Romola Garai on the the Powerful Lead Women at the Center of Queen Anne: 'A Change in Circumstance Can Eat Away at a Friendship'

Romola Garai found film renown early on in movies like Atonement and I Capture the Castle but returns often to the stage. In 2014, she appeared off-Broadway to transfixing effect in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink. Garai can currently be found on the West End in the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of Queen Anne, playing the elegant and ambitious Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who was a close friend of the sorrowful monarch of the title and the power behind the early 18th-century English throne. The ever-lively Garai spoke to Broadway.com in the run-up to bringing Helen Edmundson’s history play to the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

How has it felt so far stepping into this play, and into a role originated by Natascha McElhone when Queen Anne premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon late in 2015?
Natascha wasn’t available [for the transfer], so I got sent the script, which I really loved and thought was very meaty and interesting. That was in October last year, so I then went in and met Helen [Edmundson, the writer] and Natalie [Abrahami, the director] to talk to them about it and got the role. This has been on my schedule for quite a long time.

What did you respond to about it?
I think a lot of credit needs to be given to the RSC for making a conscious effort to change the canon and commission plays that are historical and that maybe have the appeal for an audience that this play has and that have very, very good roles for women.

How do you feel about joining a project written and directed by women and starring two women, yourself and Emma Cunniffe [who plays Queen Anne]?
That’s exciting, of course, but what’s great as well is the way Helen has written a play about power and friendship and the way in which the friendship between two women is destroyed when one of them undergoes a massive change in status and the other isn’t able to cope. It’s like when your best friend gets married or has a child: a change in circumstance can eat away at a friendship.

How would you differentiate the characters of Anne and Sarah?
There seems to have been a resurgence of interest recently in Anne as the last Stuart monarch and specifically as someone who was repulsed by polarized politics and tried to build peace in her country: she engineered the union with Scotland and here we are at a time just now where we seem potentially to be losing that union. Sarah Churchill was at the other end of the spectrum: she was looking for a fight! [laughs]

Does that mean that the devil, as it were, has the best tune?
Yes and no. Sarah in many ways is a less likable character, but when I started reading about her and playing her, I just thought, “This is exactly what would have happened to me if I had been born during that time.” If you have any sort of desire for status and influence at all and your society doesn’t allow you to have it, then of course those desires can become corrosive. She’s an amazing, amazing character.

Can’t one applaud some of her traits while questioning others?
Very much so. I don’t think you can consider the kind of police state within which she existed at the time, not to mention the patriarchal society and the misogyny that went with that, without admiring how much she attempted to buck that trend. At the same time, she was a great beauty who was terrifically interested in her own legacy. She was a PR woman ahead of her time and, as such, a very divisive figure in history.

Am I right that you don’t mind playing unsympathetic people?
I actually think goodness is harder to play. The toughest job I’ve ever done was Cordelia [in King Lear, opposite Ian McKellen, a decade ago] because there was just nothing to grab on to. I find it fun to explore the depths to which people can go—to which they can sink. That interests me more than the heights to which they can rise.

Does this play have resonances for today?
Absolutely. The monarchy seems a perfect prism through which to analyze power: you only have to look at the way Anne’s monarchy has been recorded, or not recorded, to see how profoundly something in society is resistant to stories of women with power. With Hillary Clinton, for instance, it was absolutely soul-destroying to me to see the way in which she was treated and the attitude towards her as a woman. I’d like to think that this play is part of a wave of writers of both sexes writing about women and power and why we seem so unwilling to accept one with the other.

Is it unusual for you to be appearing in the West End, given how much you have done away from the commercial mainstream?
I’ve only ever done one West End play [prior to this one]. It was called Calico [in 2004] and starred Imelda Staunton. It didn’t do very well but I did get to work with one of the great stage actresses of our time.

Do you ever yearn to do something contemporary, after all these period pieces?
I wish I had a penny for every time I’ve said I wouldn’t do something that was a period piece. At the beginning, I did loads of those sorts of jobs and didn’t say no to anything for a long time until I thought to myself, “I’m not going to do any more period things”—except that I then realized just how interesting they can be, like [British TV series] The Hour. I suppose I now feel having done a variety of different projects that the word “period” is just too general a term.

Has working on this play made you think that maybe you might go into politics?
[laughs] Well, I’m not sure I would be anybody’s first choice! Like Sarah, I don’t have very many soft negotiating possibilities. But maybe, yes. I suppose I wouldn’t have said that ten years ago but we’re living in such strange political times now that I sometimes do think perhaps I should do something a bit more relevant with my life.

What about managing a stage run with two young children at home?
It’s a lot better than movies, where they drag you in at five a.m. and don’t let you out till ten at night. At times I’m a bit sleep-deprived, but I like the fact that I can be around [for the children] during the day. You won't find me working corporate hours!