Rome - this autumn on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO - press pack phase two
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Lindsay Duncan plays Servilia
How could anyone resist a role that includes your very own curse kit? Certainly not Lindsay Duncan, who plays Brutus's mother and Caesar's lover, Servilia.
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"The props department made a fantastic piece for cursing – a roll of soft metal with a metal stylus with which you would draw or write and then that piece of metal would be rolled up and delivered to someone," she explains, adding it was such details that made Rome irresistible to her.
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"There are so many things to investigate on a series of this scale. This pre-Christian world is riveting. They were always summoning gods – a god for any problem, tailor-made.
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"If you had a specific curse you'd summon gods that would be appropriate to that particular form of curse and to the way you wanted someone to be harmed."
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And it wasn't just the curse kit that Lindsay loved.
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"The props department is like a treasure trove, it would just turn you into a thief in a second," she smiles.
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"You want everything that is beautiful, like the aristocratic Roman woman's dressing table that I had. I wanted to steal all my stuff!"
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She was hugely impressed by the attention to detail.
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"You could walk into a museum now and see exactly what the props department made. They create these things to such a high standard. You get to hold them and use them.
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"It's fantastic because you've got the resources and all these fantastic skills. It's really exciting when you can do something to that kind of standard, particularly if you've been doing contemporary stuff.
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"There you just go shopping; that's not the same experience as someone stripping bits of leather and dyeing silks that have been brought from India. It really does evoke ancient Rome."
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She also found herself learning a whole new skill.
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"I had to work with this loom at one point," she recalls. "The props department made two Ancient Roman looms which really work – and what's more, they had to learn not only how to make a loom but also how to work it themselves, so that they can teach the actresses.
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"We had so many loom jokes," she laughs.
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Ironically Lindsay signed up for Rome without knowing any of the finer details involved – she didn't even see a script first.
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"It's not as if ancient Rome is an unknown subject. I'd hardly be likely to go 'ancient Rome, how dull'," she argues. "You just know there are so many stories in there."
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She admits she took a risk, but was happy to do so.
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"Risk isn't necessarily a bad thing," she says. "I hadn't seen any scripts and it is a huge time commitment. I rarely make this kind of time commitment and I think few actors do, based on so little evidence.
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"The only time I've done it is once with the RSC, which probably in any actor's life who has a theatre background you will certainly consider that.
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"But it has to be said, with HBO's track record, most British actors would be more than curious about investigating that. We knew that if you're going to embark on something so ambitious you need the kind of resources that HBO have got.
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"They have done some very impressive, very groundbreaking stuff in the last ten years. So the idea of taking a risk with a company with that kind of track record is exciting to me."
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But it didn't take long for her to be certain she'd done the right thing.
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"I met Bruno [Heller, the writer] and Michael Apted [director of the first two episodes]. They sold it to me.
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"They talked about this woman who I'd never heard of and they told me of the two key relationships that would be of most interest to anybody now, which was mother of Brutus and lover of Caesar – not just a lover, because there were thousands, but a very important one. What a fascinating little triangle that is.
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"Bruno said this is a woman who develops as a character to become one of the key figures in Rome, albeit briefly.
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"I thought, 'well, she's got to be interesting'. And I was curious as to why no-one's ever heard of her, although I don't have any answers about that."
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She is mentioned only rarely in accounts of the time.
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"Hilton [McRae], my husband, before we knew I'd got the job, had already bought me Rubicon, which is a highly praised book around this period of history. It was a great coincidence," Lindsay says.
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"And there are maybe three references in that to Servilia, and they are very, very brief. I even looked her up on the internet and there was very little.
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"There are a few references by contemporary commentators about her in relation to Caesar, that she was hugely important to him.
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"She was famously given an absolutely gobsmacking enormous pearl by Caesar – it's like the Burton-Taylor diamond."
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Fortunately Lindsay isn't the type of actor who needs a huge amount of background for her roles.
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"I don't tend to research massively unless there's a real reason," she admits.
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"My background is really being a writer's actor – that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing.
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"There's a whole range of acting skills and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me, my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.
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"I always tend to be script based. What's our starting point and also how much space have I got in this story as a character, what am I being given?"
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So for her to commit to Rome without even reading a script was a real act of faith.
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"Had they said to me, 'we are filming just outside Watford for a year', I might have wanted to see a script!" she says wryly.
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"Spending time in Rome is a hugely attractive proposition. If I was right about anything I was right about that. That's a personal thing, but that was one of my great life experiences."
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While there she shared an apartment with Indira Varma, who plays Vorenus's wife, Niobe.
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"We know each other from working in the theatre together and doing a Pinter double bill. We never worked together during the course of Rome, though, which is a great regret.
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"We were always hatching plots as to how we could get Indira's character to come and work in my character's household, we desperately wanted to do that.
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"We got on terribly well because we love the same things: the arts, the architecture, the food; we both cook.
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"We'd be in Campo Di Fiore weeping over fruit and vegetables and carrying them home. We had a compete fantasy life there."
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The closest she'd previously come to working there was while she was filming Under The Tuscan Sun a couple of years ago.
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"I went to Cinecittà [the world-famous film studio where Rome was made] for my costume fitting for that film.
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"I had a real physical reaction as I drove through the gates – I'd just never seen such beautiful studios. The ochre-coloured blocks, the trees, it was so exotic. It was a fabulous experience."
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Though Servilia rarely leaves her own house in Rome, Lindsay managed to tour the huge set and found it overwhelming.
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"The Forum literally took my breath away," she marvels. "I don't think there was anybody who wasn't affected by that.
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"When you see it, it just moves you so much because we would go to work every day driving past what remains of the Forum and you'd get such a thrill from seeing it rebuilt in parts.
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"It's staggering. It's come to life because it's in colour and of course ancient ruins aren't in colour any more. It's all gone. It was an incredibly vibrant, astonishing, confusing sight."
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By coincidence one of the roles which brought Lindsay to public attention 30 years ago was also set in Ancient Rome, though as Scrubba in TV’s Further Up Pompeii! she had a rather more frivolous take on the Empire.
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Since that success her roles have been mostly rather more heavyweight and she has collected numerous prestigious awards along the way, including Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards for Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Private Lives (the latter role also garnering Tony, Variety Club and London Critics Circle awards for Best Actress).
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Her film credits include AfterLife, Mansfield Park, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Body Parts, while her many television credits include the award-winning Shooting The Past, Perfect Strangers and Dirty Tricks.
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In fact she can be seen on TV screens rather a lot this autumn.
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"Just before the summer I did back-to-back television – it's very unusual for me to do lots of very mainstream television," she says.
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"I did a Poirot and then a Spooks, so I've gone from Ancient Rome to Thirties' Cote D'Azur to 2005 urban jungle."
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Before she begins work back on Rome, she's staying firmly in the present.
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"I'm about to do something in a contemporary film called Starter For Ten, playing the mother of Alice Eve, whose mother I played in the Poirot.
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"Her mother Sharon [Maugham] is an actress. If you had a line up you'd never pick Sharon out as blonde, blue-eyed Alice's mother. I look like more like Alice! So I'm now playing her mother for the second time in a matter of months."
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It's just one of a series of coincidences that have suddenly sprung up in her professional life.
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"In the past, I've played Kevin McKidd's [Vorenus] mother and Ray Stevenson's [Pullo] lover. Subsequently I'm playing Tobias's [Menzies, Brutus] mother in Rome, and my husband ends up playing his stepfather in Hamlet, the next job that Tobias did.
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"ou go through years and years without these connections and then suddenly they all roll up together."
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Though acting is very much in the family, Lindsay says her son Cal, who's 14, isn't currently showing any signs of following in his parents' footsteps.
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"He isn't an actor, he's a musician," she reveals. "He's a mean guitarist and music is absolutely his passion. I think he's talented; I know he's talented. I completely support his passion for music in every way I can, in terms of playing and going to gigs and everything.
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"But I've always resisted any attempt to box him in. I'm so excited that he's got his own thing, though. I think it's brilliant for him."
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