Emma Thompson – On motherhood

                              June 2001   By Philip Berk

It’s been three years since Primary Colors, but now Emma Thompson and her director (friend) Mike Nichols have reunited to make a television film.

Not just any television film but a superb HBO movie entitled Wit.

In it Emma plays a college professor and spinster suddenly confronted with her own mortality.

The subject matter is rather grim, but Emma is transcendent.

So what has she been doing for the past three years?

You’ve guessed it: playing the role of mother.

After her divorce from Kenneth Branagh she fell in love with fellow actor Greg Wise (he had a small role in Sense and Sensibility) and sired a daughter Gaia who is now two years old.

Is that the only reason we’ve not seen her?

“I stopped work after Primary Colors and I didn’t work for three years in order to have a life and a baby, which is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

So she’s a full time mother and  Greg shares all the chores?

“Oh yes.”

What would be a typical day for the three of them?

“Let’s see, Gaia is usually up at about half past six, and we get up with her both together. We drink our milk and our tea and our coffee and we play. We just muck about with her until about 9 o’clock when she has an hour snooze, and then nanny arrives, and she and Gaia go off to feed the ducks or we go for a walk. Then we come home at half past twelve,  and we feed her.  Greg, my partner, is as much of a mum as I am. He’s hands on, and since I’ve been ill over the weekend he has been with her the whole time. Even though we have a nanny, most of the time we’re with her.  And that’s why I haven’t worked much. I really enjoy this bit because soon she’ll  be going to school and have a social life. They start awfully early these days. So we’re pretty much together most of the time.

“Wit was the rare exception  although Mike was absolutely fantastic. A film day is normally 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. We were famous, and deeply loathed by the other crews, because we’d be waving goodbye to each other at teatime, which  meant I was home to give her her supper, her bath, and put her to bed.”

How did Wit come about?

“It was Colin Callender of HBO who came to see me. He brought me the play. ‘Would you be interested in doing it?’ I was very pleased to be asked in such a personal and gracious a fashion. I read it and I thought it was amazing. I realized that very rarely do plays make good films, but Mike had made a habit of disproving that. But in all honesty I didn’t think of Mike because I didn’t think he would do something for television. He might be a bit too grand to do telly. So it was Greg who said, ‘Why don’t you ask him because you love him and you hold him in the highest possible regard and plus he’s very witty and the play’s called Wit. Why don’t you ring him?’ I took his advice, which I usually do, and I asked him, ‘Do you fancy directing me in it at all for television?’ and there not that long a pause, and he said, ‘Yes, sure,’ and that’s how it was.”

Has giving birth changed her as an actress, especially since Wit is such a demanding role?

“I’m sure it’s given me a huge sort of extra something; before you have children, like it or not, you feel very differently. You are not as mortal. Since I’ve had my daughter my relationship to death has changed. I remember with my grandmothers, who both died quite elderly, not in the best of health obviously,  but no matter how dreadful a day was, my Scottish grandmother always looked forward to the brandy and soda at the end of the day, actually several because she had senile dementia so she’d swear she hadn’t had it; so we had to give her another and another, which gave rise to great mirth in our house but made us realize how infinitely precious life is. Even when every single part of it has been taken away from you , there is still something that holds us.”

Her father died when he was relatively young.

“Yes he was only fifty two, but I’ve felt his spirit and I’m not given to ghostly sightings but I was absolutely sure that it took him ages to leave us.”

Does she talk to Gaia about him?

“I do, yes. All his grandchildren — he has three — know about Eric. But it is my nephew Ernie who’s  been most spooky about my father. He never met his Grandpa Eric, but recently he was asked by my sister where he thought Grandpa Eric was, thinking he’d say heaven, and he said in Scotland, which was my father’s favorite place. But what intrigued my sister most was when she asked him what he was doing, he said playing golf. We could’t believe it because Ernie didn’t know about golf, he didn’t know my father played golf and that he was passionate about playing golf in Scotland.”

Gaia was with her on the set of Wit. What was her reaction to Mommy’s shaven head?

(At the press conference she’s still sporting a buzz cut, and she looks uncannily like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.)

“We shaved my head in front of her and she didn’t take any notice at all. She just wanted to eat the shavings. Afterwards she found great delight in smacking my head, at which time she would emit loud cries of triumph. “She loved to come on the set. Actually the best thing that happened  while Gaia was there was Sean Connery came to visit us and asked us to lunch, and we were unable to go owing to some painting requirements that Gaia had in my dressing room; so I wrote it down in the diary I’m keeeping for her that her first lunch date she’d ever been asked out on was by Sean Connery, and she had refused him, which gave me a thrill anyway.”

Is there anything she can say about Greg?

“I don’t like talking about our relationship because I was probably too open about talking about my previous relationship (with Kenneth Branagh.) Maybe I should draw a veil and keep it for myself. But I will tell you one thing. He did buy me this 38 titanium ring in New York, and that’s big money girls, and if a guy goes out of his way to get you something like that from Blooms on the lower east side of Manhattan, you know you’re onto a good thing, and that’s all I’m willing to say at this stage.”

Will she be getting back to work now or will she wait a few more years?

“I am going to take a bit more time off, but I will be writing. I’d like to have another baby, but that’s all in God’s hands. I’ve got several scripts that I would like to see made.”

Is one of them the Victor Jarra project, which she started three years ago.

“Well I sincerely hope so, but I’m still working on it. I went to Chile last year —  that was my other little piece of work I did after Wit. I went here on a research trip which was fascinating. The script is proving to be terribly difficult. I went down a blind alley for three years. I’d written it as a biopic, but then I was told by people greater than I that that was a mistake, but I kept saying no, no. Now I realize they were right all along but I had to come to that decision by myself. I can’t see where to go next, but I would say that if I ever get this made it’ll be the thing I’m proudest of because it is so difficult. It’s my greatest desire to get it done.”

What are her thoughts on marriage?

“Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a very old institution, it’s  quite young, and it was invented at a time when people conveniently died younger than they do now. When you’re married to someone for twenty years from the age of twenty, it’s somehow more likely to last than if you’re expected to live to seventy, which in Shakespeare’s time would be considered several life times.

“Bear in mind,’ she once told me, “marriage was not invented to keep men faithful. It was invented to keep women within the bounds of  patriarchy. Men generally speaking are not faithful. They’re far more likely to be unfaithful. And it’s very common for women to stay with unfaithful men.”

I trust she was not referring to Greg.

POST SCRIPT

While still married to Branagh when I asked her if she agreed with those who were calling her husband “a genius,” she indignantly responded, ” I reserve the use of that term for either Mozart or Shakespeare.”