Doctor Who - Documentary s07e04 Episode Script

GEOFFREY BEEVERS".
Carry loved being onstage.
She said she felt completely safe there.
So, it was just between her and the other actors on the stage and the audience.
Olivier really respected her as an actress.
DAISY ASH FORD: My mum was very unconventional.
She did smoke a pipe.
(LAUGHS) She was this really loving, open-hearted person.
PRISCILLA JOHN: Totally honest, very direct.
She was incapable of lying.
BEEVERS".
She was the most interesting person I've ever met in my life, because you never knew quite where you were.
Yes, it was wonderful.
ASH FORD: Mum was from a very big family.
I mean, she was the third child.
There were eventually eight of them.
So, I suppose it grew and grew and grew as she got older.
Carry was born in 1940 and I was born in '48.
So, she was effectively eight years older than me, and always said how brilliant it was when I was born because the previous two had been boys and she was fed up with them.
She was always, as a child, looking after younger children and, you know what I mean, mucking in and trying to help out.
She would organise us going carol singing and make appointments at various large houses around Kenilworth and troop us all off there for two nights running, where she would collect money for the blind.
And she would have us all rehearsing carol singing and then take us all off and have the route organised and at every single stop we loved it, because we were given mince pies and sang our hearts out, and she organised all that.
Her father and mother were in the business.
He was a theatre director and her mother was an actress and dancer.
Sunday lunches totally were wonderful.
My parents always had odd people from the theatre, if they didn't have anything to do they were invited to lunch on Sunday.
And it was just this very big community of people in our house.
During that time, we would go to the theatre and Daddy encouraged everybody to go and see the shows.
Ana' Mummy would get dressed up and look beautiful for first nights and the children would all go.
Even though they were eight, nine, ten, eleven, they all went to see the shows.
And I think that must have rubbed off a lot on Carry.
We all had to go to Catholic schools.
And us girls went to St Joseph's Convent School for Girls, Crackley Common in Kenilworth.
ASHFORD'.
Being sort of schooled by the nuns she found very tricky, she had a very hard time at school.
And I think that made her very suspicious of organised religion in a way, because I don't think she felt like the nuns were particularly Christian a lot of the time.
But she had a very strong sense of her own morality, her own right and wrong and a very strong faith.
BEEVERS: The decisive time in her life was when she went as an au pair to France for a year, and she couldn't speak the language and she was treated virtually as a slave for a year by this family in Saint-Etienne.
- That was pretty hazardous.
- Yes.
I didn't like it at all.
I had to learn to speak French.
Nobody in this tiny village in the Massif Central spoke English.
And I don't think, in those days, except perhaps in Paris, anyone knew what an au pair was.
So I landed up skivvy.
(CHUCKLES) Carry was really treated very badly there.
And she turned to talking to God, really, as her only kind of lifeline.
So, she had a really personal relationship with Jesus, with God or whatever you like to say.
So she talked to God, you know, when she was in trouble or whatever it was, for the rest of her life.
PRISCILLA: I never wanted to become an actress but Because I was much more interested in behind-the-scenes.
But I know my older brother Nick and Carry and Robin and Simon, they all wanted to act.
And Carry came through and eventually went to Central School of Speech and Drama, which she found out that my mother went to, sort of, you know, 30 years before.
INTERVIEWER: And you were three years studying at the Central School of Drama.
With Julie Christie.
INTERVIEWER".
Really? CARRY'.
Mmm, it was a good year.
I mean, in every college and in every course, you get Apparently they said all the women in our year were very strong.
I was in the canteen, terrified of course, first day.
And in the corner I spied somebody standing very much on her own.
Carry was quite quiet then and took a back seat.
This is not the Carry of later years.
But immediately committed herself to the work side.
I thought, this is gonna be somebody who's very, very serious.
I've got to watch for this.
But we teamed up and we shared a flat together for the whole time, for all three years.
We had lots of laughs and things, we had different boyfriends and things and we were watching over the covers to see which one came in later.
And we had one place, it was digs where I went in to have a bath and I came out and I said, "Do not go in there and have a bath.
There is a space above the bath "and an Indian has been watching me bath.
" She said, "An Indian has been watching you bath? "What are we going to do about that? "Well, I know what I'm doing.
I'm putting a curtain up.
" So, off she went immediately and pinned up and nailed up a curtain.
And I said, "It's no good, he'll be able to pull it to the side.
" "Don't be silly, just get on with it.
Get on and have a bath.
" PRISCILLA: She then went to the National Theatre, the Old Vic, to work with Laurence Olivier.
And that was just incredibly, you know, awesome.
And obviously, she was sort of overwhelmed to be working with him.
She once stood in for Maggie Smith in a rehearsal of Othello and, um, he had to put his arm around her (CHUCKLES) And she said, "Oh, I could die now," you know.
"This is it," you know, "Laurence Olivier is holding me.
" You just had to really, to get over your awe.
Used to say, "Well, they have to go to the loo just the same as all of us.
" (INTERVIEWER LAUGHING) It was quite impressive that she was in really, probably, the best company of the 20th century, I mean All the smaller parts at that time were played by people like Mike Gambon and Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen and You know, and then there were sort of The larger parts were being played by Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens and Olivier and Redgrave and They're all knights now, I mean, they were all, you know So, she was in very exalted company.
HESLEWOOD".
Right from the word go, she relished work and committed herself wholly and just worked incredibly hard.
Whereas I would sort of trust to intuition and momentary bouts and things, she learnt every single part and learnt every single word and left no stone unturned.
The first time I met Carry, it was in the street in Nottingham.
And she was on tour with the National Theatre and I was at the Nottingham Playhouse and we were introduced by a mutual friend whom I had been at drama school with.
And we went to a coffee bar, I remember, called The L Shaped Room, and quite a few of us there but Carry and I talked a lot and, um And I was very impressed by her.
Carry and Geoff to me were total soulmates.
It was like they'd met the other half of themselves.
BEEVERS".
She was so warm and friendly and kind of, um And she moved It's her movement, I just She just always moved so beautifully, so gracefully.
They both loved Shakespeare.
They both knew Shakespeare inside out.
I know nothing compared to what they knew.
There was a party at Nottingham Playhouse and we met there.
I think we kissed in the circle of the theatre auditorium, I seem to remember.
SEBASTIAN JOHN: My father got on with Geoffrey terribly well because Geoffrey's an intellectual.
And my father loved heated discussions with him over the Sunday lunch.
Also Geoffrey was very fond of potatoes.
We couldn't believe how many potatoes he'd get through.
We, being in a big family, everybody ate terribly quickly.
You spur each other on.
Geoffrey ate incredibly slowly.
(LAUGHS) So, we'd all be waiting because he would be talking to my father and discussing a finer point of politics or of the theatre or what have you.
We'd be getting terribly impatient for him to finish cause we'd want to go on to the pudding.
It was a time when I'd met all my university friends, when I first knew her.
And I was introducing her to my set of university friends.
And I think we got talking about something terribly intellectual about sort of form and content or something.
And I just remember her turning round and saying, "You know, you're all just a lot of intellectual snobs.
" And you know, she would say what she meant.
And she was right, you know, at the time we were all being rather sort of intellectually snobbish about something.
So she was great, she kept me down to earth, I tell you.
And we helped each other a lot, acting-wise.
'Cause then we got together and both went to repertory theatre in Worcester and Ipswich and we acted together a lot, playing every conceivable relationship, from sort of brother and sister to, you know, lovers and husbands and wives and mothers and sons, I mean, just everything, and it was such, um It was a wonderful time.
I think there was a little bit of snobbery at that time.
There were theatre actors and there were television actors and theatre actors felt that the theatre was the place where acting went on, proper acting, and that television was this sort of jumped-up new medium.
But Carry was determined that she was never a snob of any description at all.
And she wanted to get into television and learn this new medium.
And I think she found it a bit difficult because, you know, there was a reverse snobbery where people felt that actors who came from the theatre would not necessarily be, you know, good at television acting or whatever it is.
I got into a terrible despair 'cause I thought, "I'm never going to get into telly.
" I'd done one or two plays.
So, I thought, "What the hell.
" And I went and had some photographs taken of me in a bikini up a ladder.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) It was more of a dare, really, and it was a marvellous photographer because I looked quite good.
And that's how the photograph fell on the desk of one of the producers of Doctor Who.
And yeah, the rest is history.
Miss Shaw, I'm Lethbridge-Stewart.
Do come in and sit down, will you? Was all that nonsense out there really necessary? Identity passes? Guards? I was even searched.
Your character wasn't this sort of archetypal screamer or sort of bimbo, I mean, she had brains as well as being attractive.
No, I was told very definitely they wanted a big change.
And they wanted this scientist who, in her own field, was pretty clever.
Of course, Doctor Who was miles, a zillion years in advance.
So that's how I started out.
Plastic? It's not thermo-plastic and neither is it thermo-setting and there are no polymer chains.
That's interesting.
I used to watch Doctor Who every Saturday.
It was the one thing that all of us children during the '70s watched.
It was the thing.
And so when I learnt that Carry was going to be a Doctor Who assistant, well, that was just the ultimate thing.
I mean, can you imagine? Look, do I really have to call you Miss Shaw? (CHUCKLING) No, Liz, just Liz.
Liz.
That's much better.
I have seen, um, all of her episodes, I think, of Doctor Who.
Not for a while, but I have seen them.
I think she's great.
I would be proud to have done work like that.
She certainly looks very glamorous and very strong and sort of moral and keeping the Doctor in order and I love that.
What results can you expect with this primitive equipment? Primitive? We've got lasers, spectrographs, micron probes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I know all that.
The fact that I could go to school and say, "My sister's on the telly, "look out for her," was just the best thing.
And then when she came home at the weekends and you could then discuss with her what was happening and you could see how the whole shows were made.
And I think I met Jon Pertwee on one occasion, he came back to the house.
It was exciting.
You play the situation whether the words are good, I mean, it helps if the words are Shakespeare 'cause he's wonderful.
But he might be at The Tempest and Trinculo is fighting off Caliban thinking he is a monster.
All you have is Shakespeare lines or you might have a Silurian or whoever it is, you're still playing the same situation.
I think she was disappointed when she was told that they wouldn't be having her for the next series.
And she felt that she hadn't been very good in it and that was why she was sort of being given the sack, as it were.
But then she realised after the event that she was actually pregnant and there was no way she could have done another series.
And she wished she'd been able to just say to them, "Oh, well, it's too bad 'cause I'm pregnant "and I couldn't do another series anyway.
" So, it all amounted to the same thing in the end.
ASHFORD'.
You rely on people, the directors, other people that have watched it to give you feedback.
And I don't think she got a lot of encouragement at the time, so she didn't necessarily feel that she'd done a good job.
And particularly when she was told that they were going to replace Liz Shaw, I think the way she was told was quite difficult, I mean, it wasn't handled very well.
And I think that shook her confidence.
But looking back on it, it was simply that she had been cast This is my view of it.
She'd been cast by one producer who had an Avengers type view of Doctor Who and the assistant in which both would be intellectual equals and would spar with each other, you know, like they did in The Avengers.
And a new producer came in who said no and probably consulted with Doc with Jon Pertwee and they thought, no, you know, this is Doctor Who, it's not Doctor Who And His Assistant, you know what I mean? So, you know, we need an assistant who's, you know, more of a dolly bird and will scream and say, "What do we do now, Doctor?" I can't imagine how it is when you've got your career going, you know, full tilt, it's going at brilliant speed and you've been in Doctor Who and you're on the career ladder and people know you, to then, you know, have a family.
And Carry was not the type of girl to say, "Right, I'll get someone else to look after my children.
" She wanted to look after her own children.
BEEVERS".
There's no doubt about it, if you have a family your career will slow down.
That's why it's so much harder for women in our profession than it is for men.
And, um So she kept working but the work sort of dropped off a bit, and by the time we had the third child, it was very much more difficult.
SEBASTIAN: Daisy was terribly ill when she was young.
And Carry spent most of the time in hospital with her during the first three or four years of her life, I think it was.
Things probably were quite tough a lot of the time.
And Mum was probably under quite a lot of stress, particularly when I was ill.
But I think the testament to her is that she I didn't really feel it.
I think it was a very difficult time, really, because we moved to a little cottage, you know, we had a two-up, two-down little cottage, which was the first house we were able to buy.
(CHUCKLES) Every single pair of curtains in our house she made.
She made all the cushion covers, she covered some of the furniture.
She washed nappies, she did, you know, what my mother always did.
She used to make me dresses when I was growing up.
I remember one of my best friends at the time had a bit more money than we did and there must have been some sort of party that we were going to.
I mean, I was still quite young, maybe 10 or something, and she had Her mum had gone out and bought her this beautiful dress from a very expensive shop.
And I remember being really upset 'cause I didn't have anything like that.
And Mum therefore decided to make me a dress.
And it was like she'd made me the perfect dress, the princess dress, you know, with the design I liked and the material I liked and I think I That dress meant more to me for the fact that she made it than any bought dress could have done.
She used to say she'd feel frustrated when I think this is a very common lot of women in our business, she felt frustrated when she was looking after the children that she wasn't working.
And she felt guilty when she was working that she wasn't looking after the children.
I think that's a very common a very common thing.
But she was a wonderful mother, really.
People always ask me, you know, your parents are actors, you must have lots of parties and things.
(CHUCKLES) And they were so not those kind of people.
They liked gardening, they liked reading, they liked being at home.
BEEVERS".
We would read to the children and then we would read to each other.
So we'd very often have a book on hand, classics, particularly.
We used to read a lot of sort of Wilkie Collins and things like that, 19th-century classics, to each other, and we'd read a sort of chapter each.
So, practised our reading aloud skills but we used to love listening to each other reading, yeah.
PRISCILLA: When her family were growing up, she of course got back into television and theatre and she then, I think, managed a really good career doing both.
It was easier to do television than theatre because theatre you have to work much longer hours.
And I didn't want to be away from the family, I suppose I'm pretty family orientated.
I think it helped when she realised that she wasn't as bad in Doctor Who when she was able to see what she'd done.
When I saw The Silurians thought, "Well, they were bloody lucky to get me.
" That's 23 years later, you see, and I've been living with this thing that I wasn't very good.
She didn't know why she'd worried.
And I think that's probably quite common, you know, when you're a lot older and you've got a bit more perspective.
But she thought, "Actually, I was very good.
" And, um.
And I think that gave her confidence in her later life.
And then a man called john Molyneux, I remember, writing to her and saying, "Oh, please come to a convention, "you haven't been to one for, you know "And there are lots of conventions about, "and you've always fought shy of them" 'Cause she was Yes, she didn't particularly want to remember Doctor Who because of her experience there.
But, um But she was eventually persuaded to go to one in Manchester.
And it was a very big one, as it turns out.
And she just remembers being behind these doors, waiting to go up this long aisle and there were about, you know, a thousand It was one of the bigger conventions.
There were a thousand people in this hall.
In her first ever appearance at a Doctor Who convention anywhere ever, please, a huge welcome for Caroline John! So she went into the back of the hall, wondering how'd they take her and whether they'd all boo her, 'cause she'd been bad in it or something.
And the moment she started going up the aisle, and everybody started cheering and the flashlights were going off and she said, from this rather nervous little person at the beginning, she found herself getting up onto the stage and waving and saying, "Hello, fans," and being completely at home.
(BEEVERS LAUGHING) She said it was sort of a transformation.
She went down the aisle and suddenly realised that all the fans actually wanted to see her.
And she sort of wasn't really expecting it and was amazed.
Thank you! I shall cry in a minute.
(LAUGHING) I used to go with Carry to a lot of conventions, mainly in the '90s and early noughties.
And Carry was very keen that we co-write a sketch to do for the cabaret evenings.
So we decided on using the end of The Silurians.
And we wrote this sketch about two cleaning ladies who are meant to be cleaning the cyclotron room but can't because there's a bit of a hoo-ha going on.
And they end up going on about how much racket's coming from next door, how much they fancy the Doctor.
And going on about how way-out Liz Shaw's outfits are.
Which I think shows that Carry was very relaxed with Doctor Who.
I think that was in about 2000, so by 2000 she was totally chill with it.
ASHFORD'.
I think there was always a little bit of a rebel in Mum.
I think it was there from her childhood but because of her upbringing, she had been a bit scared to express it because she She felt she had to sort of fall in line, otherwise the nuns would have a go at her.
And in her later life, I think she expressed it a lot more, which is what made her so unique.
BEEVERS: Still Time, for example, this play started at the Manchester Royal Exchange and came to Southwark Playhouse.
And at the age of 60, she had to take her clothes off completely, in a very small space.
What she said was interesting that she'd avoided doing that all her life and then she got to 60 and, you know, suddenly found herself taking all her clothes off.
But she She said the reason she did it was that there was a good reason in the script.
She didn't want to just gratuitously get her kit off.
That was the only time I've ever seen her nearly beaten.
When she had to go by bus to the Royal Exchange Theatre.
Got off the bus, "I can't do it, I can't take my clothes off, I really can't.
" But did do.
Got in and did it.
And I did actually write in my diary that, "I went to see Carry in a play last night "and saw rather more of her than I'd expected.
" Which sums it up.
But she was amazingly brave and she really was keen to tackle challenging roles.
BEEVERS: And then later, she had this wonderful part that Lynn Redgrave wrote for her, as the whole life of a person, so she went through from sort of a child to an old lady on stage, right through a whole life in this one-woman show.
And she went endlessly to rehearse.
She knew where everything was.
She was professional.
Amazing.
And she gave a fabulous performance.
That was That was my favourite performance of hers.
I mean, we all act every day of our lives.
When we lie we act.
It's not as difficult as everyone likes to think it is.
What is difficult is is having the courage and the confidence.
That is difficult.
She was an exceptional actor but maybe I'm biased.
SEBASTIAN: Carry was ill for quite a few years.
She'd had cancer, which she'd got over one bout of cancer and then she'd had this next bout of cancer, two or three, four yea rs after the first.
Um, she took it on incredibly well, she was stalwart.
BEEVERS: When people are ill, "brave" is always the word that is used but And she was always a brave person, but When you come to it, she You have no option, do you? You just have to face what's happening.
PRISCILLA: Carry was never ever frightened of death.
She didn't want to go.
She had beautiful grandchildren, adored her children.
Didn't want to leave Geoff.
But you know something? She was very practical.
She said, "Oh, Geoff can manage.
Geoff will be fine.
" "Geoff will be fine as long as he's near a library.
" I mean She was amazing, really.
I think she worried more about me than she did about herself.
And she's I think she Her faith enabled her to trust that it would be all right when she died.
That it would be all right, she just had to trust it.
And she was amazingly calm.
ASHFORD: I think because we knew that it was the end, in a sense, we were all able to sort of come and see her much more.
We were very lucky in a funny kind of way because she came back from the hospice and we had one glorious week of wonderful summer weather.
And we'd take her in the wheelchair out into the garden and all the roses that she'd tended just all came out all at once.
And it was just beautiful.
And spent the Jubilee day, most of us were there and watching the boats going down the river.
(LAUGHS) We all were sitting there with Carry in bed and I'd got her a pair of glasses that were Union jack glasses.
And it poured with rain.
And I think even Carry, who was bit of a monarchist and loved all that, yes, and Priscilla did, too.
And the whole family were around that weekend.
PRISCILLA: And.]
can't tell you, the commentary, you might remember, was an absolute disgrace.
And both Daisy and Geoff are not royalists.
Carry and me would say, "Go out of the room, we want to watch them, "we love the Royals.
" So, I said, "This is terrible, these, "these amateurs.
" I don't know.
(LAUGHING) "What are all these boats? What are these flags?" I get on the phone to the BBC and we're both complaining to the BBC about the commentary.
"We're turning over to Sky now.
" (CHUCKLES) We had a lovely big family dinner.
And she said, "It's so lovely to hear the family all laughing "and you all having "Thank you so much.
" You know, it was great that she could hear us all, as usual, having Sunday dinner.
And I think when she died, I think she would have been overwhelmed by the amount of people that that sent good wishes and by all of this that's happening now.
Because she was so focused on one-to-one and she was so humble about who she was that I don't think she would have expected it.
But, um, I think she would have been secretly very moved and and proud that this is what has happened.