Actor Tamara Lawrance: ‘Less and less do I relish playing hyper-disturbed characters’
As an actor, Tamara Lawrance, 29, has a rare intensity, a centred stillness. In person, the Londoner comes across as warm and exuberantly quick-witted. Her career took off, in 2017, as Viola in Twelfth Night at the National Theatre and as Prince Harry’s girlfriend in BBC Two’s King Charles III. In 2022, she and co-star Letitia Wright both won a British independent film award for their outstanding performances in The Silent Twins. More recently, she starred in Jimmy McGovern’s harrowing BBC drama Time, playing a mother who killed her baby, and is about to return to the stage in The Comeuppance, by the American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, about a high school reunion – a funny, smart and profound take on a post-pandemic world.
You’re playing Ursula – how do you see her?
Ursula is coming to terms with a change of identity. She has been diagnosed with diabetes over lockdown and is partially sighted. One of the play’s themes is how people deal with who they were alongside who they are now. She is the host, the anchor, the person who wants to relive her youth. Characters always teach me something about myself. Less and less do I relish playing hyper-disturbed characters… I don’t want to kill anyone for a bit!
What has playing Ursula taught you?
Listening. I’m enjoying her active listening. There is great power in being someone who can act as a support for other people. And observation. People often assume that when people are listening they are just quiet, but Ursula is clocking everything.
She is descibed as having had “the worst pandemic ever”. How was yours?
It was [long pause] – there was grief, in that I lost people during that time, but there was also something profound about being at home [in north London]. I’m lucky to have a lovely family, and it was beautiful to see the ways the children – I don’t have children myself but have young siblings and cousins – came into their own over lockdown.
In year 7 I was mortified to discover you couldn’t do drama until year 9
Are you a fan of reunions?
I probably wouldn’t go to an actual school reunion but I thought, inspired by this play, that it would be nice to set up my own reunions with friends from secondary school I’d not seen for a while. I’m getting them tickets.
Putting nostalgia to one side, are you any good at living in the present?
That is the question of the times, isn’t it? I’m not very good at it at all. I realise it’s the answer to everything, but I’m always reflecting on the past and I’m a bit of a worrier about the future.
Will you mind turning 30? Fun fact – you and I actually have the same birthday, 15 July.
No way – you’ve done your homework. Yes! And I’m really excited about turning 30, although it is that thing of being the oldest you’ve ever been and younger than you’ll ever be again and of trying not to feel you’re at the end of something. Older friends are always saying: “You’ve got time,” but it never feels like that.
The Comeuppance is great at exposing the remote intimacies of social media. How comfortable is your own relationship with technology?
I’ve been reading The Shallows by Nicholas G Carr, about how our brains change through the way we process technology. I love the benefits of staying connected but the scary side is giving our neuroplasticity over to something that is shortening our attention spans and creating anxiety. For our health, we should all probably take some space.
Would you agree the best actors, sportspeople and dancers have a quality of stillness at the heart of their performances?
At the core, there has to be relaxation, presentness, listening. I’m reading a book called My Character Wouldn’t Do That about cognitive science and acting. Donna Soto-Morettini talks about self-consciousness as the marker of “bad acting”. The acting I admire and aspire towards is about having a full inner life you can trust.
That inner life defines The Silent Twins, about sisters who refuse to communicate with anyone but each other. Since making the film, have you felt haunted by it?
I continue to think about the injustice of how people are sentenced – the twins were misunderstood. Reformation is not about putting people in a box for 20 years, it’s about dealing with the roots of why people are the way they are. Twins have shown up often in my life and work – I have uncles who are twins and I’ve played twins three times. They skip a generation, so hopefully someone in my family could have twins – I don’t know if it will be me.
Recently you found yourself back in prison in Time (what is it with these casting directors, can’t they set you free?) as Abi who murdered her baby.
That was difficult – I felt really disturbed, started having weird dreams. But it taught me to take care of myself outside the job. I’d have to go home and switch off and maybe just watch something like Love Is Blind.
Going back to your childhood, as the daughter of a hospital technician mother and a delivery driver father, when was it you first decided you wanted to act?
In primary school. I wanted to act because it was fun. And in year 7 I was mortified to discover you couldn’t do drama until year 9. At 11, I persuaded the head of year to set up an extracurricular club and we did the Shakespeare schools festival. I played Puck, then Macbeth.
At 17, you won a prize in a nationwide Poetry Society competition. Do you still write poetry?
Poetry is a way I’ve processed emotions. There is an amazing essay by Audre Lorde, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, in which she talks about the necessity of poetry to process what is going on. I’m trying to get back into it.
You went to Rada straight out of school. To what extent is acting a craft or a gift?
It’s both. It’s definitely a craft, an art, a discipline that can be refined. But drama school is not the only way to refine it. Having said that, the intense three years at Rada revolutionised acting for me.
If you had to choose between theatre and film, which would win out?
Film, because I have to pay my bills.
What’s your greatest fault?
I hold on to pain. As a Cancer, you’ll know what that’s like. Sensitivity and emotionality are a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, I need to be able to hold things a bit more lightly. Let the crab’s pincers relax…
You’re clearly a reader. What else do you enjoy outside acting?
Live music – I’m into west African instrumental music, especially Kadialy Kouyate and the South African cellist Abel Selaocoe.
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
I’ve been very fortunate in doing what I wanted to do. In the next 10 years, I don’t necessarily want to be living in the UK. I’m open to leading multiple lives, and maybe this isn’t what I will be doing for ever.
So might you do a Glenda Jackson?
Go into politics [laughs]? I don’t think any of the parties would like what I have to say.
