Interview with Keeley Hawes who plays Anna

Why did Falling speak to you? 

It couldn’t fail to speak to me because at its heart it’s a love story. Beautifully observed, unsentimental and very tender.  The characters are so well drawn, and I have wanted to work with Jack Thorne for a long time. I was also intrigued by the fact that Jack had never written a love story. He has created something very special. 

What do you know – or thought you knew – about the life of a nun? 

I grew up opposite a convent, weirdly, in central London, so I saw a lot of the comings and goings – it was a beautiful convent but quite mysterious, with a very high wall. So, I know as much as anybody, which is very little, but I was lucky enough to have a long conversation with a former nun. She was a wonderful woman of about my age who, as they call it, “jumped over the wall” and left the convent and that life. I don't think you're going to get a lot of nuns to talk to for obvious reasons, so that was incredibly helpful. And Jack had done lots of research, so it's all in the script. This is a world we've seen in film and television, but often in a comedy.  

Anna does work in the community to some extent, doesn’t she? 

Yes, it was quite important, story wise, for her to go out and have the moments with her mother (Susan Brown). Anna is the head gardener at the convent, so the extra produce she grows in this amazing, enormous walled garden was a way to get her out into the community that made perfect sense. But it’s only a couple of hours, once a week, so most of her time is spent at the convent. 

What can you say about Anna? 

She's not expecting to fall in love! When we meet her, she's very content. She has spent more of her life in the convent than out of it, so she doesn't know anything else. She has a great relationship with the nuns there and with the abbess (Niamh Cusack) – they are her family. She is married to God so she’s already in a relationship, as is David. It's a lifetime commitment with no thoughts of leaving - neither of them is expecting this. That’s why it's so heartbreaking and difficult: they've given themselves to God in every way, so it's a real tussle. 

What happens when she meets David? 

They have a moment where their hands touch. It’s very unusual for Anna to be touching hands with a man, although she does come into contact with men, she has nice relationships with them and is comfortable with them. It's not just because he is a man and she's looking for a way out. It's a chemical reaction to David, specifically. 

What's so special about David?  

The casting of the wonderful Paapa is a lot to do with that. He's open and funny and brings those qualities to this role. They’re a really good match for each other intellectually, and they're going through the same thing. They live parallel lives, really, then occasionally get together and have a ten-page scene, then both go off into their own worlds again. I spent a lot of time in the convent or with my mother or Muriel (Rakie Ayola), who takes her in when she leaves, while David goes off and has his own storyline. It is a love story about these two characters who aren’t together all the time, which makes it even nicer when they are. 

Jack writes wonderful two-handers – what are they like to perform? 

It's like doing a play: Paapa and I have a 15-page scene in the final episode, and they’re often done in one take. There is something really wonderful and freeing about a take that takes ten minutes rather than the very short scenes you often get with TV. This is much rarer. I’d just like to do this all the time, to be honest! It does take more preparation for everybody across the board, but you're all part of this moment. Line of Duty was the extreme version for me, 25, 35 page-scenes, and the person I always feel most sorry for is the boom swinger! But those scenes are the fun ones where you feel a real sense of coming together. 

How was Paapa as a playing partner? 

Delightful. I was thrilled to bits when I heard that it would be him. He was so different to who I imagined might play that part, because I’d thought of an older priest, which is maybe the more obvious casting of that part. So, when they told me, it made perfect sense – such a brilliant piece of casting. He has such gravitas and depth but also funny bones, which is really helpful because he has that twinkle. Even in the very heavy scenes, he has a lovely lightness and vulnerability that is really appealing about that character, and what makes them similar. They're both in the same position, but it just takes him a lot longer to come round. It's a very female-male thing. She's like, “Come on, let's do it!”. He's like, “Oh, I don’t know…”  

How much does it take for Anna to be so straight with David about her feelings, so quickly? 

That's just her personality, it’s how she is about everything: very cut and dried, straight, forthright and honest, which may be a consequence of how she's lived her life. There’s no tiptoeing around things, which is quite shocking, certainly to David. It’s not that she's unaware of people's feelings, but she’s very much on the front foot. It's really refreshing that she says what's on her mind – not in a cruel way, but it's just not what we're used to. 

Falling in love can be quite exposing and shocking for anyone, but what impact does it have on Anna to have her entire existence challenged so directly? 

There’s huge guilt, because being a nun is being in a marriage, something to which you devote and dedicate your every waking minute. You have forsaken all others and everything else for this relationship with God, so to even question that, let alone act on it, is unthinkable. Guilt is a very powerful, awful emotion, which means this is the worst thing that could have happened, but also a wonderful thing. There's nothing better than falling in love, but for Anna it is hugely overshadowed by feelings of guilt and upset – it's like a bereavement. She's walking away from the nuns who have been her family, and she doesn't have any money, she doesn't have anything, only the clothes she's walking away in. She’s giving everything up in a way I can't quite get my head around. She has responsibilities, she feeds everyone, she has this lovely relationship with Polly (June Watson) who is this motherly figure while her postulant Bimpe (Shayde Sinclair) is almost the child figure in it. All these relationships mean so much to Anna, even aside from her relationship with God, so it's very difficult. But it makes you think: what would I do? What's my equivalent? My equivalent is standing up and walking out and never coming back to my house, my children, my husband, the dogs, everything. It's unthinkable. Getting on a bus to a new life where you then find out that person possibly doesn't feel the same about you… Dramatically, it's a wonderful thing. 

What can you say about Anna's upbringing? 

I love those flashes of the actress playing young Anna (Eloise Little), that family dynamic with Anna’s mum. We get glimpses of what her decision did to that family, why she went, her parents’ relationship and the heartbreak that it's caused her father in particular. Very few people have straightforward relationships with their family, so it adds a wonderful layer to Anna's story, explaining why she is where she is. 

How did you plug into playing someone with that depth and intensity of faith and belief? 

Being in that sort of world is always so helpful. You’re wearing a habit. You’re in a convent, in an amazing location, with some of the best actors we have in this country, our wonderful director Peter Hoar, who directed It’s A Sin, and a script like that. So, it's in the moments. I'm not method, it's always all about the script and the person you're acting with when you're in that moment, you’re plugged into it. The opportunity to speak to someone who has lived that experience was so useful thing too, so I had all of those things in my mind. 

How do the habits and the wimple and so on change how you carry yourself? 

It's a very short amount of time in the makeup chair, which is always great and really freeing. We all loved dressing up as nuns and I’d never done it before, so it was completely new. Once you put it on, you're halfway there because it's so unlike anything else. You are the same as everybody else, completely levelled. It's very focusing.