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Keeley Hawes is reminiscing about hanging out with Harrison Ford at the Emmys. “I said hello, as you do, and we ended up having a little chat. He was just lovely. I said: ‘I’m a big fan of your beautiful wife [Ally McBeal star Calista Flockhart] as well.’ His face lit up at the mention of her. She was nearby and he looked at her lovingly, then turned back to me and said: ‘What a wife. What a life.’ I just melted.”
Hawes attended the Hollywood bash with her husband Matthew Macfadyen, who took home the outstanding supporting actor gong for his mighty turn as Tom Wambsgans in Succession. “Going with Matthew was the way to experience it,” she says. “If you’re ever lucky enough to be nominated for an award yourself, you get so nervous that it’s not very enjoyable. Here, I could get dressed up in a big frock, people-watch and have a fantastic time without any of the worry. It was a whirlwind of glitter and fabulousness … and Matthew won. What’s not to love? Often these things aren’t as glamorous as they look. That one really was.”
That’s enough glitzy gossip (for now). We’re meeting to discuss another major event involving frocks: BBC drama Miss Austen, timed to mark the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Based on Gill Hornby’s bestselling novel, it takes a long-standing literary mystery – why Cassandra Austen burned her novelist sister’s letters after her death – and reframes it as a story of sisterly devotion. “It feels like a classic costume drama, in the vein of Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice,” says Hawes. “Modern takes like Bridgerton are brilliant but this feels like part of the Austen canon, so her fans will be pleased. I read it and thought: ‘Why hasn’t this story been told before?’”
Miss Austen came along at a point when the three-time Bafta nominee was keen to shake things up. “I wanted to do something wholesome, for want of a better word. There’s so much darkness and murder in drama nowadays. That’s all well and good. Everything has its place and its audience. But I’d done several projects about death and was desperate to do something about love. I had no idea that a centuries-old love story between two sisters was the thing I was looking for.”
In Cassandra, Hawes creates a heroine as captivating as Austen’s. “What she did was a total act of love. The sisters adored each other – that’s historical fact – and Cassandra showed extraordinary foresight. She wanted the lasting memory of Jane to be her novels not her personal thoughts. Nowadays we’re used to knowing everybody’s feelings about everything, every minute of the day, through social media. She did something noble by ensuring that all we know about Jane is her work. And her own story is so moving. Despite the heartbreak, she’s warm and kind with a subtle dry wit. I found her very funny.”
Cassandra’s later life is intercut with flashbacks to their teens. Olivier award winner Patsy Ferran plays young Jane, while Scottish-Norwegian actor Synnøve Karlsen is young Cassy. Hawes and Karlsen previously played mother and daughter in The Midwich Cuckoos. “We get along great and see ourselves in each other, so I was delighted we got her. Synnøve’s going to be my daughter or young self in everything from now on. I’m putting it in my contract.”
The high-calibre ensemble also includes Rose Leslie and Jessica Hynes. “It’s totally women-led,” says Hawes. “Our writer, director and producers are all women. It’s still unusual to have a team like that, let alone for it to follow through into the cast. Not to do the boys down but it was a joy to be surrounded by incredible women. I hope that’s the way the industry’s going. I gravitate to women’s stories and try to be instrumental when I can.”
The cast accidentally went method during filming. “It was shot on location, so we’d sit round the fire in these freezing cold houses, having long conversations. Phones weren’t banned but, for some reason, it became almost a phone-free environment. It felt refreshingly old-fashioned, which lent itself to believing in that world.”
Despite often playing posh, Hawes hails from a solidly working-class background. She was raised in a council flat in London’s Marylebone and her father was a black-cab driver. When she was seven, Sylvia Young Theatre School moved premises to directly opposite her home. Hawes’s future literally appeared in front of her. “If it wasn’t for the grant and the help that I received [to attend the school], I wouldn’t have my career.” All I can do now is try to help others along.” She mentors students and is an ambassador for youth charity The Feathers Association, which began in her local community centre and was “hugely important” to her growing up.
That career went next-level when she turned Line of Duty’s DI Lindsay Denton into an antiheroine for the ages. “That was a gamechanger for me,” she says. “At that time, people didn’t often wear no makeup on screen. I’d tended to play more glamorous parts until then so it changed perceptions.” She was nicknamed “Steely Keeley” by critics, including this one. “I’ll take it,” she laughs. “I do like that nickname. It’s on the money, so thanks.”
Showrunner Jed Mercurio cast her in his next blockbuster series, political thriller Bodyguard, as a Conservative home secretary killed by a briefcase bomb. “For years afterwards, I got asked if she was really dead. People still regularly talk to me about it. It streamed worldwide on Netflix, so it happens anywhere I go.” She even received feedback from real-life counterpart Amber Rudd: “I bumped into her in a restaurant. It wasn’t based on her but she seemed very pleased. It was flattering in a way.”
Her next landmark role came in It’s a Sin, Russell T Davies’s 80s Aids crisis drama. Hawes delivered a towering turn as Valerie Tozer, the deeply-in-denial mother of protagonist Ritchie. “Oh my god, that show!” says Hawes. “It’s up there as a career highlight. The work, the impact, everything. I not only had lovely messages from actors who I really admire but also from viewers saying: ‘That was my mother, my life.’ Which is terribly sad but also great because we wanted people to feel that. And it led to a rise in HIV testing, which made us all proud.”
Despite her hit-stuffed CV, Hawes is often mistaken for another TV star. “I’m often congratulated on Suranne Jones’s work,” she chuckles. “I don’t want to disappoint people, so tend to just thank them. It’s perfect because I didn’t put in the graft but can revel in the glory.”
Next up is Prime Video thriller The Assassin. “We shot it in Athens last year. I play an ex-assassin who’s taken herself off to a Greek island for a quiet life – until, of course, her past catches up with her. Her estranged son, played by Freddie Highmore, comes to visit and all hell breaks loose. Loads of running around. Big action sequences. I’m badass. It was more fun than anybody should be allowed to have at work.”
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She believes roles for midlife women are slowly improving: “I’ve timed my ageing process well. Things are getting better.” Her sole complaint, albeit tongue-in-cheek, is how she’s asked to play even older. “In The Assassin, they call me a retired hitwoman. I’ve gone from playing grandmothers at 38 to retirees at 48. It’s a bit unfair but I try not to dwell. Even Cassandra Austen is described in the novel as barely able to get up the stairs, with long, grey hair trailing behind her. We aged the character down and used makeup to age me up a bit.”
Scripts must pass two tests before Hawes accepts a job: a bathtime read and Macfadyen’s approval. “We always read scripts for each other,” she says. “He’s got great taste, as we know. It’s like a novel – you can tell if you’re hooked within the first 30 pages. If the bathwater’s gone cold around me, then I’m in.” As her career progresses, she’s taking more risks: “The whole point of this job is to make your heart beat faster. The further you venture outside your comfort zone, the more exciting it is.”
She has a reputation for keeping in touch with former castmates, setting up WhatsApp groups when filming wraps. “There’s an active Durrells group chat. We have a Sylvia Young classmates one, with Emma Bunton and Kellie Bright. There’s even a Spooks one [she and Macfadyen met on the set of the 00s MI5 drama]. We saw David [Oyelowo, their co-star] last year in LA and fell straight back into being a bunch of giggling idiots. Nothing really changes.”
She and Macfadyen recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. What was it like watching him have the worst marriage ever in Succession? She laughs. “I actually think ours in Stonehouse [the couple co-starred in a drama about politician John Stonehouse, who faked his own death in 1974] was on a par, as far as toxic marriages go. It was extraordinary to watch the Succession phenomenon. My closest experience would be Bodyguard. It’s exciting to be in the thing that everyone’s talking about. We went to see Sarah [Snook, who played Tom’s wife Shiv] in The Picture of Dorian Gray in the West End. It was funny seeing people’s reactions to Matthew being in the audience and her being on stage. They were doing double takes, like ‘What’s going on?’”
Hawes was such a Succession fan, she’d be tempted to eavesdrop on secret script meetings. “I’ve got fond memories of Matthew doing read-throughs or being told what was happening in the next season over these high-security Zooms. He’d close himself away in another room but I’d be on the other side of the door, half-hearing things. People truly loved that show. I don’t know if it can be replaced. There’s a Succession-shaped hole on TV.”
Her current addiction is Clarkson’s Farm. “I wasn’t sure it would be for me but we started watching it and couldn’t stop. Whether or not you’re a fan of Mr Clarkson, he’s incredibly entertaining and it opens your eyes to what farmers are contending with. It’s also really moving. I mean, Gerald! We were actually in bed watching it on New Year’s Eve, well and truly asleep when the clock struck. There’s an insight into our rock’n’roll lifestyle.”
She laughs at them being dubbed a “showbiz power couple” by the press. “People like to label things. We just find it funny. A power couple, watching Clarkson’s Farm with two fluffy poodles and a bowl of nuts – that’s us.”
Miss Austen is on BBC One and iPlayer in February.
