no it's more you know she just had tragedy after tragedy after tragedy after tragedy and her mother used to tell her from a very young age that she was ugly and the reason why she was going to send her somewhere to be well educated is because she was never going to be able to use her looks and so she had to use her mind and she called her granny a mum called her you know those kinds of things inform a character and you know when you watch Eleanor later in life even when she would give speeches in front of the United Nations which she helped to you know to found in a sense she's tentative her voice is tentative she's not she's always referring to notes her voice is very high pitched and it's broken and she pauses a lot and she says um and she you know all those things that you think that that strong powerful women have a certain degree of perfection to that when they deliver and they give speech you know she's a perfect example of how you can be afraid and do it anyway but you can show that you're full of fear and you can do it anyway and you can lead the United Nations and you can go beyond the fear but not even beyond the fear to give the most amazing speech you know known to man just beyond the fear to be able to even stand up there and open your mouth and say what you need to say and there's actually a really wonderful line that I think was a direct quote from her which of course I'm not going to remember which is that another one but it's something to do with answers on her postcard please that because she's giving advice to her lover Hic who's coming to her for advice because she has to give a speech and she basically says you just you have to keep you have to get up and do it and say it because what you have to say is more important than the fear and so if you've got something to say that is more important than the fear then no matter what is going on for you inside in terms of terror and stage fright and you know that you've got a high pitch voice and weak but because she believes that I believe that because she believed that what she had to say was so important and it was what she had to say first of all she was a brilliant writer and she wrote most of what she said in public is she was transforming lives the amount of work that she did that transformed people's lives you know people from you know rough families, low income families you know being the voice of the New Deal of Frankpins New Deal going out onto the streets and actually be oh my gosh you know and because I think she knew that what she was doing was showing the American people that they were protected that they were heard that there was a way out of the mess that the country was in um and that even though she said um and ah and had this high pitch voice and she knew that she was judged for her looks and her voice she knew that what she was doing was so important that she needed to do it anyway Boy could we do with her now Oh my god I want to ask you before we go to your audience We have plenty of time for questions both online and here in person you lovely people but just let me while you prepare and while the mics are starting to roam I wanted to ask you the great Toni Morrison once said that this as an artist, as a writer with each characterisation, with each book there's a little less of you left as an artist that kind of rubs away your essential nature and I wonder if given this great panoply already um of characters you've played we've discussed seven of them what's left? Is there anything left in the tank? and if there is what is the character? Who is the character that you'd love to play? I mean is that you know I haven't I'm constantly playing uh women who have their shit together or if they don't they do enough of the time that they're holding you know there's a roof over their head and you know and I'm really uh I'm really interested in playing someone who is struggling quite a lot more than you know who is is really having a hard time either making ends me or is an you know proper I played a few alcoholics but and uh you know properly an addict or you know I hate to use this word but this I do mean this degenerate so if I understand you correctly what you want to do is play a serial killer who's really got a shit together can't wait right let's go for some questions stick your hand up you've got some at the front right away second row where are the mics? oh you could probably just yell it at this point I think so but it's fairer I think to the people who watch you go online to you can you come down if you've got a mic in your hand start asking your question save time down here we'll get to you hello Jillian are you able to address the rumours about you playing Sarah Paulson's wife potentially I was literally after some of the posts about you know throwing my name in the hat on my behalf right emailed one of my agents in the states and she said she's a 30 something 6 foot tall professional football player football player like one of the best football players in the world and has about 30lbs of muscle on me so no I would say I would say probably not thank you I think we've got one right down here plenty down here if you could be one of your characters for a day if you could live as any one of them who would it be and why he's in probably Stella Gibson I mean I don't say gene but I kind of feel like I live a gene's life more and more so the more embarrassing I get in the eyes of my sons but it would probably be quite fun to play Stella for a day just because she's so she's so smart and I really like the way her brain works in the show and also I wish that I could be a detective actually I'd love to but I'm too stupid and too clumsy and don't take enough stuff in I feel like I'm present but on the other hand I miss like three quarters of what is right in front of my eyes and also nobody would buy if I had knocked on people's doors or I like showed up at a crime scene people would be like isn't that what you think I'm saying so it would be really nice to actually get to do it like for real because I'm Stella Gibson do you still have a question okay sorry I know you're meant to be in control I'm not going to take control in my English class we've been studying great expectations so we watched a couple of versions of the book and I thought that your version was really interesting and I was just wondering what do you think Miss Tavisham is a symbol for in the novel a nation's exam pass is dependent on you no pressure I mean she so she's she's trapped she's the embodiment of a woman who is trapped in an old fashioned ideal of what a woman's role is meant to be and that was in part why I chose to the particular voice that I did too because I felt like she was almost frozen in time as the 18 year old that she would have been when she was at the altar and am I right? I think so I'm studying disappointment and how you can live a whole life as it were impacted by disappointment and what it does to you how it shapes her cruelty in a way I mean that was so evident in the way you played it because she wasn't just some mad person she was a suffering person yeah definitely and just eaten away with resentment and sorrow and self pity and none of those things attract her characteristics but at the same time kind of understandable and timeless and particularly given the era that we're talking about so just cut and paste all that you'll get an A yes right there and then we'll go further back hi what's up what's up I just wanted to know how was it to work with lily rape how it was to work I mean it was so great can we help that question again how was it to work with lily rape who plays Eleanor Roosevelt's lover I will say hick and she was great I mean I've seen some of the episodes now and the scenes between the two of them at least in the early episodes I've seen a really special and I don't know what I mean I know what we were aiming for and it seems like we might have have achieved what we were aiming for but I don't know why we're shocked because they are there's a different there's a different quality that hick brings out in Eleanor and almost a girlishness and a softness and a giddiness and yet lily is so she's so still and she's so she's a curious she's very very unique she's a wonderful a wonderful woman I really enjoyed working with her she was a delight but I feel like it was because it was her it was because of how she listened how her hick listened to Eleanor that it allowed this other aspect of Eleanor to come out fantastic let's take a couple of questions from online we've got a huge response online from audience members all around the world I'm just going to read out too for the purposes of Courtney joined via the Living Knowledge Network and Courtney asks when working with a new writer or producer what's the most valuable information they can provide you with to help you get into character and what do you prefer to figure out for yourself and then there's another question wait one at a time is that alright if I do it one at a time okay so the experience that I had on The Crown which was with they set a precedent that I wish could could be manifested all the time but you know the care with which the actors or anybody the crew all of the crew working on that series is such that you just you feel everybody feels like they're valued and they're part of the whole and also their research team is so exquisite and forensic you could literally ask them for anything I mean I asked for some things for them to find some things that were down such rabbit holes of you know detail video blah blah blah and so when you've had that support they're not having that support either because producer doesn't know how to do that it's not part of how a show is run it's not it means they don't have the funds they don't whatever it really reminds you then how much of your career has been incredibly lonely and you've been on your own because most of the time you are kind of finding all that yourself and needing to but the luxury of having producers that know that know and really care for the actors process is invaluable and incredibly rare with writers I don't want to get into yeah I'm sorry it's really hard to find really well written scripts and it just it is and so I have started to realise that I compartmentalise and I have a tendency to not necessarily care more and give more if I feel like the script is giving back but that would be natural wouldn't it it would but it feels very petty and well you've got to struggle though if the script isn't there well you've got to be a bit difficult but it is hard when you know that it's like but then it's down to be why have I said yes anyway so I'll leave that there and another question and it came from Damien Barre who's also a fellow of the RSL hello Damien and this one's for Gillian and Andrew you can read one book again for the first time really relive a formative reading moment which book is it and which version of you is reading it oh god that's a cracking question we love Damien Barre by the way hello Damien do you want to go first? I'll pick an obvious example because I think it's important to pick something that you read perhaps in childhood Damien's question is very good and for me it is to kill a mockingbird because I suddenly realised that not only was that the father that I wish I'd had but also that was enlightenment I wish we had every day was the understanding a living work of literature and by the way they're always a society of literature is the great organisation for keeping these questions alive and adding to them and refining them and leaning into genuine change and for me that book I could see that every time that book occurred to me all the way through my life it would be a prism through which I'd achieve a better understanding of who I was and where I was what planet I was on and what the morality was of that place and what the complications were one of the more complications today just in how it's been reframed that's right and we live with great writing every day in that way so I would love to be reading that for the first time tomorrow and starting all over again gosh oh I'm really struggling mostly because some of my favourite books are so dark and I'm not sure I really want to be in that place at this particular moment again although I do I mean for instance a little life I'm not sure I could not believe how how good and profoundly devastating and richly drawn those characters were but I'm not sure whether I want to put myself in that world at this particular moment I'm trying to think of books that I've read when I was a lot younger I didn't really discover reading I think until I was an adult in a way that I wished that I had but in the interest of time I think I'll leave it at that we've still got some time for more questions so please fire your hands up there's always this sense that we should be fair to the geography of the room so let's go to the middle yes hi if you could give one piece of advice to young performers what would it be what would you maybe have said to your younger self um I think I have a a responsibility to change I mean I was asked at one point to write a letter to my younger self of advice a letter that was then published and I but it doesn't really relate to performance and I guess in relation to performance performance is quite different because it's so what I have learned and this is both for you know in the old days of auditioning and it still relates to performances as a professional actor is that if you put everything you have into something whether it's an audition or whether it's in a play or whatever you're cast with or whatever it is that you're doing whether the performance is dance or whether you're a painter or whatever if you know that at that particular time in that moment with the information that you have and the time that you have and that if you put everything you know you have into it then that can actually feel like that's enough that you know that you've given you can't let yourself off the hook you can't say oh well I didn't get it because there's two parts of this there's the the way that we can sometimes sabotage things by not really putting effort into it because that means if we don't get it then we can just say to ourselves oh well I didn't really try it's actually doing the opposite knowing that that you did the absolute best and the fact that you didn't get it does not mean that the best that you could do is not good enough it means that it purely was not meant for you it was meant for somebody else so then being able to then let go of what the consequence is which is incredibly freeing to be able to honestly say look I did I showed up my 100 or 110% and same with Thatcher I put everything into that I felt like I did the best that I could do at the end of the day you know I'm sure there are people out there who actually hated my portrayal of her but the majority could have hated and gone what the hell was she doing I mean what with the head and the main that could have been the majority that could have been all the articles that could have been you know and I needed to be in a place where I felt like this is what I've got this is what I've got I'm going to leave it or leave it and really being able to cut to if that had been the case I might not be sitting here I might have quit the business but the idea is that actually you have to get to a place where you can let go and let go after auditions just trusting that and the amount of times that after the effect when I haven't gotten something that I was particularly attached to when I realised that actually I'm so grateful I'm so grateful I didn't I didn't get that because another door is opened or my mum needs me or you know whatever Thank you Yes you've got it Hi so I was wondering whether your character interpretation of Blanche had been led by Tennessee Williams's sort of kind of ahead of its time style within it yet it was down by the societal aspects of the time I think definitely yes I mean I think that my interpretation and I think probably led by Benedict but certainly I came to this realisation and understanding was that the version of the moth to the flame of Blanche had as much strength and fire in her then as it had vulnerability and I used to word weakness but I mean weakness just in terms of her being under the control of the alcohol being under the control of her relationship to men being under the control of her her own demons and so I also You mean in a sense that her fragility shouldn't be allowed to write her off that she was somehow because she was fragile and vulnerable that didn't mean she was a write-off person there was always that way of describing Blanche and early reviews and even William has to be said sometimes allowed you to feel she was this kind of crazy person crazy person and also that all of those all of the life events and all of the attributes that he writes equate to a woman who is on the outside so delicate and weak that she looks like she might blow over or break or I don't I feel like there was enough in his description of the fire in her belly that that lended itself to imagine imagine living that the life that she lived before she showed up on her sister's doorstep to keep coming back to keep showing up after being kicked out of a town after selling yourself after being beaten up by this liquid gold and to walk into a whole lot of male brutality and be blamed for it there's so much going on in that play which you drew out that's a question that I would like to ask do you ever want to go back again to a character that has been known performers go back there was a potential opportunity for us to do it a third time and at that point I started that route and then I realised that actually I feel like I escaped with my life don't go there again I'm just trusting to you there's so many hands up to have it across to you let's get the questions moving yes terrific event really great I wanted to ask Gillian whether you had read White Houses by Amy Bloom when you were preparing for the Eleanor Roosevelt series no that's a pity you should have it's about it's about it's it's based around the relationship of Eleanor and Hic and is really a wonderful read so it's a pity thank you he's still reading yeah who's got the mic I've got it I wondered I started to ask you a question on the galaxy zoom and then the time cut out I wondered if you could finish it it's about Macbeth you've often said you wanted to play Lady Macbeth and I wondered who would you choose which dashing Scotsman would you choose to be your to be your Macbeth to be Macbeth can you think of a character I'm going to answer this in a very disappointing way which is that I've since decided against it too many portrayals and existences no I think after you've done such full-bodied constant immersed characters as a blanch and a thatcher et cetera et cetera I almost feel like Lady Macbeth it feels too easy in the same way I almost feel like Heather Gabbler is too obvious I did a Lady Macbeth as an audition when I when I was in my late 20s I think and and it was that that got me interested but it was the same time that in the work that I put into it and I don't know I just I'm not sure if I would find it satisfying enough and I might be proved wrong I think it's an interesting piece of self-knowledge that if I could venture because Francis McDormand I think did a brilliant job recently on screen but I think that it's a piece of self-knowledge to know that something's slightly too predictable for you so in a sense it's like something being overwritten there isn't enough room for you because people have already imagined you in roles like that I've seen you in roles like that perhaps and it also feels like I've explored so much and it doesn't feel like it's something that I haven't explored yet which is part of why I say yes to things you make good choices on that basis you go with your gut which must tell you no no that's not going to be as exciting as it seems on paper I kind of got to that when I was at the point of am I going to give away months of my life to this I kind of made the decision not to and I might come back to it but yeah Who's got it? Julian thank you so much for a lovely evening I'm curious about one particular aspect that is a Canadian now living over here I'm keen to question you about your accent this evening what feels natural to you now that you're living over here and when do you have to put it on when do you turn the dial up when you turn it back down how do you approach an audio coming into an audience like this Usually it's about what's in my ear simultaneously because that's how I mean I just got back from the States and while I was in the States the other half of my accent was part of how I was communicating and it is if I was five minutes on a phone with somebody from the States right now after doing this interview I would fall into an American accent and it's something that at various times I've tried to control it I've thought this is freaking people out too much it's I need to you know when I've tried to control it it just sounds I feel like I sound I sound like an idiot I'm trying not to speak with a British accent I'm trying to speak with an American accent and it feels very it feels false and what feels most natural to me having grown up in both places predominantly in my formative years having grown up in the UK this feels the most natural when I'm here and American feels the most natural when I'm there and it's kind of as simple as that Can I ask you a question because I have a microphone, I have a priority I can't see where you are I'm here Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence is entering all kinds of arts and there are computer games there is augmented cinema that Cameron is doing so what do you think what is the future of cinema there will be no actors at all it will be all computer generated or not and you personally would you buy AI generated art Let's take the last question I think we just take the last question Would you buy AI generated art? AI generated art so not NFTs actually AI generated art Why are you laughing? I've never thought about that I didn't know that AI is generated art I mean if I liked it and I could afford it I don't know Was there another part of that question that you wanted to address the earlier bit? No I just read a white bird with my son because he had to read it for class and I thought it was beautiful and I just wanted to know they haven't really said too much about the movie adaptation that you've done can you tell us anything about the filming or the character or anything like that or how you prepared for it Directed by Mark Forrester and I shot it in Prague at the beginning of this year and it also has Helen Mirren who is the grandmother It started as a what do you call that? What do you say? Exactly It started as a graphic novel and it's the story of a young boy in German occupied France to the young man has polio and he's on crutches and he lives with his parents still and he's in school I think he's 14 and I play his mother and he ends up helping a fellow classmate young girl to hide when the Germans come to take the Jews away from his classroom and so he helps to hide her and he hides her in the barn outside their house and for over two years and they develop a very strong beautiful friendship and relationship and I probably shouldn't tell you the end but anyway it was Directed by Mark Forrester I've seen it, it's really beautiful the kids in it the young girl and the boy at riveting and I know they're trying to take it to festivals first before it comes out so it's very sweet Thank you for two more questions Where are the mics? Go for it, just get them into the hands of people with their hands up please Hi Jillian at the back Hi, how are you? I'm just wondering if you've ever returned to the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, which you helped me a famous and if you keep in touch with Jamie Dornan Where is the Merchant Hotel in Belfast? What? You did a lot of filming there I thought we filmed at the Marriott or the Hilton or something because that's where the pool was that's still a movie I don't remember Every once in a while Jamie and I communicate or have a meal together That really worked that chemistry and it's one of the mysteries of contemporary British television On paper that must have sounded mad a very bright investigator has a strange relationship with a killer That's not unusual though Having become since then a crime aficionado That's actually really not That means sympathy somehow In order to truly understand the serial killer for instance the investigator goes as far as goes properly into their mind their thinking and sometimes even loses the plot Okay one last question Hi Jillian I'm here So I might have misunderstood you earlier but I thought I heard you say that when you choose to accept a role you feel that it's either in you or it's not and I guess you come across as really cool, calm and collected and hearing you talk about Eleanor Roosevelt and how she's kind of afraid to not afraid but there's kind of that fear I was wondering if you kind of related to that at any stage in your career where you kind of like going back to what you're saying about string theory not string theory but you know about whether it's in you or not like yeah did you ever feel kind of that way maybe earlier on or even in the present? I still very often feel that way and I think so feeling that level of fear that it could potentially unsettle or unseat me and performance etc and I that's still very alive and well in my life and I think why I was interested in that with Eleanor is that the way that I as you said you seem calm and collected so that's that's a an outside persona that I know that I can put on a certain percentage of the time even though underneath I might or even you know physically my hand might be doing you know whether I'm doing like a a Letters Live thing at Royal Albert Hall or something like that where I'm in front of a large crowd and I'm in a little fear what I was fascinated about with Eleanor is the fact that she showed it she allowed herself she allowed herself I think she knew that that's how she came across and she knew but she knew that what she had to say was so much more important than the fact that she but also what she did is she had an audience back then there was something about her personality and her magnetism and the way that she or maybe it was the time because I've watched a lot of interviews but I think actually that part of it is a little bit of of elitism and that because she was a Roosevelt and certainly because she was then married to a president people didn't interrupt her men didn't interrupt her so you see these interviews where a journalist who is 90% male at that time is asking her questions and she's taking her time to answer and there are a lot of spaces between her words and her and he's not interrupting they're not interrupting and it's kind of shocking it's like wait that doesn't happen anymore I mean she's not me but I think it was because they wouldn't dare in society I don't think they would have dared to interrupt and then a Roosevelt even though she's taking a really long time to explain this and to talk about this particular thing and so I don't know what exactly my point is I think that I answered your question definitely ladies and gentlemen broadening the field and indeed the meaning of literature is a core value of the Royal Society of Literature it's a unique organisation give your beautiful minds a friend for life by joining the organisation Gillene and I agreed to do this event tonight because we admire it as an organisation we lean into the work that it's doing and we're so grateful to you for coming along tonight for your enthusiasm for your help and your fact checking and for your general enthusiasm it's been a real thrill for me personally and I want you to put your hands together and thank my friend Gillene Anderson I'm going to ask you to sit back down for one second so I can say thank you so much Andrew and Gillene please join us in the foyer after the event where Andrew will be signing books and for those of you attending online you can also buy books through the RSL's bookshop.org shop supporting independent book shops it's impossible to say book and shop that many times we're very grateful to Gillene and Andrew too for giving those here another special treat tonight with a few signed official RSL tote bags we have 10 signed literature matters tote bags available to buy from the RSL outside now all proceeds will go to supporting the charitable work that we do that Andrew has spoken so beautifully about I can see a few people itching to get out of their seats now so before I let you go I would just like to give a few final thanks for this evening thank you to our partners the British Library for hosting with us tonight particularly John Fawcett and B Rowlett thanks too to the team at Unique Media who have produced the live stream this evening particularly Rebecca Godley and John Stethridge and a particularly big particularly particularly big thank you to the RSL's events manager Beth Gallimaw as this is her last event for the RSL before taking up a new excellent and exciting role at the Bradford Literature Festival so thank you Beth to everyone joining us in this room and from your rooms at home we're looking forward to seeing you again very soon and hope you've enjoyed this evening as much as I have please join me in giving a final round of applause to our speakers this evening Gillian Anderson and Andrea Hogan