Monarch Of The Glen (2000) s03e00 Episode Script
Susan Hampshire Interview
Female interviewer: Susan Hampshire, you're playing Molly MacDonald in "Monarch of the Glen.
" How much of a welcome change is that from all the costume dramas you've played in the past? The loveliest thing in the world is not to be putting on a corset and pantaloons and a wig and all the things which are so- they weight so much and they're so restricting, and you feel so tired at the end of the day.
So it's fantastic to be in sloppy clothes.
Most of the time, Molly's in gardening clothes or old skirts or huge jumpers.
Also the clothes are very warm.
I'm not having to wonder- you know, worry about bare shoulders and is the shoulder- you know, are they made up to look a nice alabaster color.
If I wanted to go in the sun I could, whereas normally you keep out of the sun if you're doing period drama, because you don't want to look anything other than absolutely as white as you can be.
- So- - porcelain white.
It's very relaxing- porcelain white, yes- it's very relaxing, in comparison.
Molly's part has grown and evolved over the series, yet from the beginning you gave us a huge sense of her presence, both on and off the screen, if I may say so.
Was that part of the challenge of taking the role of Molly? Often when you do a part it's kind of by default.
I mean, other people were supposed to play this part before me.
The first person, at the very last minute, couldn't do it, because her daughter was having a baby and she desperately wanted to be with her daughter who hadn't had a child before.
So that was the first person gone.
Then there were a couple of others and I don't know quite what happened.
Then suddenly, at the last minute, there was me, and I didn't really have long enough to think about it.
All I thought about was, "isn't this wonderful to be part of something which seems to be the sort of entertainment " there's a huge hole in the market for what I call family entertainment, that's light, romantic, slightly unrealistic so I thought it would just be a nice idea to be in it.
But, if you're playing an important person's wife, you then automatically get a little bit of importance, although the part was absolutely a cough and a spit.
Because I was Richard Briers' wife, I somehow had a place in the series.
But it was a place that I fought for.
I mean, I had to find ways of making her interesting, even if it was keep a feather duster and yellow rubber gloves on in a scene or be looking under a chair for something, something to make somebody who's more alive and not just standing and nodding and saying yes behind her husband's shoulder.
"Monarch of the Glen" is filmed up in the highlands of Scotland.
How much do you feel that the scenery has helped with the popularity of the program? The scenery is almost the major star of the show.
The scenery - they should be paying the scenery, not the actors.
I mean, it is so important, the scenery, and it is so, so beautiful.
And it's beautiful for us.
I mean, I do the same journey to work every morning.
It's a 40-minute journey, and every single morning at least three times I say, "I can't believe this is so beautiful.
This is-" and the light is always different.
It is exquisitely beautiful, if you like nature.
If you hate nature, then it's an anathema to you and you feel as if you're on the moon and you're not a happy person.
But I love it.
And what else do you think adds to the series' popularity? As you probably have noticed, there's no swearing, there's no- there aren't any major rows.
There's no bad language.
We don't only see people in close up, we actually see them standing.
We see the room that they're standing in, which is very nice.
We sometimes see them with a beautiful piece of scenery behind them.
But humor is the most important ingredient, and it's the most difficult thing to do, to write something which has a light humor and still carry an emotional story through.
When you look at practically any episode, you see all these marvelous locations around you and it is absolutely believable that they are just a few yards from the main house.
- Yes.
- is that, in fact, the reality of the situation, or do you have to go miles to get - some of the beautiful - to each of them? Locations are absolutely at the back door and all around the house, and the others, we're traveling.
We never travel more than an hour.
But, I mean, the schedule of working out there- first of all, it's seven months filming.
People think I go out for three weeks and do 10 episodes.
It's seven months of commuting, having the odd day off.
When we're shooting one episode at a time it means you can't go home for three weeks.
We do a six-day week or 11-day fortnight.
I'm up at quarter to 5:00 every morning, getting to makeup by 6:00 something, and shooting the first scene at 8:00.
That I'm doing relentlessly, even if I'm in the background for seven months and not very many days off.
We get- we finish- we're supposed to finish at 7:00.
With some directors we finish at 6:00, which is nice.
But anyway, we still don't get home till just before 8:00.
You learn your lines, and if you're getting up at quarter to 5:00 you eat something, you go to bed.
So it's not- it's not a honeymoon, it's not a - you know, what I might call a totally relaxing shoot.
So you mentioned that you're up at 5:00 in the morning.
What- how does the day pan out for you then? How many scenes would you be expected to do per day? I mean, when they're doing three episodes at a time, which is- sometimes we do three episodes in a block- then in the morning I could do two scenes from episode one, in the afternoon- because it's in the dining room- a scene from episode two and at the end of the day, a scene from episode three.
Or they may not even be in that order, they might do three, two and one.
But it's jumbled up.
It's almost always jumbled up.
It's never - we never do it in sequence.
But that's because they're trying to use us as efficiently as possible and not to have us there for seven years, because otherwise, it would take seven years to make.
We only shoot five minutes a day, which is not that much.
Have there been any glaring continuity mistakes, doing it that way? Oh no.
We have the most- the person- the people on the set that really need the praise are not the actors.
They go home, learn their lines and they're pampered all day.
You know, there's somebody if it's cold with an umbrella or a coat.
There's somebody to do your makeup and your hair.
There's a car to take us up and down the hills so we don't get wet and look wrong for the scene.
The people that really work on the set- first of all the camera operator.
He's got his eye to that all day long.
Can you imagine how tired he is? The focus puller and the lighting man and continuity, those are the people that really, really, really work so hard.
Props work hard.
All the- I don't know what- there's a new word for it, for the people who do the electrics, the lights or whatever it's called.
We used to call them gaffers, I don't know what the word is.
But anyway, the people who do all the lights, they work really hard.
But the actors, we get a break.
So we can go up and have a cup of tea.
If we're not in the next scene.
The first assistant works really hard.
Second and third assistant work really hard.
But don't ever feel sorry for the actors.
You obviously enjoy playing comedy, but actors always say that it's the most difficult thing to play.
Why is it so difficult? All television or all drama or all entertainment just relies on the script.
But all types of comedy, need a different type of technique.
You know, some of it is Norman Wisdom-type comedy and you slip on a banana skin.
This is very light comedy.
What it is, it's heightened reality.
It's almost a comedy of manners, isn't it? Yes, so it isn't realistic, but at the same time it isn't- we haven't got a lot of, you know, cracking good laugh lines.
It's situation, in a way.
And it is quite difficult, because it's to get the right touch, and for new people to come in also to get the right touch.
I - you know, the truth is I don't know enough about it.
All I know is that some scenes are enhanced by your doing something which is slightly off-the-wall to make people know that this is not a scene that we've all got to take too seriously.
You know, just one- like wear an apron that you wouldn't normally wear, or, you know, like Lexie's often showing her midriff in the middle of what is the most cold part of the world.
But it just lets you know that way, this is not serious drama.
You might not know how to do it, but you're jolly good at it.
That's very nice of you, thank you.
Susan Hampshire, thank you very much.
That was very sweet, thank you.
" How much of a welcome change is that from all the costume dramas you've played in the past? The loveliest thing in the world is not to be putting on a corset and pantaloons and a wig and all the things which are so- they weight so much and they're so restricting, and you feel so tired at the end of the day.
So it's fantastic to be in sloppy clothes.
Most of the time, Molly's in gardening clothes or old skirts or huge jumpers.
Also the clothes are very warm.
I'm not having to wonder- you know, worry about bare shoulders and is the shoulder- you know, are they made up to look a nice alabaster color.
If I wanted to go in the sun I could, whereas normally you keep out of the sun if you're doing period drama, because you don't want to look anything other than absolutely as white as you can be.
- So- - porcelain white.
It's very relaxing- porcelain white, yes- it's very relaxing, in comparison.
Molly's part has grown and evolved over the series, yet from the beginning you gave us a huge sense of her presence, both on and off the screen, if I may say so.
Was that part of the challenge of taking the role of Molly? Often when you do a part it's kind of by default.
I mean, other people were supposed to play this part before me.
The first person, at the very last minute, couldn't do it, because her daughter was having a baby and she desperately wanted to be with her daughter who hadn't had a child before.
So that was the first person gone.
Then there were a couple of others and I don't know quite what happened.
Then suddenly, at the last minute, there was me, and I didn't really have long enough to think about it.
All I thought about was, "isn't this wonderful to be part of something which seems to be the sort of entertainment " there's a huge hole in the market for what I call family entertainment, that's light, romantic, slightly unrealistic so I thought it would just be a nice idea to be in it.
But, if you're playing an important person's wife, you then automatically get a little bit of importance, although the part was absolutely a cough and a spit.
Because I was Richard Briers' wife, I somehow had a place in the series.
But it was a place that I fought for.
I mean, I had to find ways of making her interesting, even if it was keep a feather duster and yellow rubber gloves on in a scene or be looking under a chair for something, something to make somebody who's more alive and not just standing and nodding and saying yes behind her husband's shoulder.
"Monarch of the Glen" is filmed up in the highlands of Scotland.
How much do you feel that the scenery has helped with the popularity of the program? The scenery is almost the major star of the show.
The scenery - they should be paying the scenery, not the actors.
I mean, it is so important, the scenery, and it is so, so beautiful.
And it's beautiful for us.
I mean, I do the same journey to work every morning.
It's a 40-minute journey, and every single morning at least three times I say, "I can't believe this is so beautiful.
This is-" and the light is always different.
It is exquisitely beautiful, if you like nature.
If you hate nature, then it's an anathema to you and you feel as if you're on the moon and you're not a happy person.
But I love it.
And what else do you think adds to the series' popularity? As you probably have noticed, there's no swearing, there's no- there aren't any major rows.
There's no bad language.
We don't only see people in close up, we actually see them standing.
We see the room that they're standing in, which is very nice.
We sometimes see them with a beautiful piece of scenery behind them.
But humor is the most important ingredient, and it's the most difficult thing to do, to write something which has a light humor and still carry an emotional story through.
When you look at practically any episode, you see all these marvelous locations around you and it is absolutely believable that they are just a few yards from the main house.
- Yes.
- is that, in fact, the reality of the situation, or do you have to go miles to get - some of the beautiful - to each of them? Locations are absolutely at the back door and all around the house, and the others, we're traveling.
We never travel more than an hour.
But, I mean, the schedule of working out there- first of all, it's seven months filming.
People think I go out for three weeks and do 10 episodes.
It's seven months of commuting, having the odd day off.
When we're shooting one episode at a time it means you can't go home for three weeks.
We do a six-day week or 11-day fortnight.
I'm up at quarter to 5:00 every morning, getting to makeup by 6:00 something, and shooting the first scene at 8:00.
That I'm doing relentlessly, even if I'm in the background for seven months and not very many days off.
We get- we finish- we're supposed to finish at 7:00.
With some directors we finish at 6:00, which is nice.
But anyway, we still don't get home till just before 8:00.
You learn your lines, and if you're getting up at quarter to 5:00 you eat something, you go to bed.
So it's not- it's not a honeymoon, it's not a - you know, what I might call a totally relaxing shoot.
So you mentioned that you're up at 5:00 in the morning.
What- how does the day pan out for you then? How many scenes would you be expected to do per day? I mean, when they're doing three episodes at a time, which is- sometimes we do three episodes in a block- then in the morning I could do two scenes from episode one, in the afternoon- because it's in the dining room- a scene from episode two and at the end of the day, a scene from episode three.
Or they may not even be in that order, they might do three, two and one.
But it's jumbled up.
It's almost always jumbled up.
It's never - we never do it in sequence.
But that's because they're trying to use us as efficiently as possible and not to have us there for seven years, because otherwise, it would take seven years to make.
We only shoot five minutes a day, which is not that much.
Have there been any glaring continuity mistakes, doing it that way? Oh no.
We have the most- the person- the people on the set that really need the praise are not the actors.
They go home, learn their lines and they're pampered all day.
You know, there's somebody if it's cold with an umbrella or a coat.
There's somebody to do your makeup and your hair.
There's a car to take us up and down the hills so we don't get wet and look wrong for the scene.
The people that really work on the set- first of all the camera operator.
He's got his eye to that all day long.
Can you imagine how tired he is? The focus puller and the lighting man and continuity, those are the people that really, really, really work so hard.
Props work hard.
All the- I don't know what- there's a new word for it, for the people who do the electrics, the lights or whatever it's called.
We used to call them gaffers, I don't know what the word is.
But anyway, the people who do all the lights, they work really hard.
But the actors, we get a break.
So we can go up and have a cup of tea.
If we're not in the next scene.
The first assistant works really hard.
Second and third assistant work really hard.
But don't ever feel sorry for the actors.
You obviously enjoy playing comedy, but actors always say that it's the most difficult thing to play.
Why is it so difficult? All television or all drama or all entertainment just relies on the script.
But all types of comedy, need a different type of technique.
You know, some of it is Norman Wisdom-type comedy and you slip on a banana skin.
This is very light comedy.
What it is, it's heightened reality.
It's almost a comedy of manners, isn't it? Yes, so it isn't realistic, but at the same time it isn't- we haven't got a lot of, you know, cracking good laugh lines.
It's situation, in a way.
And it is quite difficult, because it's to get the right touch, and for new people to come in also to get the right touch.
I - you know, the truth is I don't know enough about it.
All I know is that some scenes are enhanced by your doing something which is slightly off-the-wall to make people know that this is not a scene that we've all got to take too seriously.
You know, just one- like wear an apron that you wouldn't normally wear, or, you know, like Lexie's often showing her midriff in the middle of what is the most cold part of the world.
But it just lets you know that way, this is not serious drama.
You might not know how to do it, but you're jolly good at it.
That's very nice of you, thank you.
Susan Hampshire, thank you very much.
That was very sweet, thank you.