Q&A with Leanne Best who plays Adele Fairley

Playing Adele meant leaving your wedding celebrations early to start filming – that’s dedication! What made you say yes to the role?

Well, I got the script just before I was going away to get married and I was interested because we all grew up with Barbara Taylor Bradford. I remembered my mum and nan avidly watching the original series, but I knew this was the one time in my schedule that I just couldn’t film anything – the part would certainly have to knock my socks off for me to fly home early from my own wedding festivities. In the end she was impossible to turn down, so we changed our flights – I left a party in my heels, got straight on a plane to London, then on a train to Leeds. It was all worth it to have the opportunity to play a woman like Adele though. Thanks to my husband, who is also an actor and was very cool about it! 

Adele experiences mental illness at a time when there was no understanding or support – she is dismissed as the ‘mad woman in the attic’. What was it like to play her?

It was really interesting because she is an alcoholic, and agoraphobic. Addiction is a very complex illness, but on top of that she has also been treated really badly, and this adaptation really shows a woman navigating the world at a time when women were second class citizens. It didn't matter what your currency was, you had to barter with it to get as much as you could get. So Adele's lot is that she was the enigmatic daughter and that’s what piques the interest of Adam Fairley. The trade for marrying up is that she has to be this constant, dazzling presence, and it costs her dearly. There is something in the cruelty she exhibits towards Emma and ultimately herself, that is born of terminal frustration, teetering on self-annihilation, because she can't move, she's literally in a gilded cage. So she’s definitely struggling with alcoholism, but she is also having a big response to the life she has found herself living.

What was it like working with Emmett J. Scanlan to create this tempestuous marriage?

He was such a great teammate. We're both unafraid to get our hands dirty, to be really clear about what we want to say, but also to be really open to listening. We came at those scenes from a really heart-led space, even though it’s twisted and toxic, and they project the things they can't stomach about themselves onto each other, we had a great time filming it. As much as he loves her, their relationship becomes quite lacerating and traumatic, so it was great to work with someone I really trusted on that. 

You have some incredibly demanding, emotional scenes to play – was it challenging to play this character?

Yes, and we did a lot of the distressing stuff in one chunk at the beginning, so it felt a bit like going down the mine for hours and then you’d go back to the hotel! There is something really freeing about it, and the thing that I really loved about Adele is that often in art and in life you’re only allowed to be one thing – the beautiful one or the difficult one or the clever one – but Adele is so many things. Having the freedom to go full pelt, with big operatic swings at these kinds of scenes was really good fun. I did lose my voice a couple of times!

How would you describe Adele’s relationship with Emma?

Jessica Reynolds is a revelation as Emma, she’s superbly cast because she shows that real vulnerability while also having a huge amount of steel at her core. Adele finds her very beguiling because she’s such a vibrant young woman, but as soon as she feels betrayed by Emma she starts to be awful and manipulative. Adele has very little autonomy in this house and develops a really co-dependent relationship with Emma that then teeters onto visceral hatred.

Adele’s relationship with her sister, Olivia, is also fraught with difficulty, isn’t it?

I’ve always loved Lydia’s work and it was such a treat to get to work with her. The love triangle between Adam, Adele and Olivia is built on relationships that are so complicated – you will feel genuine sympathy for Olivia. Adele has taken up endless resources, she needs constant affirmation and expects everyone to orbit round her as she orbits round Adam. So you can totally understand how she feels when Adam turns his eye to Olivia and makes her feel worthy, valuable and attractive in a way she has never been allowed to be. Adele has previously taken up all the oxygen in the room and there has been no space for Olivia to exist. So I hope we’ve shown the complexity there, and that this is not good sister versus bad sister. They live in a world where they are only allowed to be one thing – Olivia is supposed to be grown up and dull, while Adele is infantilised and shiny, but those things aren’t really true.

Do you enjoy the world of period dramas?

One day I was on set with Emmett with my 18,000 tonnes of hair, looking like a John Waterhouse painting while he was dressed as the Lord of the manor, and we just started cackling because it was so divorced from our lives!

There are no cheats, our incredible hair and make up artists made these costumes as they would have been in the period, down to the stitch. A lot of Adele’s clothes had a looseness to them, a lot of dresses were falling off the shoulder to reflect how wild and unbound she is, so there was a lot of sneaky gaffer tape to make sure I wasn’t showing more than we wanted! I loved the hair so much – they used to take it off for me at the end of the day and I’d be bereft!

Do you think this drama still feels relevant for a modern audience?

Yes, of course when I mentioned the job to my mum and aunties they were so excited, and this iteration of the story will be a crowd pleaser in terms of staying true and honest to the books people love so much. But there’s also a newness about it that feels a bit more punk to me. It’s a bit more reckless, which I think makes it feel both timeless and very modern. 

A lot of the structures in place in the drama are things we are still coming to terms with today, and when you look at what Emma goes through as an unmarried woman with children, it throws up some really interesting things. What’s telling in this drama is how these societal structures don’t actually work for anyone – they destroy Adele but they destroy Adam too. He is entitled to do as he pleases, but all of it just leaves him feeling hollow. He can't outrun the life he was born into. The dazzling uniqueness of Emma Harte is that she does outrun her life, but the cost is so massive. So you see this really oppressive system that isn't working for anyone, and watching Emma wrangle with that as a young woman is really interesting.