Read the interview with Andrea Riseborough, who plays Angelica Fanshawe.
Tell us more about Angelica Fanshawe and her journey.
In the series we see her life represented from the age of 17 to 38. She's a woman not of her time, in the sense that she's unapologetically brave and sexual and forward-thinking and ballsy and intelligent. She is not defeated by the constraints of society; she prevails, like Brilliana Harley, who defended her own house during the Civil War from a Royalist siege. Angelica is a woman like that.
Having played Mrs Thatcher earlier this year, is it a relief to play a fictional character
With Margaret Thatcher we had footage of her, so I could be like play-dough with that, and let it live in me. But the Maggie in the film was totally different to the real-life Maggie. With Angelica, I imagined myself as fully as possible in that world. It was a reverse situation, really, in that everybody else was real, and I was fictional. So it was a different kind of liberation. The liberation of playing Maggie was that if anyone asked why I did something a certain way, I could say that I actually researched it and it was the truth. With Angelica, the liberation was that I could use all my imaginative qualities to bring her to life.
The story is set over 20 years. Is it difficult filming a character across such a period of time?
What's difficult is that it's filmed non-sequentially. You might film scenes from four different episodes in a day, going from playing a 17-year-old to a 30-year-old, then you're 20, then you're 38 and have a kid suddenly. And you have to be on top of what she might be feeling. I had music that related to each period of Angelica's life for me. For the first period, I'd listen to Monteverdi, and it would take me to a certain place. Then for the second period, it was Rachmaninov, and it would evoke a certain time, and I could think of all the things I attached to that time. I found that really useful - I always do. And I used a book of pictures to help me imagine different places, and I also had four different perfumes that I used, from very young to more mature. And different knickers! Different undergarments, some of which made me feel saggy, and some of which made me feel youthful and light.
Was it a dream to dress up in all that finery?
I didn't think of it that way, but the clothes are absolutely exquisite. The costume designer is incredible. The colours that take you through the series are amazing. It's like painting, except in the Wild West. And it was also wonderful getting to fire pistols and getting to ride. My horse, called Poncho, had a bit of a kick to him. We had a good relationship, though.
At the moment you're doing Ivanov on the stage with Kenneth Branagh. What's it like having to seduce him on stage every night?
Sasha, my character, would never think of it as seducing him, but she does really hope that they can have a life together, and she really wants to make him happy. So imagining making a very, very unhappy Russian very happy is a joy each evening. And it's also quite painful when it doesn't work out. It's Chekhov - it's not going to.
