Reflecting on her latest projects It’s A Sin, Finding Alice and To Olivia, Keeley Hawes speaks to Josh O’Connor about the nuances of each role, her production company Buddy Club, and supporting the next generation of actors.

From The Durrells and Honour to Bodyguard and Line of Duty, Keeley Hawes has made her name as an actress who delivers poise and nuance to every role she takes on, whatever the genre or medium.
Earlier this year, Hawes starred in three of 2021’s most talked about shows, so far, exploring the complexity of grief in Simon Nye’s Finding Alice, the devastating impact of the 1980s AIDS epidemic in Russell T Davies’ It’s A Sin, and portraying Roald Dahl’s wife Patricia Neal in the biopic To Oivia.

Reflecting on these roles and the universal themes that link them, Hawes catches up with her The Durrells castmate, The Crown star and now Golden Globe winner Josh O’Connor to discuss everything from navigating production through a pandemic to starting her own production company, and why they’d love to work together again.

KH: Hello! Where are you?!

JOC: I’m in a ridiculous little cottage in the middle of nowhere… I’m literally here on my own in the country and have been for ages. I realised you’ve basically got three things coming out in like three weeks – is it not the biggest press tour you’ve done? It’s mad!

KH: It is… The good thing about it is that they’ve all got very similar themes. They’re all about life and death and grief, so they’re tied in quite nicely. And it just worked out that way – you know how things go.

JOC: Was Finding Alice before lockdown then?

KH: Finding Alice we started shooting last week a year ago and then in March we went into lockdown. We were all like ‘Ok, bye guys! See you in a few weeks! Cut to six months later…

JOC: Like The Durrells. I think what Simon [Nye] writes so well is having you on the floor laughing, and then because you feel sort of insecure, because you’re vulnerable – you’re just in tears laughing – he then catches you with something really shocking or upsetting. There’s so much heart beneath it.

KH: It’s very human, isn’t it?

JOC: So human. Did you come to Simon and say ‘This is an Idea?’ Because obviously it’s your production….

KH: Well I’m co-producing it along with Simon’s company and Roger [Goldby]’s company, because Roger has co-written it as well. But we were coming to the end of The Durrells, the end of series three, and we’d just started saying ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to carry this on? That’s how it came about. Roger came up with the initial idea about this woman losing her husband, and then we all started to discuss grief.

There’s a lot of death on television and in film, but there’s very little, certainly at that time, about grief and what happens next. I think that’s partly because in this country certainly we’re not very good at it – if you cry, the reaction is mostly ‘Oh don’t cry!’ As you know from playing Prince Charles, it’s that sort of stuff upper lip, no emotion whatsoever. It’s within all of us I think, it’s ingrained in us not to let that out. Alice is sort of the opposite. Emotionally it’s all on the front foot, everything just comes spilling out of her mouth, she’s always putting her foot in it, she’s very quick to cry, and also not afraid to be lost. She really is completely lost. She’s sort of out of control of everything… Which is the opposite, [of my role in] It’s A Sin. My character Valerie Tozer is totally emotionally repressed and can’t let anything out at all.

JOC: It’s A Sin is amazing. Russell T [Davies) is obviously incredible, and Olly Alexander is amazing as well.

KH: It’s amazing!

JOC: So good! And in To Olivia obviously you’re playing a Hollywood Oscar winner, and in a totally different period. It’s kind of unbelievable you’re playing three totally different characters in the space of three weeks.

KH: Aren’t we lucky with our lovely job?

JOC: So lucky! When you take jobs, are you going ‘Well, is that different to the last one?’ Do you ever feel like you need to actively do something different?

KH: think I do. Part of what is so exciting about what we do is that you just don’t know what’s going to come next. As much as I think I try to choose wisely, and I’m lucky enough to have those choices to make, you also get to a certain point where for the writing, with people like Russell T Davies, I didn’t really need to read that script to say yes! I knew that it would be of a certain level and I knew that I wanted to work with him.

JOC: Now you’ve got your production company and you’re starting to produce work, was that partly so that you can have more control and be like ‘I want to do this now’?

KH: Well I love, as you know Josh, being in control…

JOC: I didn’t want to say it! No, I’m joking. I always see it as you’re looking out for everyone. It feels like you’re perfect for a producer role in that sense.

KH: It feels like an extension of that, and if you can have a voice in those situations, then use it… Finding Alice was a real learning curve, the biggest scale show that I have been involved with in terms of producing so far. And to have Covid thrown into the middle of it – as awful as it was – in terms of producing it was suddenly a situation that none of us had ever been in before, so I didn’t feel on the back foot in terms of that. I was just part of a team of people who were all trying to work their way through this and to find solutions to these problems.

JOC: What was that experience like? You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who was halfway through a production. I’ve had friends who were about to start and then stuff shut down, or we finished The Crown like the week before and then we were out.

KH: You were the talk of our set! ‘They’ve finished, they’ve got to the end!’

JOC: We were so lucky. But actually the reality is – exclusive! – that we had a week of just my stuff that was cut!

KH: [Laughing] ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just Josh!’

JOC: But I haven’t spoken to someone who was actually five weeks from finishing…

KH: And a cast that included four 70+ actors. The last two weeks before we went into lockdown were literally by the skin of our teeth, seeing who was able to come in, who had been told that they had to stay at home, rewriting, reworking the schedule on a daily basis. And then of course we all packed up and went home. But we managed to finish shooting all of the interior scenes, so when we went back for five weeks we just had location which, as everybody now knows, is easier. We’re outside.

JOC: In the kind of in-between point, how was that? Is it not terrifying thinking ‘We’ve got half a production’?

KH: It was conversations with insurers, conversations trying to hold onto cast, because some productions then started picking up – the bigger streamers who could underwrite their own shows. They needed crew, whereas productions like ours that aren’t so financially secure, we were then frightened of losing cast and losing crew because people needed to work. But ultimately I think almost our entire crew came back, which was really lovely because it felt like the same show. We then of course had to, on set, deal with all the Covid protocol… God knows people worked really hard to make it work. I had a scene with somebody and I had to be intimate with them, and we were all going ‘We can’t possibly do this!’ So this lovely actor’s wife came in and they dressed her and doubled her for me. I’m doing this scene with this actor, and at this point where we had to have this moment I stepped to the side, his wife stepped in and had this intimate moment with me just there at the side…

JOC: Weird!

KH: And then stepping back onto my mark and carrying on the scene. So you know, God only knows!
JOC: I sort of think it’s amazing. There are times in filming where it is mad, some of the stuff we have to do that on the screen looks normal, but you know behind there it’s carnage. On The Durrells it happened all the time, but with Covid it’s times a million.

KH: Yeah, it’s next level craziness, but we got there.

JOC: With It’s A Sin, that was way before lockdown, wasn’t it?

KH: That was all pre-Covid, thank God, because some of those scenes I really don’t know how they would have got around with a Perspex screen. That wouldn’t have had quite the same effect. We didn’t realise quite how lucky we were! But it was really the happiest set. Some of those guys were still in drama school. I think Callum, who plays Colin, was still at drama school when he shot that. It’s just mindblowing. Olly has acted before but nothing on this scale, and taking on that part in a show with this sort of subject matter, emotionally the places he had to go… It’s the only set I’ve ever seen a member of the crew break down in the middle of a scene. I’ve never seen it before in my life. It was really tough, really, really tough.

JOC: Do you find the differences between film and television massive? Because, for instance, To Olivia is obviously immediately apparent as more of a filmic kind of thing. Do you approach it differently?

KH: No, I don’t approach it differently to be honest. I think the differences are usually financial, aren’t they? The main difference with film is that there is this huge disparity between big budgets and tiny budgets.

JOC: It’s a huge gap!

KH: There’s no rhyme or reason, is there? That’s why you just have to follow your gut when you are reading something as an actor. You’ve got to do it regardless of the budget if you are able to, and just do it for the right reasons – because you love it and because it makes your heart go faster and because it’s something that you believe in and want to be part of.

I’ve been thinking as well, you’re much younger than me, so you know people I’m sure who are coming out of drama school now and into this world that we’re living in. I think of those people often; they don’t have the end of year shows, there’s none of that. But the thing I suppose to hold onto is exactly that – and that doesn’t change 30 years in or when you’re just out of drama school – that you have to keep trying and you have to remember what it is that you love about acting.

JOC: You mentioned that there were actors in It’s A Sin who were still at drama school, we know that when we did The Durrells. Callum was barely out of drama school and same with Daisy. Those two were incredible and were just brilliant and knew exactly what they were doing from the beginning. There’s something amazing about having someone straight out of drama school being totally enthusiastic and [it] keeps the show going. I just feel terrible for people who’ve missed out on a showcase, or all the kind of stuff we got when you start your career.

KH: That’s tough, and meeting the right sorts of people like agents and casting directors. The people I know – Andy Pryor has been very active, all of those sorts of people – are putting things in place to meet those young actors because they need them and I hope they can hold onto that. That we need them and we want them and want to see what they can do. Particularly now, as we realised how quickly we ran out of content in the first lockdown.

JOC: Even from when I left drama school 10, 11 years ago, there wasn’t streamers then! There’s so much content.

KH: It’s amazing! There’s so much content and so much demand. The safer we can make it, the smoother it will become in terms of production and there is so much being made. Look at all of those lovely young actors in Bridgerton – so many fantastic shows. So I would say hang on in there everyone.

JOC: So what’s happening for you now? You’re basically doing press for these shows for ages, right?

KH: I’m doing press for these shows, I’m working. I sort of have an office job in that we’re working hard on Buddy Club, so the new world of Zoom has been very useful for that. Are you sort of having a break?

JOC: Yeah, basically. I finished a job just two days before Christmas, which is all great. I always remember you saying on The Durrells – right near the end we were working so hard and we were all talking about ‘What’s the next job?’ – you always said that you can’t live your life going ‘What’s the next one? What’s the next one?’ At some point you’ve got to stop and take stock.

KH: It’s good to take stock, and I’m glad you are. I hope you’re really enjoying all of your fabulous, amazing success. It certainly makes my heart full to see.

JOC: Hopefully one day we can do another Durrells! I keep dreaming about it.

KH: Anyone who will listen I keep talking about the Christmas special, I’m putting it out there… I’d love to work with you again. Lots of love and stay safe.