Bring up the Bodice! Actress Charity Wakefield on playing the other Boleyn girl
Fearless, passionate and sexy, actress CHARITY WAKEFIELD was the natural choice to play one of history’s most infamous temptresses. She talks to Daphne Lockyer about taking on Mary Boleyn in the much-anticipated BBC dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s bestsellers
Top and skirt, Vivienne Westwood Anglomania, from Selfridges. Earrings, Mei-Li Rose. Rings, Joubi, Assaya
Charity Wakefield is early for our morning interview at London’s trendy Shoreditch House – a media and showbiz club that boasts a roster of famous members, the actress herself included. She’s making the most of it, ensconced in a squishy leather chair in the lounge – a pot of tea to the right of her, a freshly made lemonade to the left. ‘I couldn’t decide which I wanted,’ she says, embracing the experience, as she’s apt to do with just about everything in her life. ‘So I ordered both.’
Mary Boleyn was practical, kind, generous – and an incredible survivor
Apart from her increasingly successful career as an actress – and she’s about to appear in the most hotly anticipated TV drama of the decade – she’s also the joint proprietor of Charlie Foxtrot Vintage, a shop in Southeast London that specialises in stunning period clothing.
‘I was going to wear my vintage Issey Miyake coat that’s green on the inside and blue on the outside, but I looked at the rain and thought, “Not today!”’
That item, of course, would have set off her beautiful turquoise eyes, although the striking 34-year-old doesn’t really need adornment of any kind. No wonder director Peter Kosminsky thought to cast her as Mary, ‘the other Boleyn girl’, alongside Claire Foy, who’s playing her younger sister, the doomed Anne in the aforementioned drama – BBC Two’s six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up The Bodies.
Described by Mantel and various historians as the more beautiful of the two girls – and the more sexually experienced – Mary was bedded by monarchs on both sides of the channel: first the king of France and later, before Anne married him, Henry VIII.
Charity wears SHIRT, Vivienne Westwood Anglomania. Trousers, McQ Alexander McQueen. Earrings, Mei-Li Rose. ring, Annelise Michelson. SHOES, vintage Chanel, from Charlie Foxtrot Vintage
‘You could say that she did all the legwork for Anne – quite literally,’ Charity winces. ‘And because she was quite vivacious and sexy herself, she also gave her sister lessons in how to be good in the royal bed when she finally got there. Anne was called the Great Whore by people who didn’t like her. But Claire and I talked about it and researched it and we’re pretty sure that, actually, she was a virgin until Henry and that was all part of her determination to become the queen.
‘As a virgin in those days you were far more prized – just as you are in some societies even now. Mary, on the other hand, was only 15 when she was bedded by the king of France and later, when she was married to her first husband, she also became Henry’s mistress.
In fact, she probably had two illegitimate children by him at that time, including a son, also called Henry, although he was never officially recognised by the king.’
Charity with her fiancé David Newman earlier this year
By modern standards, it might, she says, be easy to judge Mary. ‘But I certainly don’t,’ Charity stresses. ‘You have to place her in the context of the incredibly brutal times that she lived in, in which the daughters of the nobility were “pimped out” by their families for political advantage.
‘We read stories today about young girls being trafficked for sex and, in a way, it was the same for Mary and Anne. From an early age, Mary was treated like a sex object – the king of France even called her his Hackney Horse, for heaven’s sake!
‘Yet, in the end, in those times, when your life could be ended on a whim, she kept her head – quite literally – which is more than poor Anne did. Finally, she even managed to marry for love – although the fact that her second husband, William Stafford, was beneath her socially got her banished from court by Anne and Henry.
‘By that stage, I’m sure it was quite a relief. And I love that she ended her days with the man she loved. For me she is somebody who had great tenacity. She was practical, kind and generous with her soul and her body. She followed her heart and stayed alive. She was an incredible survivor.’
Charity could talk all day about Mary Boleyn and about the Wolf Hall experience in general. Her previous roles have included some other corkers – she was the passionate yet vulnerable Marianne Dashwood in the BBC’s Sense and Sensibility, and she played the intelligent, independent Land Fothergill, the protagonist’s first big love in Channel 4’s adaptation of William Boyd’s brilliant novel Any Human Heart.
‘There was a lot riding on those roles because – just as with Hilary’s work – there are a lot of fans of those books, too. But, yes, there was something so special about Wolf Hall, and I think we were all aware of it.’
Certainly, the £7 million project, which was filmed throughout last summer in cathedrals, country homes and castles all over the South of England and Wales, is TV drama-making on a grand scale. It features 120 cast members – including Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell – hordes of extras, sets and meticulously accurate costumes. The drama looks like a Holbein painting brought to life.
Anne Boleyn was called the Great Whore, but actually she was a virgin
‘Mind you, the corsets were a nightmare,’ Charity says. ‘Nine out of ten in terms of how uncomfortable they were, especially because we were filming in such hot weather. The corsets were sewn into the dresses, so you couldn’t just slip them off when you weren’t in a scene. That and a hairdo that took an hour and a half in make-up every day, and included scores of tiny plaits and a weft of hair that extended to my hip, was a bit of a struggle.
But the whole get-up was completely vital to becoming Mary. You just felt her arriving with the corsets and the hair.’
Charity loved working, too, with what felt like an old-fashioned travelling troupe of actors. ‘We all ate lunch together and sat around when we weren’t filming, playing an ancient Tudor board game – a bit like chess – that Mark Rylance introduced us to.
‘On one occasion we were filming at a beautiful castle with a moat. Damian Lewis jumped in at the end of filming and he called us all in to join him. The whole cast swam right round the castle through the pondweed and the water lilies. It was brilliant. You wonder sometimes that you’re actually being paid to do this job.’
Cardigan, vintage Yves Saint Laurent, from One Of A Kind. Belt, Mulberry.Ring, Joubi
Despite the eventual frostiness between Mary and Anne in the drama, Charity and Claire remained good friends throughout. ‘I’d love to tell you that when our characters fell out so did we, but that wouldn’t be true. Claire is fantastic and funny and a ball of energy. Plus she’s a chatterbox just like me. She’s not like Anne Boleyn at all, which makes her performance all the more amazing.’
During filming the two discovered that they had both studied acting at the Oxford School of Drama. ‘And that, in itself, was unusual because it’s a small school and you hardly meet anyone else who went there. But that shared experience really helped to bond us. The connection was instant.’
It’s obvious that Charity is a woman’s woman and she has a close-knit group of female friends, many of whom live close to her in Peckham, Southeast London. ‘For the past four years we’ve been meeting once a month to play Scrabble and have a laugh and a really good natter. We take it in turns to host and make lots of lovely food. It’s our way of making sure we stay in touch, because otherwise it’s amazing how much time can go by without you seeing your friends, and mine are so important to me.’
There should be more diversity on screen in terms of women’s bodies
She is extremely close to her younger half-sister Olivia – a flight attendant– and her mother Caroline. ‘My mum called me Charity because the name came to her in a dream when she was pregnant with me,’ she laughs. ‘Other people might think, “Whoa, that was a strange dream” and think no more about it, but my mum took it as a message. She is wonderfully quirky and alternative – she still goes to Glastonbury every year. She’s incredibly independent, well-read and well-travelled. She’s also the most honest and open person that I know and I hope those are qualities that I’ve inherited from her. I certainly try to bring them to every role that I play.’
The relationship is deepened by the fact that Caroline was a single mother for the first few years of Charity’s life. They lived in Villajoyosa, a small village near Alicante, with Charity’s grandparents until she was four. ‘My mum is one of eight children, and she’s the daughter of an actor – James Hayer [who appeared in the movie The 39 Steps and voiced the famous Mr Kipling ads]. We went to live with them when I was born and my earliest memories are of being in Spain. We still go back there because we have family living close to Barcelona.’
She describes her Spanish as ‘OK but not great’, although she had the chance to practise it while filming the 2012 movie Day of the Flowers in Cuba.
It was during filming that her boyfriend – the actor David Newman, whom she met while playing Elaine to his Benjamin in a stage version of The Graduate in 2005 – arrived to propose to her. They haven’t yet made firm plans for a wedding, she says, twiddling a beautiful vintage diamond ring on her engagement finger. ‘But we will. Eventually.’
Charity as Mary Boleyn in Wolf Hall
Her view of men, she adds, is coloured by having not one but two great father figures in her life. There’s Richard, the stepfather that she grew up with, whom she describes as ‘the best dad a girl could ever have’ and Andy, her natural father, whom she didn’t meet until she was 20.
‘When I did finally meet him in San Francisco, where he lives, I was in a confident place because I already had one great dad and I thought maybe Andy would be a nice bonus. What I didn’t expect to feel was this immediate natural affinity to someone. As soon as I stepped off the plane and came into arrivals I looked at this bank of people and instantly knew who my father was.
‘As soon as we spoke, I felt as if I’d known him for ever, and we soon discovered that we were very alike. I love taking photographs, for example, and it turned out that he was a professional photographer. We spent hours in his darkroom developing photographs together. Now, if ever I’m working in Los Angeles [and there have been extended stints there, filming the movie Serena with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in 2013, for example], I make a point of going to see him.
‘I was so lucky that, although there was never any question of my mum and Andy staying together after I was born, there was never any animosity between them, and my mum was always completely truthful with me about my dad.
‘But then my mum always made a point of being open with me about everything, including growing up, boys and sex. She taught me that knowledge is free and should be shared, and I really love her for that.’
The two have discussed the pressure faced by young actresses to sign up for ever-more-explicit love scenes. ‘I do think far too much story these days is being told through the medium of two people having sex, and it’s actually quite boring and regressive.’
Fortunately, she adds, in Wolf Hall the sex is more suggestive than explicit. ‘But I have done love scenes before. In Any Human Heart, for example, I didn’t think twice about it because it was integral to the story and I’d had a conversation with the director beforehand about how it would be shot and how much I’d be exposed. And I trusted him.’
Charity is not opposed to sex in art, she says: ‘Sex is part of life, but I do think that actresses often get the raw end of the deal because they’re generally more exposed than actors. And I’m not a fan of the way that every young woman on screen must be thin and oiled up with no hint of cellulite, which is completely unrealistic and damaging to other “normal looking” young women.
Jacket and trousers, Vivienne Westwood Red Label, from Fenwick. top, Apu Jan. sandals, Rupert Sanderson
‘It’s why I love someone like Lena Dunham [the star and creator of TV series Girls] because she’s not afraid to show her lumps and bumps or to say that you don’t have to be physically perfect to be worthwhile.
Charity in Sense and Sensibility as Marianne Dashwood with Dominic Cooper as Mr Willoughby
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she adds. ‘I admire beautiful women and don’t think there is anything wrong with us doing whatever we need to do to feel fantastic about ourselves. But, at the same time, I think we should have more diversity on screen in terms of women’s bodies, and if I’m honest there is a part of me that – when I read a script in which I’m meant to be naked or taking part in a sex scene – worries about how I’m going to look on screen and how my imperfections are going to be judged by people.
‘I’ve been thinking recently that maybe all of us actresses should band together and do a nude, un-airbrushed photo shoot. That would be such a positive thing for girls out there who hate themselves because they think everyone else is perfect. But to appear like that is a scary proposition too. It would take a lot of courage.’
Charity hopes one day to have daughters who feel happy and healthy in their own skins. ‘I want them to be strong and free-spirited, which is how I was raised.’ She has begun to feel broody, she says. ‘It’s what happens when your friends start having children and I’d like to join them before too long.’
In the meantime, she has her dog Honey, an adorable cavalier king charles-poodle cross that she acquired on the set of Wolf Hall. ‘She is one of the dogs who appears in the drama and I fell in love with her when she came on set, and persuaded the animal trainer to let me have her.’
She has embraced the responsibilities of dog ownership, even the twice-daily walks. ‘I actually find that I sleep really well now,’ she says.
‘It’s funny,’ she adds. ‘I met an old Chinese sage when I was at the Shanghai Film Festival. His advice to me was, “Be happy – and always take a walk after dinner!”’ Right now, she’s managing both brilliantly.
Wolf Hall will be on BBC Two later this month
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