Actor Lia Williams on playing Paula Vennells: ‘I think she’s more shallow than malicious. She created her own set of truths’
Lia Williams, 59, is an exceptional actor of questing intelligence and warmth whose award-winning performances on stage and screen have a way of staying in the mind. Her 1993 interpretation of a student accusing her professor of harassment, in David Mamet’s Oleanna, was one such role. Now, 30 years on, she is about to play a professor, in Alma Mater at the Almeida by Kendall Feaver, a tremendous new play that returns to the subject of sexual misconduct.
It seems you’ve always been drawn to political drama.
I’ve worked with Harold Pinter – who directed Oleanna – and he used to say, about his own work, that he was never consciously political yet a political strain ran through everything he wrote. I’m now beginning to wonder – I’ve been doing this job for 40 years – if there might be something similar in me. While not overtly political – I’m an idealist and eclectic in my tastes – I keep getting drawn to new writing that discusses complex issues but also has heart.
You play the first female master of a college, Jo Mulligan – an unsettling mix of enlightened and unreconstructed. Has the subject of how we approach sexual misconduct changed?
Not a great deal has changed, yet everything has changed. Oleanna was a polemic and loaded. Alma Mater isn’t. It has brilliantly clear arguments from different characters. Jo Mulligan is a second- or third-wave feminist who fought for equal rights pitched against Nikki, a young student. Fourth-wave feminism has gone online and exploded. But we’re challenged nowadays by groupthink. It’s cool to be feminist while, in Jo’s day, it was often seen as wacky. Jo wants to encourage her students to consider the things she has discovered for herself such as to think outside the box and be responsible for your own actions.
When I direct, I’ve a stronger grip on what I’m doing as well as who I am. When you’re acting you have to lose who you are
Being responsible – or failing to be – reminds me of how extraordinary you were as Paula Vennells in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office – that mirthless professional smile of yours a little masterpiece – did you make a close study of Vennells?
I couldn’t. Vennells, as we all know, was impossible to find: she just disappeared. There was that one shot of her on a bicycle in a churchyard but she was so protected by lawyers that ITV and the writer couldn’t get near her. The most interesting thing for me was that the writer was not allowed to invent a single word for that particular role so everything I spoke was transcript. We had to make the printed word sound as if it was coming from my mouth, otherwise the lawyers would have sued.
What did you think of her testimony to the Horizon inquiry – and did you support the pressure on her to surrender her CBE?
I never like witch-hunts but she has to be accountable. It’s absolutely crucial. I made a choice not to play her as evil because I thought it important the audience make the decision. That’s how I approach my work generally. I played her with ambiguity and when you look at footage of her – you cannot work out where she’s at. During the hearing, her tears seemed to indicate she was genuinely sorry, but being sorry is not the same as taking responsibility – and my reading is that she’s not emotionally capable of handling the depth of that responsibility. I think she’s more shallow than malicious. She created her own set of truths and believed them. She was in way over her head. She was a corporate person through and through and possibly did not have the imagination to deal with this kind of horror.
Has your experience of directing in the theatre changed your sense of what it is to be an actor?
When you act in a play, you are a certain colour on the canvas. When you direct, you see the whole painting. I see myself as two different people. I’m more raw and vulnerable as an actor. When I direct, I’ve a stronger grip on what I’m doing as well as on who I am. When you’re acting you have to lose who you are, lose your footing.
And speaking of footings, I read that your actor son, Joshua James, has been teaching you rock climbing. How did that pan out?
Rock climbing isn’t my thing, we discovered.
Not relaxing enough maybe – what do you do to relax?
I love scuba diving. I spend an enormous amount of time with Angus Wright, my partner. We met doing the Oresteia here at the Almeida [he played Agamemnon to her Clytemnestra]. The Almeida is my favourite theatre. We took the show to New York after Covid but I ruptured my achilles on the second day of the tech [technical rehearsal]. An absolute disaster. It felt like a psychic amputation because I had the character raging in me… I spent 80 days on a sofa while Angus had to carry on with the show.
How is your heel now?
Completely mended. I had surgery over there.
Are you still a patron of Clean Break (sorry about the name in the context of your heel) and what can therapeutic theatre do in practice?
It gives women who have experienced the criminal justice system a safe space to express their stories. It is a huge catharsis for women who feel on the outside of society that builds confidence and the sense of belonging – it’s a wonderful organisation. I’m also a patron of Act [the Actors’ Children’s Trust], a charitable arm of British Actors’ Equity, which helps support children of actors who are struggling financially.
Which playwright is closest to your heart?
Tennessee Williams. He is a real poet but I also love Mamet and Pinter. I’m so lucky to have worked with writers who are masters of their art.
And that has to be true not least because it is hard for an actor to be better than his lines?
I totally agree. You might kid yourself into thinking: I can bring something to this, but you really can’t. If it hasn’t got legs, you can’t run.
You’re nudging 60 – how does that feel?
I don’t mind being old. For a woman, it can be amazing. I think a lot of older women have so much beauty. I’ve never needed to be entirely visible, though I certainly don’t feel invisible now. I’ve not chosen to be boldly in the limelight and have loved a career where I can step into a role on a stage and then just disappear quietly after it – it’s my greatest pleasure.
Alma Mater runs at the Almeida, London N1 from 11 June to 20 July
