View from my sofa: Natascha McElhone
Whisper it – the star of Hotel Portofino isn’t that keen on Italian food…
Ray Burmiston
- Jon Peake
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What’s the view from your sofa?
I look on to a cemetery, which is very beautiful. It’s Victorian and the architecture is amazing. It’s very quiet – you can hear owls hooting at night. I usually watch things on a computer because of being in transit quite a lot, but I do have a big TV in the basement. There’s no light, so you can pretend you’re in a cinema. That must be perfect for movie nights! I used to do movie nights with my three sons where I would show them films I’d seen at their age, like Dead Poets Society, French films – I was obsessed with Éric Rohmer – or classics like Brief Encounter or The Philadelphia Story and see if they resonated. Most of the time they were captivated.
What do you currently enjoy watching on your computer or TV?
I’m loving Only Murders in the Building. I love the Woody Allen film Manhattan Murder Mystery and it reminds me of that – the human desire to be involved in tragedy and drama. Also, the Mexican show Somos. on Netflix because I’m learning Spanish. I was going to learn Italian, but Carolina [Gonnelli], who plays Paola in Hotel Portofino and is half-Venezuelan and half-Italian, said to me, “It’s wonderful that you want to learn Italian, but it will only be useful in Italy. Spend your time learning my other language.” And so, I’m learning a sort of Latin American Spanish online. Hotel Portofino is set in Italy, but it’s filmed in Croatia — is that right? Yes, I think we get away with it. Croatia is incredibly beautiful, and the food is amazing. This is going to be contentious but I’ve had much better food in Croatia than I ever have in Italy.
That’s almost as shocking as your character Bella not only getting a divorce but — gasp! — wearing trousers in the 1920s! Are you glad that you live in the present day?
Oh yes, and I’m very excited about the future as well. I’m a Star Trek optimist rather than a Black Mirror pessimist when it comes to tech and AI. I’m now involved in an AI think tank, which came about because of a role I played in The First as an AI professor who was desperate to get to Mars. When I was at school, we didn’t use computers, but my kids are digital natives – though I was quite mean as they were the last people in all their year groups to get phones. They were social pariahs for a long time.
You’ve said that you dislike terms like “strong woman” when applied to your characters. Do you stand by that?
It’s the way I’ve always thought. I wasn’t given dolls as a kid. My brother wasn’t given guns. We had a very non-gendered upbringing. I remember a TV executive saying to me years ago, “Are you only interested in playing strong women?” and I said, “I’d be really interested in playing a doormat, actually,” because I think a lot of women end up being in that situation. I want to reflect reality. I’m not interested in playing only one type of person.
We’ll see you as Sherlock’s mother Cordelia in Guy Ritchie’s series Young Sherlock. Are you a Sherlock fan? I didn’t really have much exposure to the books, but it’s such an integral part of being British, it’s in the vernacular – you know, “No s**t, Sherlock!” But I was reticent when I heard about it. I was like, does the world need another Sherlock story? But it’s the origin story, which we’ve never seen. You want to know what experiences form a person.
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You’ve worked with Hollywood giants including Brad Pitt and George Clooney — did you ever pinch yourself? There are actors I admire, but I never hero-worshipped anyone. My mum [Noreen Taylor] was a rock journalist, and she’d come home with stories of how she’d been with Blondie or Chrissie Hynde. You learn from an early age that these are just normal people.
Authors
Jon Peake
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