Zoe Wanamaker
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A regular fixture on the London stage (and U.K. television screens), Zoë Wanamaker was born in New York City. Lately, has become a regular visitor back to her birth town, recreating her electrifying London turn in the title role of the Donmar Warehouse production of Electra on Broadway in 1998, and starring in Lincoln Center Theatre’s production of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! in 2006. But speaking in her distinctively husky, warm English accent—filtered, no doubt, through the roll-up cigarettes that she constantly smokes—she couldn’t be more British, having been raised and educated here from an early age after her parents, the actor, director, producer (and founder of Shakespeare’s Globe in London) Sam Wanamaker and actress Charlotte Holland, moved here after he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. Worldwide audiences know Wanamaker best for her role in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, while U.K. television audiences know her for her ongoing lead performance in the long-running series My Family, in which she stars opposite Robert Lindsay, but it is as an associate artist at the National Theatre that has she become that rare thing: a genuine star of the stage. Broadway.com caught up with Wanamaker in her dressing room between the matinee and evening performances of Much Ado About Nothing, in which she is currently playing Beatrice to Simon Russell Beale’s Benedick.
You’re back at the National yet again—you’re virtually the house actress here now.
I’ve never thought of it like that, but thank you, it’s great to be here.
Zoë Wanamaker in
Much Ado About Nothing
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You keep coming back. Why is that?
I like companies. I loved working with the RSC, too, where I worked from 1976 on and off for 12 years.
You’ve also worked here at the National now during the regime of each of the last four artistic directors, Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and now Nicholas Hytner.
I’m a very lucky girl!
Your first job here was when you appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest with Judi Dench, directed by Peter Hall, in 1982…
Doing a very, very English play with very, very English people, like Judi, Anna Massey, Nigel Havers and Paul Rogers, it was the first time I’d ever felt American and Jewish by comparison. But it was a fantastic company.
Were you surprised when Nick asked you to play Beatrice?
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would play her—the only thing left for me in Shakespeare, I thought, was to play Margaret in the Histories, and then I'd need a lot of Botox for the beginning, which would have to be sucked out at the end. In fact when I left drama school it was that time in the ‘70s when Shakespeare was marginalized to some extent and new work was actually what I wanted to do. So when I first joined the RSC in 1976, I wanted to do as many new plays in the Other Place as I could, but I only did only one Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. It’s been a long time since I did any Shakespeare, actually—the last one was when I went back to the RSC to play Desdemona in Othello with Willard White and Ian McKellen, directed by Trevor Nunn, at Stratford that then transferred to the Young Vic [in 1989]. But I love Shakespeare, because it's so human. He knew everything about the human heart. And Shakespeare is like music. I kind of know where the dots are, but once you start mining it, you find out so much more.
Simon Russell Beale and Zoë Wanamaker
in Much Ado About Nothing
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Isn’t Shakespeare, in your blood, thanks to your parents, and in particular your dad?
Yes, that was his passion. I only get the passion when I'm doing it. It’s scary, because I'm not as fluent in the language of Shakespeare as say Simon Russell Beale is, but I'm willing to learn and be guided and encouraged. I know I can do it, because I understand it, from when I was a kid. I was lucky—I was brought up in theatrical family, they were both Americans abroad and they went to see and do everything that London offered. That was their legacy to me.
And the Globe, of course, is your dad’s legacy to London – the only pity is that he didn’t live to see it completed and thriving, as it is now.
That was an absolute tragedy. It was dad's passion completely, and it slightly embarrassed me at the time, I have to say. There were so many detractors against it, so many people asking why we needed it. Nobody took him seriously. But it was only really after he died that I realised the consummate effort and struggle he put into it. He dedicated 27 years of his life to it.
Why haven’t appeared there yourself?
It is just too emotional for me. I get very emotional when I walk into the building.
Thanks to your parentage and birthplace, you can work on either side of the Atlantic.
But I was always frightened of going [to the U.S.] without a job to hawk my ass around. Because I was brought up here, I have always had more of a personal connection with England.
It was an RSC show that first took you back to New York, when Pam Gems’ Piaf transferred to Broadway in 1981.
That was my first introduction to playing in my home town. And then I went back and did Loot in 1986—we got five Tony nominations, but then closed when we didn’t win any. But that’s what I love about New York—you actually know where you stand immediately, and you’re either a hit or you’re not.
Zoë Wanamaker in
Awake and Sing!
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You were definitely a hit when you starred in Awake and Sing! in 2006. But then we got a revival of the play here at the Almeida last year, it was done in a new production and you weren’t in it.
It had been mooted to bring that production over, but financially I don't think anybody could have done it with the same cast and brought the American actors over and put them up here, so we decided it was time to move on and let someone else have a go.
Despite your success in film and TV, it’s great that you keep returning to the stage.
I love it. I really enjoy doing it and being challenged by language and the art of it. TV is a completely different discipline. It’s extraordinary, though, that My Family has been so successful. We are about to do series seven and eight now. It’s one of the reasons we can’t go on with Much Ado, since it starts at the end of this.
Tell me about starring opposite Robert Lindsay.
I enjoy working with him very much, and I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for him. He has comedic taste and he's extremely clever at what he does, and I admire that. It is a beast [working on the show], but we’re seen by a lot more people: 80,000 people will see Much Ado, that’s it, whereas My Family will play to eight million in one night. You can’t compete with that, but hopefully it will draw people to come to the theatre.