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She reveals what we can SOFT all learn from the unbiddable duchess POWER “‘I’m not in the ‘Let’s move to an Oxfordshire home, originally a gift from LOUIS island and weave our own clothes’ Anne. “It’s like Mugabe built a house .” camp,” she says — and that would be She plays Sarah (Emma Cunniff e is WISE diffi cult, what with her being married Anne). Why? “I suppose my gut instinct to a man (the actor Sam Hoare) and was just that I knew that person,” she having two small children with him. says. Sarah was many things at once, t’s a testament to how blind, or But you definitely feel she would Garai adds: “A narcissist... meaty, and maybe how greedy, I am that I peruse the island’s brochure and con- complicated and funny... a monster... cannot for the life of me fathom sider the odd weekend break. just brilliant and witty and extra- Romola Garai’s necklace. Why on Today we meet to discuss a project ordinary... a bully.” A role like this is Iearth does it say “F* ** the Tortes”? that blends Garai’s mainstream appeal rare for women. “Maybe it’s the way Does she really have such an issue with her radical sensibilities. Queen men feel about playing Richard III. with cake? It’s only at the end, when I Anne is a play written by a woman, You’re a horrible person in lots of ways, ask, that she explains. “Oh, F*** the Helen Edmundson , directed by a but it’s fun to be you as well.” Tories!” she says blithely, fi ngering the woman, Natalie Abrahami, and with Not that Sarah was as subtle or as gold pendant written in a thick, looping peaches of parts for two actresses, who Machiavellian as Richard, she con- script. “My friend gave it to me, and it’s get to enact the real-life friendship cedes. “I think a lot of those ‘soft’ very hard to read,” she sighs. between Anne, last of the Stuarts , and qualities that are linked to women, like In retrospect, it was obvious. We her BFF Sarah Churchill, Duchess of diplomacy, she just doesn’t have any of have just spent an hour discussing Marlborough . To call the relationship those — and I think that’s something I Garai’s radical politics, and she’s an “intense” would be like calling Garai “a responded to.” She gives a knowing actress, so it was hardly going to say bit of a left ie”: it is very much all in. laugh. “She can’t help but be herself, “Team May”. But with a fi rebrand fem- “They do love each other, but they you know?” inist like Garai, it’s a given. The 34-year- cannot survive each other,” is how she Garai isn’t brusque or rude, but she old has, after nearly two decades in neatly puts it. does emit a direct intensity, a polite but the business, managed to morph from To summarise, Anne was the diffi - stubborn commitment to her cause. what could seem like another period- dent, dowdy princess under the sway Today, there is even something pained drama heroine by numbers (she made of Sarah, her bright and vivacious older about her, wide-eyed and anxious; her mark in 2002 ’s Daniel Deronda) to friend — but then Anne became queen she very much wants to say the right the star of more subversive or innova- and grew into her role, much to Sarah’s thing, but doesn’t want to sound a tive fare such as The Crimson Petal and fury and dismay. The relationship total prat. “This is the most pretentious the White, The Hour and Suff ragette. determined our history, aff ecting how interview I’ve ever given,” she says Then there are her campaigns — against Britain waged its wars, who was in at one point, appalled at her pro- lads’ mags , against the airbrushing of its government, and leaving us one of nouncements. “My husband is gonna her photos, and for better rights for our most ridiculous stately piles. “Blen- be, like, ‘This is hilarious — you’re working parents in her industry... heim Palace!” Garai exclaims of Sarah’s such a dick!’” BELL DARREN 4 25 June 2017 Certainly she is not very “chill”. I ask what is the best piece of advice anyone has given her. “I suppose it’s just important to try to have fun.” Do you need to remember that sometimes? “Yeah, I do . I think I’m the kind of person who can forget to have fun. It’s nice for me to work with people, socialise with people and be married to people who remember that you’re supposed to be having a good time.” In sum , she is beautifully unbidd- able. “I was never on-topic — I was never good at that,” she says simply. Where does that come from? She makes a face. “I think I’m just like that. It’s in my genes. What I like about Sarah is, some people are just not good at holding back, or being diff erent things to diff erent people. They’re just always the same. Sometimes that means you’re a bitch, or you’re thoughtless — but other times I think you can rely on people who are just themselves. Because you know what they’re gonna do , how they’re gonna react.” Unsurprisingly for someone who has excelled on stage as Shakespeare’s exacting nun, Isabella , in Measure for Measure at the Young Vic, Garai isn’t keen on half-measures. We live in a decade when feminism has returned with full force, but also felt a virulent backlash . Does she feel progress is slow? “I suppose that what frustrates me is not that the progress is slow, it’s that the reach of the debate is still limited. I think it’s a shame that we’re still talking about feminism and not talking enough about misogyny. People say, ‘ Well, is it a feminist play?’ But what they’re not saying is ‘ that is a misogynist play’. People are loath to call things out that they think are damaging, rather than celebrating.” She says that if a theatre runs mostly plays by men, directed by men and starring men, what else can it be but misogyny? I understand her point, but I wonder aloud whether misogyny isn’t a strong, divisive term. “I use it a lot ,” she says brightly . “I do think feminism has been diluted in an eff ort to make it Being widely available, and it has lost some of its momentum. And I think there are Sarah is ways you can just throw a stink bomb in the middle of things, and I think maybe like misogyny does that.” the way From the hints she gives, it sounds as if her husband brings out her lighter men feel side. But Garai doesn’t like talking about about Hoare, or her children, and we only know the basic details about her playing background. Her father was a banker, and they lived briefl y in Singapore Richard III. before settling in Wiltshire; she went to You’re the prestigious City of London School for Girls . She has three siblings, and horrible all their names begin with the letter R : in lots of she is Romola not because of the George Eliot novel, but because it’s the ways, but feminine of Romulus.