Joely Richardson: ‘I’m celebrating growing up – my sister didn’t make it’

“Oh, it’s so nice to see Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell walking around naked in the rain, isn’t it?” Joely Richardson says In the new Netflix adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s lover“They are like children when they run out into the street… so delightfully ignorant!”

Hard luck for Richardson when she co-starred with Sean Bean in the 1993 Ken Russell version. this is a REAL day. We have to make this crazy. She winces. “Giant rain machines have been installed. Ken would play classical music, pompous, opera, maybe Wagner. We got a quick “Ready, Steady, Go!” And he said: take off your robe, run. There was an element of colossal adrenaline and fun. But we were in a walled estate, and just as we were firing, the biplane flew past the wall and the people on the upper deck were all looking at us…” She chuckles. “We’re like, ‘Oh! Ouch! Ouch. My. God.'”

Now 57 years old, best known to young viewers for her roles in pinch/fold as well as 101 dalmatiansRichardson returned to the “weird but familiar” world of Lawrence’s taboo-busting story to play Nurse Mrs. Bolton in the Netflix version directed by Laura de Clermont-Tonnerre. The director gave a powerful twist to the story of the wife of a war-wounded aristocrat and her romance with the hermit huntsman Mellors. While Russell instructed Richardson to play Lady Chatterley as a more modest character – with flowing blonde locks and matte eyeshadow on her drooping lids – Corrine (who was modest as Princess Diana in The Crown) plays her bold and fresh face with more direct freedom of action.

Lawrence himself was painfully conflicted about female sexuality. He was one of the first male writers to even think about the sexual needs of women (certainly one of the reasons his book was banned before 1960) and he supported women as fully realized human beings while his peers rejected them as mere decorations. But he was also derisively dismissive when those needs weren’t fully met by the penis. In the novel, he gives a speech to Mellors in which he scolds women who “like every feeling, embrace and exit, anything but natural” who “let it go like my wife”. They want to be the active side… And then there are the ones that drive you crazy before you actually cum and their loins keep squirming until they’re pressed against your thighs, but they’re usually lesbian.”

Clermont-Tonnerre sharply refutes these terrible, outdated notions by referring to the 2022s. Lady Chatterley inspirational masturbation scene. She also reimagines the relationship between Lady C and her husband’s nurse, turning the rivalry over Lord Chatterley’s limited affections into a supportive female friendship. So, Mrs. Bolton, Richardson’s maternal mother, assures the heroine Corrin of the importance of love and physical intimacy. The role is a perfect fit for Richardson, who has often played characters with a girlish warmth that seethes beneath a more level-headed and formal demeanor.

“The solidarity between women was a big part of what drew me to the role,” Richardson reveals via video from a cozy cream sofa in his London home. “This is my personal experience – I have always seen women on the side of other women. I loved Mrs Bolton. She’s a bit of a gossip, but a force for good. An old romantic at heart.

Ken Russell’s 1993 version, then derided as a “goofy” ending to the original television play, ended with Richardson and Bean sailing away on a boat together, embracing like a prototype of Kate and Leo above the waves.

Looking back, Richardson remembers Russell (who died in 2011) as “erratic and crazy, but cool at the same time. Passionate and combative. He is the history of cinema.”

She reminds me that by the time she got into Chatterley, she was well versed in dealing with eccentric male screenwriters, having worked with David Hare on the 1985 film. all-weather and Peter Greenaway in the 1988s drowning in numbers. She later worked with Steven Poliakoff, “then Americans loved David Fincher,” she adds. “Some of these great directors have a difficult personality. But my father [Tony Richardson] was a director and he always told me to follow the director’s vision.”

She finished filming Guy Ritchie last week. Mister and this week she started working on Disney Ballad of Renegade Nell“and you never know what you’ll get from any director. Sometimes it’s scary, but I always tried to follow her vision if I didn’t feel like it. So strong in anything. Because even actors can make mistakes, you know? Only the director and editor has the full vision. Giving up your ability to be right is very important. Because it’s not really about you. You have to adjust your style, adjust your comfort zones.”

One of the times Richardson admitted to being out of her comfort zone was while filming her movie in 1993. chatterly.

“These weren’t days of gym-puffed bodies,” she recalls. “Later, Ken told me that he chose me because of my “old-fashioned” appearance. He did not want a modern female form. He didn’t want a cleaned up version. He didn’t get it!” She laughs and then shudders. “But I remember the scene…”

She doesn’t say what the scene is, “because I don’t want people to watch it on YouTube, but I had to do something that I found embarrassing and vulnerable.” Ken promised me that the lighting would be very dappled and shimmery, with partial shade. Do you remember the famous scene in his woman in love Where men fight naked by the fire? movie legend, right? I imagined such lighting.

“But when I entered the room, there was a bright, flat light. I thought, “Oh my God, this is NOT going to look pretty.” I remember saying something to Ken and he said, “Trust me, it will be appreciated, it will look different when it’s edited.” Well, when I saw it, there was no mottled shadow or flicker. It was pretty intense.”

While the experience was unpleasant, Richardson says it taught her to put her ego aside and focus on storytelling. “As the years go by, I become more and more confident,” she says. “I did a movie with Nick Cage” – 2019 Color our space – “And DP said to me:” All foreignThere doesn’t seem to be any vanity in it. I remember some of the actors in Robert Altman’s Ready-to-Wear complaining about the lighting and he told them, “You look the way you look.” That’s how I want it.”

I wonder if the experience of on-screen nudity was any less frightening for a woman from such a famous acting dynasty as the Redgraves? Her grandfather was Michael Redgrave and her mother was Vanessa Redgrave, who was known to be a sexually obsessed nun in the Russell household. Devils (1971) – and her older sister Natasha Richardson, who died in 2009 at the age of 45 after a skiing accident. Were they representatives of a bohemian family who sat at the dinner table and discussed the artistic merits of nudity on the screen?

Richardson looks shocked. “No! no. I mean, I grew up in a creative environment? Yes. But the downside was that I never saw my parents. The creative world that people think I grew up in didn’t exist at the bus stop since my sister. Coming home from school, getting groceries, cooking dinner and going to bed. My parents were divorced, so from time to time during the holidays I had these glimpses of that other world, because he was always on the set.

Richardson’s co-star Sean Bean was openly skeptical of modern-day intimacy coordinator hugs on set, claiming they kill spontaneity. Richardson admits that she has not yet worked with him. “I know that Emma Corrin was very happy to use Lady Chatterleyso I’m ready to learn more about how they work. I was lucky enough to film my own Chatterley scenes with a great actor like Sean Bean. He has a great sense of humor which really got us through it all. If you can’t laugh at moments like this, when can you?!”

Then she gets serious. “I think we have to remember that the really terrible things that have happened in this industry have not happened on sets with 50 people watching. They happened secretly off the set. We need to pay attention to this.”

While much of the talk about Chatterley is – inevitably – about sex, Richardson argues that “it’s really more about intimacy. After being wounded in war, Lord Chatterley is unable to offer his wife intimacy. So she finds him in Mellors. Although it is an important part of Lawrence’s story, frontal nudity is not usually needed to express intimacy. You can do it with a handshake, a look. I think we all crave intimacy these days. We are all cut off because of the screens, because of the state of everything. It was a terrible time, wasn’t it?

She says she can accept aging while still being fully functional. Old age is not for the faint of heart, and I’ve seen it take every inch of your stamina. But now I’m celebrating the process. I lived all those childhood years and I lived them well and I believe there is beauty in the whole arc if you are lucky enough to live it. There are people who have not reached my age, not my sister, so I will not be offended.

She takes a break. “My maxim is an exception heirs [Matthew Lopez’s 1910 play]: “Do what they couldn’t: live.” I think I was quoted: “Everything I do is for my sister.” But that would be crazy. We must do what we can with our own lives. At work and in life, I never show up to get through.