He looks most at ease in a velvet smoking jacket, and her hands are not for scrubbing stairs: Keeley Hawes and Ed Stoppard are simply born to rule. They play Lord and Lady Holland in Upstairs Downstairs
Upstairs Downstairs will be a feel-good drama, not fuel for class war, according to Ed Stoppard, who plays diplomat and head of the household Sir Hallam Holland. He has a silly name but a kind nature. ‘Upstairs characters have just as much heart as Downstairs characters,’ says Ed. Standing next to him in real life, Keeley is a little taller and obviously has eyes for no one but her husband, but on screen they make a handsome pair. And not for the first time: ten years ago she played his psychotic girlfriend for a BBC short, Murder in Mind. ‘I murdered someone he was having an affair with while sleepwalking,’ she remembers. ‘With my slippers on, using a club hammer.’ Upstairs Downstairs was much more enjoyable. She loved her character’s bias-cut satin dresses –’the 1930s are a very kind period, costume-wise’ –while he looks dapper in a bespoke suit. ‘The costume designer tracked it down at Angels. It’s the same one I wore for Brideshead Revisited,’ he says, referring to the 2008 film in which he played the eldest Flyte, Bridey. ‘I love that suit. I’d like to be stylish in everyday life but my twin girls are just at the age when they would splatter me in soup.’
Ed is the youngest of four, and so is Keeley. ‘Lots of actors are the youngest of big families,’ says Keeley. ‘My youngest, Ralph, is already a real showman. He sits at the head of the table and regales us all. It’s youngest-child syndrome.’
Keeley grew up in Marylebone, the daughter of a cabbie and a housewife. She lost her London vowels at elocution classes at the nearby Sylvia Young Theatre School. ‘My mother brought us up and my father worked all day. It was a very normal childhood. We never went on holiday and we were never spoilt – except at Christmas. Then we were indulged.’
Christmas morning always began ‘with the four of us climbing into two sleeping bags, one in front of the other. We would slide down the stairs in them and then we’d wait until my parents got up and we’d be let in to see what was underneath the tree. We’d each have piles of presents. Christmas was the big thing. I think it’s why I’m so into it now.’
A self-confessed control freak, Keeley has her presents already wrapped. ‘I love spoiling the kids. Matthew always says, “I really think you’ve overdone it this time.” But weirdly, as a result, I think they’re more satisfied. If we go to Hamleys they say, “Oh, OK,” quite sweetly when you say they’re only allowed to look.’Keeley’s own present pile has, in the past, contained a Morris Minor (she came home one day remarking at the nice car someone had parked outside; Matthew passed her the keys), a sketch by the 20th-century English artist Mary Newcomb of two sheep (last year’s Christmas present), perfumes, Smythson diaries (a fabulous new colour every year) and ‘anything from Margaret Howell’. Macfadyen does indeed sound like an expert present giver.
In Upstairs Downstairs, Lady Holland is not very good at bossing the staff around. ‘She has to tell people what to do but she’s not very used to it. She’s come from a nice family and she’s well brought up, but she’s never been well-off – as my sister, played by Claire Foy, says, “It’s old money, which means there’s no money.” So as the show opens she is just getting used to her new position. It’s very similar to now-adays with people who are lucky enough to employ cleaners – I still dust before the cleaner comes and I can’t bring myself to tell her if she’s missed a bit, I just do it myself.’
Keeley, 34, has also recruited a ‘mannie’, Adam, who helps her look after the children. ‘It’s such an odd thing. I don’t come from that world at all. My mother did everything. But my husband did come from that sort of background and grew up with nannies and people looking after their house because his father was in oil and they lived abroad a lot. Just the polar opposite of my childhood. When I met Matthew the suggestion of a cleaner was…’ she makes a face that demonstrates offended sensibilities ‘…but not now!’
Matthew and Keeley met in 2002 on the set of Spooks. At the time Keeley was married to the cartoonist Spencer McCallum, and they have a child, Myles. It caused some consternation when Keeley began her relationship with Macfadyen, but the couple always maintained that they did not begin their romance until Keeley and Spencer had
separated. Keeley and Matthew married in a small ceremony in 2004, when she was pregnant with their first child, Maggie. Two years later they had Ralph; all three children live with them in Twickenham.
She says she has learned a lot about the trust that develops between upstairs and downstairs. ‘There are so many levels of trust Particularly if people are looking after your children.’ Her hazel eyes widen dramatically. And financially, as she discovered when she was stung by a former employee who was found to have been siphoning funds out of the couple’s account. She laughs, as she seems prone to do in adversity. ‘It was an account that only bills came out of so we didn’t notice. And then the bank and the police both received an anonymous email saying they knew someone had been spending this money.’ In total, £7,000 was missing. Insurance covered the loss but ‘we never got to the bottom of it, really’. Nor did they press charges. Still, as Agnes Holland she can bring real feeling to lines lamenting that one can’t get the staff these days.
This year she and Matthew are reading at a Nativity service for CHASE, the children’s hospice charity they support, then heading off to Mauritius on holiday. ‘Matthew has been away for 14 weeks being a Musketeer [opposite Milla Jovovich and Orlando Bloom], so yes, we’re going off, and because he’s been away it’s very important we get together – just us.’ She looks as excited as a child. Mauritius was their honeymoon destination. They returned later with the children, and disaster struck. ‘I was pregnant with Ralph, and Maggie was with us, but on the plane she started breaking out with chicken pox. No one wanted to go near us. We had the pool, the restaurant to ourselves’ Fingers crossed that this time round their tidings are of comfort and joy.
Upstairs Downstairs is on BBC One and BBC One HD on 26, 27 and 28 December at 9pm