a day ago
JOANNA VANDERHAM on playing Diana Mosley, ‘the most hated woman in England' in the hotly anticipated TV drama about the colourful lives of the Mitford sisters
Actress Joanna Vanderham is describing the early negotiations of her wedding to fiancé Ben Hudson Mclldowie, better known as the singer, songwriter and music producer Mr Hudson. Her future husband's hits have included the top ten banger Supernova, featuring Kanye West, and he's worked with artists including Jay-Z, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus and John Legend.
'We're debating do we have a showbiz wedding or do we have immediate family and friends. Ben's leaning more towards showbiz. He's more of a diva than I am. I just imagine my family and dearest friends with all of his famous friends.' Vanderham smiles. 'It'll be very fun.'
Planned for next summer in the Cotswolds, the celebrations look set to cap an extraordinary year for the Scots-born Vanderham, 34, who has been a regular on our screens since she was a teenager, starring in everything from BBC period drama The Paradise, in which she played determined shop-girl Denise, to BritBox/ITVX series Crime, playing DS Amanda Drummond. There has also been a string of lauded stage appearances in such parts as Desdemona in Othello and Lady Anne in Richard III.
Now her role as Lady Diana Mosley in Outrageous is expected to become this summer's hottest talking point. The six-part BritBox/UKTV drama is based on The Mitford Girls, Mary S Lovell's 2001 book about the six aristocratic Mitford sisters, who regularly scandalised the nation in the 1930s. The stirs they caused were less about their high-society flirtations (even if the youngest sister, Debo, did marry a man who became the Duke of Devonshire) and more about their politics. The fifth sister Jessica, a Communist, ran away to Spain to fight the fascists; sister four, Unity, became a close friend of Adolf Hitler.
Vanderham plays sister three, Diana, an acclaimed beauty who left her first, highly eligible, husband Bryan Guinness for Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. They married at the Berlin home of Nazi chief propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler as guest of honour. Diana became a vocal cheerleader for fascism, continuing to express her admiration for Hitler until her death in 2003, which led to her being dubbed 'the most hated woman in England'.
'When filming finished, I had to shed Diana in a really profound way,' Vanderham says in her light Scottish accent, very different to Diana's cut-glass tones. 'My little sister teaches scuba diving, so I went to visit her in Sardinia and she taught me. Being underwater I thought, 'Well, I'm certainly not Diana now.' Certain lines of hers I found really difficult to deliver. Usually I can learn lines in about three minutes, but these just wouldn't stay in my head. The process required to think her thoughts was so scary – for example, about how Germany should deal with the Jewish people. It felt very dangerous.'
Vanderham brilliantly shows how Diana walked away from a seemingly perfect life because of her infatuation with Mosley. Did she espouse her vile views to please her lover, or because she genuinely believed them? 'She was addicted to him, and when she set her mind on something she was never going to change it, so that set her future in motion. But I think as their relationship developed past the passion and the lust, she became fascinated by power. I think she saw what was happening in Germany and thought, 'I can have some of that.' I'd hate people to think the show is glamorising fascism in any way. It's actually a cautionary tale of how people you don't expect can be radicalised. Anyone is vulnerable.'
Indeed, for all its glorious period costumes, at times Outrageous is almost spookily contemporary in its account of the far right's rise in Europe. The Mitfords are torn apart by Unity and Diana's behaviour, with Diana heartbroken as she becomes estranged from her adored older sister, the novelist Nancy. 'So many families where members have views at different ends of the political spectrum are going through this right now,' says Vanderham. 'It's history repeating itself.'
Sitting in a West London studio for the YOU photographic shoot, Vanderham is fantastic company: intelligent and fizzy, with a mischievous glint in her pale blue eyes. Tall (she's 5ft 7in but has a few inches added on by the Prada heeled loafers she found in a vintage shop), wearing black trousers and a black vest, her high cheekbones are set off by a flattering pixie crop. She cut her hair recently after finishing an acclaimed run at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre playing alcoholic, ageing southern belle Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. 'I finished the show, but when I got into bed all Blanche's hair was around my face and I felt she was still with me. She's so traumatised, she had to go! If I need long hair for a part, there are always wigs.'
Vanderham's father is a Dutch businessman, while her mother is professor of vascular medicine at the University of Dundee. They divorced when she was 11 but she remains close to both. With her older brother and sister and one younger sister, she grew up in the small town of Scone in Perthshire. 'I was the show-off. My little sister once told me I always talked over her and never let her speak. If she'd say something I'd repeat it but louder. So, in the past six years or so, since we're considered grown-ups, I've tried to consciously make more space for her.'
In the holidays, Vanderham attended National Youth Theatre camps in London, where she became friends with a fellow classmate, a budding songwriter called Ed Sheeran. 'We were about 16 and he was incredibly talented even then. He had his guitar with him and, as we walked from our halls of residence to the Barbican Centre he'd make up a song about whoever he was walking with that morning. One was about me!' she laughs. Sadly, she doesn't remember the lyrics. 'I'd watch him busking or playing in a pub to one person and be like, 'Go, Ed!'' Yet they've lost touch. 'When someone becomes very famous you're wary of being like, 'Remember me?' Maybe I should reach out.''
While friends from her private secondary school all went to university, Vanderham – aged just 17 – headed to the Royal Welsh College of Drama in Cardiff. Her high-achieving family were worried. 'My older brother and sister were both studying to be doctors and I overheard Dad say to them, 'Shall we open a bank account and put in £5 whenever we can, so when Jo needs to do a shift of bar work or waiting tables, she's got some back up?' My mum made me promise if I hadn't made it by 28, I'd find something else to do.'
That never happened. In her second year at college, Vanderham won the leading role in Sky drama The Runaway, earning herself an International Emmy Awards nomination. It was tempting to jack in drama school, but her friend and fellow Scot Alan Cumming, a co-star on the show, persuaded her to return for the third year. 'He said, 'You'll always regret it if you don't', and he was so right because going back and doing five plays back to back in my final year meant I now feel completely at home on stage. I'm so grateful to him for that.'
After graduating and The Paradise, in 2013 Vanderham was cast in veteran screenwriter and director Stephen Poliakoff's BBC drama Dancing On The Edge. He'd written a sex scene where Vanderham was to appear nude but she insisted on being covered up – an impressive stance for a young actress. 'Naivety helped, I really didn't know what a big deal Stephen was. But I knew these images would be out there on the internet for ever and I didn't want to have someone print out a picture they'd freeze-frame of me in a slightly compromising position and ask me to sign it.' There were two months of negotiations before Poliakoff agreed she could wear a vintage negligee. 'Afterwards, Stephen came up to me and said, 'God, that was very convincing.' I thought, 'Yes, because that's acting.' We've stayed really good friends and he was a bit of a mentor to me.'
For all her adult life, Vanderham has been based in Hackney, East London. 'I love Scotland but I feel I'm more of a Londoner. I can't handle the cold and I'm vegan!' she says. She lives with her rescue American cocker spaniel puppy Tippi, named after actress and Alfred Hitchcock muse Tippi Hedren, who Vanderham played on stage in Double Feature. And, of course, with McIldowie, 45.
The couple have been together eight years since a friend set them up. Two years ago, he proposed in characteristically creative fashion while they were on a weekend break in Brighton. He texted Vanderham as she was relaxing in the spa after a massage, asking her to come to their room.
'I just wanted to relax, so I turned up in my dressing gown, with oil in my hair from the massage, really grumpy. Ben's primarily a songwriter and producer but sometimes he acts, so he said he'd been sent a script for an audition and could I go through it with him.'
While scoffing a croissant ('I was covered in crumbs'), Vanderham started reading aloud the stage directions, which included him getting down on one knee to tie his shoelaces. 'He kept reading the script and there were all these stories about our life together and our families, little private jokes we have. I looked at him and said, 'Is this real?' He went, 'Darling, acting is real.' I didn't want to be one of those people who think they're being proposed to, so even when he gave me a ring box, I thought maybe he bought an empty box from the hotel gift shop as a prop. But then I opened it and started crying. I turned the next page and the stage direction said my character was ugly crying. He knows me so well. It was really thoughtful and adorable.'
The couple clearly lead a glamorous life: when Vanderham's not working (a rare occasion), she is a regular on the front row at London Fashion Week shows such as Bora Aksu and Huishan Zhang. Close friends include the likes of the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears. 'We're hoping he'll sing at the wedding.'
For now, Vanderham is anticipating a second season of Outrageous will be commissioned – the first stops before the outbreak of the Second World War when the Mosleys were interned for their Nazi sympathies. While awaiting the green light, she's busy writing a play and producing several of her own projects. Plus, there's that wedding to plan. Is she a bridezilla? 'No, Ben's more of a groomzilla. I don't think we need a cake – no one eats it – and we don't need loads of flowers, that's an antiquated thing from the days when people didn't wash. But there's no rush to get married. I love the word fiancé, it's so sexy. This is such a sweet part of life to be in.'
Outrageous will be streaming on U and U&Drama (Freeview/Freely channel 20) from Thursday
JOANNA AT A GLANCE
Idea of holiday hell
Somewhere cold: the Icehotel.
Go-to karaoke song
I Got You Babe. You have to duet it and my fiancé is the right person for that.
Spotify song of last year
Tilted by Christine and the Queens. I played it every night before I went on stage to play Blanche DuBois as it gave me an insight into how she felt about the world.
Last thing you took a photo of and sent to someone
My puppy.
Movie that makes you cry
Practical Magic. It's really a fun film about witches, but it's about people coming back from the dead and I watched it just after my old dog died. I couldn't stop crying.
Are you a cat or a dog?
I'd be a cat, but my fiancé is more of a dog. He's friendly to everyone while I'm more, 'Oh no, do I want you to be my friend?'
Most memorable conversation
When I was in the film What Maisie Knew with Julianne Moore, she told me, 'Never have a problem without bringing a solution.' She wouldn't say, 'I don't like that light,' she'd say, 'How about we do it like this?' I've tried to bring that to my career ever since.
Favourite beauty product
I love Skinceuticals' Emollience cream.
Are you superstitious?
I'm so superstitious. I salute magpies, I don't walk under ladders. I don't say 'Macbeth' in a theatre. I really try not to smash mirrors.
Favourite breakfast
My go-to is peanut-butter toast.
Website you spend too much time on
My puppy-training app.
Favourite swear word
It's Scottish: 'fannyballs'. It means idiot – it's not very offensive. 'Stop being a fannyballs!'
Picture director: Ester Malloy.
Stylist: Ursula Lake.
Hair: Federico Ghezzi using Bumble and Bumble.
