Dame Helen Mirren arrives slightly late and holding a glass of pink champagne. With an Oscar, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, a Tony, five Emmys and an Olivier award to her name, the leading lady of MobLand has perhaps earned the right to drink what and when she wants. Besides, she’s been busy.
We’re behind schedule, because Mirren has just asked the other female members of the cast to go back into the studio and stage a mock fight for RT’s photographer.
Her monarchs, which so far include Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II (twice) and Catherine the Great, can be intimidating, but none have the murderous force of Maeve Harrigan. A blood-hungry criminal avenger apparently shipped in from a Greek tragedy, Maeve makes life hot for her gang-boss husband, Pierce Brosnan’s Conrad Harrigan, and hell for everyone else. “She is awful,” says Mirren. “Am I shocked by her? I guess I am, but the piece inhabits a fantastical world. It’s a dreamscape really; heightened and extreme.”
As is Maeve’s language. “Oh, my God! Every other word is the c-word or the f-word.” Mirren, now 81, is a woman of the world but is she even slightly uncomfortable using the c-word so often? “I don’t have an issue with it at all,” she says cheerfully. “I’m an actor. I was thrown out of quite a few pubs in the old days when women weren’t supposed to be swearing in pubs.”
View oEmbed on the source websiteLike Macbeth, the first season of MobLand descended into bloodshed. Much of it was due to Maeve and her many plots, which often targeted the women in her own extended family.
The women who play those characters, Lara Pulver, Mandeep Dhillon and Teddie Allen, have all said they see Mirren as an inspirational figure. “It’s very weird; as you get older, a sort of ill-placed respect arrives for no particular reason,” she says of this. “I think it’s just the respect of survival. I don’t feel any different really to how I did when I was 23 or 24.”
The show attracted publicity earlier in the year when it was reported that Hardy’s on-set behaviour had annoyed the rest of the cast. How does she deal with media furores? “I separate myself from all of that,” she says. “I don’t read it. I don’t look at it. I don’t contribute to it.”
I wonder if she has become more forgiving of people? “No, but what you learn is every single person is different; every single person has their own way of doing things. There’s not one way, there’s a million different ways.” She takes a sip of pink champagne. “What you want is what’s on the screen, or what’s on the stage, to be great. And the only way to do that is for everyone to feel that they can be free to create and explore and experiment and f*** up.” Surely Mirren, with her five Emmys, doesn’t f*** up? “Oh endlessly, but that’s part of the game.”
“I don’t understand it, honestly. Why did Agatha Christie write so many books about murder? It’s very interesting that it’s women who buy and who watch true crime and are fascinated by people being dismembered and buried and dropped in swamps.” But this, she points out, is Guy Ritchie’s version of violence. “It’s not realism, it’s not documentary. It’s very, very, very heightened, and because of that, very free. There’s an element of chaos and wildness about it.”
I hope I’m not remotely like Maeve,” she says. “I absolutely love entering her world. I go home thinking, ‘Why am I enjoying this so much? Why do I feel so easy doing this?’ There must be some flaw in my character.”
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