Matthew Macfadyen and his spouse Keeley Hawes are Britain’s most in-demand TV energy couple. Pleasure & Prejudice and Ripper Avenue star Matthew has lately been catapulted to international fame because of the smash US drama Succession, whereas Keeley, star of Bodyguard, The Durrells and Crossfire, is one in every of our most sought-after main women.
However the couple have barely labored collectively since they famously fell in love on the set of BBC1 spy drama Spooks 20 years in the past, so it’s a uncommon deal with to see the pair appearing collectively in new drama Stonehouse. Primarily based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of Labour MP John Stonehouse, who faked his personal demise in 1974 in a bid to keep away from monetary and private humiliation, the three-part sequence involves ITV this week.
In a wig, sideburns and pretend tooth, Matthew stars because the charismatic MP whose self-importance and errors of judgement led him to infamy. Keeley performs Barbara, a mannequin politician’s spouse blindsided by her husband’s faked suicide. ‘Working with Matthew was pleasant!’ says Keeley, 46. ‘We’d talked about doing one thing collectively once more, and this was excellent.’
They shared a comfortable time in an Airbnb whereas filming close to Birmingham, even taking their canine alongside. ‘It was most likely stranger for individuals round us on set, understanding we’re married and the way which may work,’ says Keeley. ‘For us, it was simply actually regular. Having labored collectively earlier than we knew it could be OK. We’d drive in collectively, then his pretend tooth would go in, we’d do the scenes after which have lunch. It was a stunning expertise.’
Matthew Macfadyen and his spouse Keeley Hawes are Britain’s most in-demand TV energy couple, pictured as Barbara Stonehouse and John Stonehouse in ITV’s Stonehouse
Stonehouse’s weird story is advised with a lightweight contact, in the identical model as 2018’s A Very English Scandal about MP Jeremy Thorpe, starring Hugh Grant. The similarity is unsurprising, provided that author John Preston is pivotal to each. A Very English Scandal was primarily based on his 2016 non-fiction guide, tailored for the display by Russell T Davies, whereas Stonehouse is John’s first script for TV and has the identical jaunty method.
John turned to Davies’s Scandal scripts to assist him write Stonehouse. ‘The chance got here as much as do Stonehouse as a TV sequence, not as a guide,’ he says. ‘For me that was a really enticing concept as a result of I’d by no means written a script earlier than. I had Russell’s scripts for A Very English Scandal at house so I might have a look at them and suppose, “Oh, in order that’s how he did it.” So it really did educate me lots.’
And the fantastical story fits the breezy tone completely. A rising star within the Labour authorities led by Harold Wilson (Kevin R McNally), junior minister Stonehouse was tipped as a future PM. However outdoors politics his companies have been deeply in debt, and presumably as early as 1959 he’d begun spying for Czechoslovakia to generate profits. Married with three kids, he additionally started an extra-marital affair together with his secretary Sheila Buckley (Showtrial’s Emer Heatley).
His life unravelling, Stonehouse stole the id of a deceased constituent and in November 1974 faked his demise in Miami and travelled to Australia to start a brand new life with Buckley. He didn’t get away with it, as the brand new drama reveals.
It’s such a weird story, says Matthew, that their very own son might barely consider it. ‘I used to be telling our 16-year-old and he was like, “What, actually? That’s not true!”’ laughs Matthew, 48, who has Maggie, 18, and Ralph, 16, with Keeley. She has one other son, Myles, 22, from her first marriage.
‘He’s ludicrous, however there’s one thing sympathetic about him,’ provides Matthew. ‘He was very personable, by all accounts, humorous and charismatic. However he wasn’t with out self-importance, and he preferred the trimmings of his place. He was nice enjoyable to play.’
Matthew Macfadyen as John Stonehouse, Keeley Hawes as Barbara Stonehouse and Emer Heatley as Sheila Buckley
Mired in monetary and romantic difficulties, with suspicions about his loyalty circulating in Westminster, Stonehouse made his fateful resolution. ‘I believe it simply turned an excessive amount of,’ says Matthew. ‘I performed it as if he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There’s a unprecedented scene the place he says goodbye to his spouse and youngsters and leaves for a enterprise journey to Miami with them not understanding this was meant to be a remaining farewell. When you begin interested by it, it’s unimaginable. Very troublesome to do. I discovered it fairly shifting.’
There are echoes of Matthew’s Emmy-winning flip as Tom Wambsgans in Succession: Stonehouse and Wambsgans are each method out of their depth. ‘There was a little bit of mining of Tom occurring when it got here to taking part in Stonehouse,’ admits Matthew. ‘Each like being close to energy – and each are grotesques.’
One other towering efficiency comes from Pirates Of The Caribbean’s Kevin R McNally, who says he felt strain to get Harold Wilson good as a result of viewers will nonetheless keep in mind the PM who served from 1964-70 and 1974-76. ‘Should you’re taking part in Disraeli, you go for the historic spirit as a result of no one alive has met him,’ causes Kevin, 66. ‘However with Harold Wilson I didn’t really feel I might get away with it being somewhat bit like him. I felt I needed to do as a lot as I might to inhabit him fully.
‘At college, I used to amuse my classmates by impersonating him. I felt that was helpful as a result of I needed to be as very similar to him as attainable, as a tribute to my technology.’
As for the long-suffering Barbara, Keeley got here to admire her resilience. ‘She was an clever lady who was formidable for her husband. It was a male-dominated world. As an MP’s spouse, she was used to a certain quantity of press. This was nothing in comparison with the furore after John went lacking after which was discovered. It was an enormous story. It will need to have been horrendous, humiliating and deeply upsetting. Their soiled linen aired within the papers. She was very robust and courageous.’
For budgetary causes, the faked demise was shot in Malaga, Spain, throughout unusually unhealthy climate. ‘Terrible storms,’ Matthew remembers. ‘The sky went yellow with all of the sand from the Sahara. We shot there for six days and on all however a type of days nobody might get within the water as a result of it was too harmful. Then we had someday of weak solar so went for it. The water was very chilly. A few of us have been in wetsuits and a few of us with out – together with me in wig and sideburns.’
The freezing dip was absolutely value it for Matthew to convey to life the flawed politician with the audacious plan. He additionally tried to convey the comical facet of the person.
‘There’s a stunning factor of caper about it,’ he says. ‘It’s the outdated adage, “If you can also make individuals chortle, you may take them some other place.”’
Stonehouse, Monday, 9pm, ITV1.
