Richard E Grant: Despite our vast combined vintage, our paths have never crossed before, have they?<\/p>\n
Christine Baranski: Regrettably not. We could have had some good fun a few decades ago. A girl could have got into some real trouble. But here we are, and now we\u2019re the veterans. You\u2019re among the great character actors, popping up delightfully in so many things and always being spot-on.<\/p>\n
REG: My late wife said I\u2019m in the condiment years, where you\u2019re added to the meal in these cameo roles like vinegar or ketchup or mustard, spice or pickle or whatever. I think that\u2019s absolutely accurate.<\/p>\n
CB: It makes for an interesting and varied career. You have a shelf life certainly if you\u2019re a leading lady. It\u2019s a harder perch to descend from, which is sort of what Hay Fever is about. My character, Judith Bliss, can\u2019t quite accept that she\u2019s not up there doing it any more. I\u2019ve had a long career because I was comfortable being the supporting actress. I did The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard on Broadway in 1984 [for which she won the first of two Tony awards]. My character in that, Charlotte, is so bitingly witty and she has this marvellous repartee with Henry, played by Jeremy Irons. I\u2019d do my scenes, then go up to my dressing room, and people would say: \u201cOh, we wanted you to come back!\u201d They\u2019ll have their fill of me with Hay Fever. It\u2019ll be more like: \u201cWhen is she going to leave the stage?\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant and Baranski in rehearsals for Hay Fever. Photograph: Marc Brenner<\/p>\n
Ryan Gilbey: Judith in Hay Fever has been played by everyone from Edith Evans and Celia Johnson to Judi Dench, Penelope Keith and Lindsay Duncan. Why is the part such a magnet for great performers?<\/p>\n
CB: Well, she\u2019s an ageing actress, and how delicious to play that in your later years. It\u2019s all about the vanity and vulnerability of ageing. There\u2019s a poignancy to it; I really find her rather dear. You don\u2019t have to be an ageing actress to feel that way as a woman, particularly in our culture. We cling to youth for dear life. You could say it all borders on the camp, but because it\u2019s Coward and he\u2019s writing affectionately as well as cynically about theatre people, it has a sweetness to it \u2013 it\u2019s camp that\u2019s elegant. He wrote it at 24, so even as a young man he had that sense of something behind all the fame and glamour.<\/p>\n
Christine, this is your first time in the West End but your fourth Coward play. What\u2019s the secret to mastering him?<\/p>\n
CB: If you find out, will you please tell us? Speed, facility, lightness of tone. He uses words as weapons. I really want people to sit up and listen because we don\u2019t use language like that any more, do we?<\/p>\n
Judith and her husband, David, played by Richard, are decidedly poor hosts. What makes a good host and a decent party?<\/p>\n
REG: My late wife said that everyone there should know a minimum of two people. It\u2019s foolproof, and it means that you as the host can let people get on with it. If nobody knows anybody, you\u2019re buggered. I\u2019ve found that whenever a party has been awkward, it\u2019s because there\u2019s not enough social glue to begin with.<\/p>\n
CB: We had the most wonderful party at Richard\u2019s house on the first weekend I was here in London. It\u2019s the most enchanting, magical house. You can describe it for me, Richard.<\/p>\n
REG: Maximalist.<\/p>\n
CB: Sitting around, having drinks and laughing were Steve Martin and Martin Short, Helena Bonham Carter, Gary Oldman, various spouses and Richard\u2019s daughter and son-in-law. It was so relaxing despite the extraordinary pedigrees of all these talented people with big egos.<\/p>\n
REG: There were 12 of us, so you could still hear someone at the other end of the table and you didn\u2019t feel cut off. Christine already knew Steve, Marty and Helena but not Gary. Gary knew Helena but not Steve and Marty. There was enough glue.<\/p>\n
Grant (left) and Paul McGann in Withnail and I. Photograph: Handmade Films\/Kobal\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
You and Gary Oldman have worked together a few times, haven\u2019t you, Richard? Including on one of your first credits, Les Blair\u2019s BBC film Honest, Decent and True.<\/p>\n
REG: Yes, that was 1985. The day I landed here when I emigrated from Swaziland in 1982, I went to see Gary in the play Summit Conference with Glenda Jackson as Eva Braun and Georgina Hale as Clara Petacci, the mistresses of Hitler and Mussolini. That was where I first met him. We each got married at the same time \u2013 well, Gary\u2019s been married five times \u2013 and my daughter was born around the same time as his first child. When I had to lose weight for Withnail and I, I asked Gary how he\u2019d done it for Sid and Nancy. I had just spent almost a year when I was unemployed trying to gain weight because I\u2019d read in a magazine that if you\u2019re six foot, you should weigh 12 stone. Now, I\u2019d never weighed 12 stone in my life, so I was doing all the weight-gain powder and the gym and all that. Then Bruce Robinson, the director of Withnail, said, \u201cCould you lose a stone?\u201d So I called Gary, who I think had eaten nothing but tuna and melon; he even ended up hospitalised at one point. I went to Boots instead and got weight-gain-off powder, and my year\u2019s work disappeared within a week.<\/p>\n
Before that, didn\u2019t Bruce say you looked like \u201ca fat Dirk Bogarde\u201d?<\/p>\n
REG: He did. He still calls me Fatty.<\/p>\n
As you were going in to audition for Withnail, you passed Bill Nighy coming out.<\/p>\n
REG: Bill Nighy. Kenneth Branagh. A whole bunch of people went up for it. I had to read the kitchen scene at the start of the film. Bruce told me: \u201cDrop the No\u00ebl Coward. The character is not as affected as you\u2019re thinking. Read it with more rage.\u201d I\u2019d been unemployed for nine months so that rage was very easy to tap into.<\/p>\n
Christine, do you host?<\/p>\n
CB: I have a marvellous house on a lake in Connecticut and I\u2019ve hosted some very famous actors there. It has a very long dock that has been \u201cgrandfathered\u201d in, as in they don\u2019t allow a dock that long to be built any more, but this is about 100 years old. You sit in the living room in summer and watch the sun set, and then go out into the evening and skinny dip in the lake. When I did Boeing-Boeing for nine months on Broadway with Mark Rylance, he became a great pal \u2013 he\u2019s a godfather to my third grandson \u2013 and we\u2019d be out there howling at the moon at four in the morning. So much fun.<\/p>\n
REG: Have you ever had anybody who won\u2019t take their clothes off?<\/p>\n
CB: Oh, it\u2019s not a prerequisite. I encourage people only if they\u2019re comfortable and if it\u2019s pitch dark. Although one actress I adore insisted on sunbathing stark naked in the middle of the afternoon. In fact, she would spend all night on the dock, fall asleep on there and then wake up at dawn and there she was!<\/p>\n
You won an Emmy in 1995 for the sitcom Cybill, where you played Cybill Shepherd\u2019s divorced best friend. But you\u2019d been reluctant to do TV, hadn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
CB: Absolutely. Mainly because I didn\u2019t want to live in Los Angeles. I also had a very active theatre career, going from play to play; I loved it. It just became a question of raising two kids and having tuition bills to pay. So at 41 or 42, I began my television career with the caveat that I would commute. I never bought real estate in LA. I lived in a hotel and was on the first red-eye back to the kids. Winning the Emmy gave me this visibility. I\u2019d worked with Mike Nichols on The Real Thing, but it was because of the Emmy that he cast me in The Birdcage. Most of my film and television stuff happened after the age of 40.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve had a long career because I was comfortable being the supporting actress\u2019 \u2026 Baranski in Cybill. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
REG: I read yesterday that there was an unprecedented number of Emmys going to female actors over 50 this year.<\/p>\n
CB: It\u2019s about time.<\/p>\n
Christine and one of this year\u2019s winners, Jean Smart from Hacks, played biker chicks in The Odd Couple II.<\/p>\n
CB: Well done! Yes, Jean danced with Jack Lemmon and I got to dance with Walter Matthau. It was not a good movie, but to work with those guys at the end of their careers \u2026 oh, I adored them. Lemmon was the consummate professional, always the first one on set, and Matthau was this curmudgeonly, lovable old woolly bear.<\/p>\n
REG: Talking of Mike Nichols, I had dinner with Mike 22 years ago, the night before I went to Africa to make the only film I\u2019ve directed, Wah-Wah. I asked him for advice and he said \u2013 apart from getting good caterers \u2013 that actors can always act faster than they think they can. He said: \u201cDo the takes that you\u2019re happy with. Give the actors the takes they\u2019re happy with. And then tell them: \u2018Let\u2019s do one for Mike.\u2019\u201d It\u2019s amazing, the speed and effectiveness when people aren\u2019t pausing and breaking \u2026 up \u2026 lines \u2026 all \u2026 the \u2026 time. Because we don\u2019t do that in life, do we? It was great advice.<\/p>\n
CB: It was. He couldn\u2019t tolerate indulgence. He was so fiercely intelligent and he loved clarity. Richard, did you have a wonderful time working with Robert Altman?<\/p>\n
REG: I did. I worked with him on The Player and Gosford Park and a terrible film called Pret-a-Porter. Whereas the other two had scripts, Pret-a-Porter was like this: \u201cRyan, Christine and Richard meet in a small room. She spills the water. They argue. Improvise.\u201d It had no structure and it was a car crash as a result. If you\u2019ve got a good script, you can embellish and add stuff, but this was a free-for-all. There was one insane day when Danny Aiello completely lost the plot. Sophia Loren was supposed to have fainted, and he infiltrated the scene and started taking it over: \u201cI\u2019ll give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!\u201d He called Lauren Bacall \u201ca left-wing Commie bitch\u201d. Then he insulted Rupert Everett for being English and for being \u2026<\/p>\n
Grant in rehearsals for Hay Fever. Photograph: Marc Brenner<\/p>\n
CB: Oh dear. Did Lauren eat him up and spit him out?<\/p>\n
REG: She took no prisoners. She ripped him five new ones. It was more dramatic than anything that happened in the actual film. None of the cast would talk to Danny after that; they sent him to Coventry.<\/p>\n
CB: We all have our stories.<\/p>\n
Christine, have you ever worked the way Altman did, with multiple cameras and the actors not always knowing for sure if they are in shot?<\/p>\n
CB: A little bit on television. I think it\u2019s a great way of keeping actors on their toes. Sitcoms can be harrowing, though. If the studio audience doesn\u2019t laugh, the writers go away and come up with a different joke there and then. They\u2019re always adjusting and you\u2019ve got to nail those one-liners. You know you\u2019ve got to get that laugh because it\u2019s your job. It\u2019s a wonderful discipline. After all that comedy, I told my manager: \u201cIt\u2019s time for me to do a dramatic role.\u201d Be careful what you wish for, because if The Gilded Age goes for a fifth year, that\u2019ll be 18 straight years of television work, after The Good Wife and The Good Fight.<\/p>\n
With you in The Gilded Age, and Richard in Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, you\u2019re both part of the Julian Fellowes Dramatic Universe.<\/p>\n
REG: Yes, but we\u2019re not as rich as Julian Fellowes. Well, Christine probably is, but I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n
I noticed a few other similarities on your CVs. You both appeared in great Steve Martin comedies: Richard in LA Story, Christine in Bowfinger.<\/p>\n
CB: Underrated, I think. It\u2019s certainly got some of Eddie Murphy\u2019s greatest work. He was huge then. His first day on set, I had to walk across the street and assault him. He\u2019s a really intelligent actor. And God, does he have comedic instincts! He\u2019s also a very private person.<\/p>\n
Baranski with Walter Matthau and Jean Smart in The Odd Couple II. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n
REG: So he won\u2019t be skinny-dipping in Connecticut?<\/p>\n
CB: No skinny-dipping with Eddie Murphy.<\/p>\n
Early in your careers, you also each appeared in a scandalous erotic movie. Richard was in Henry & June, the film for which the controversial NC-17 rating (the highest age rating) was created in the US.<\/p>\n
REG: That\u2019s right. It has a lot of bonking and brothel scenes.<\/p>\n
CB: We\u2019re not known for the erotic works, I should say. But yes, mine was 9\u00bd Weeks. I played Kim Basinger\u2019s friend. I have a dinner scene where I balance a teaspoon on the end of my nose. And I can drink while it\u2019s sort of hanging there.<\/p>\n
REG: You should do that during the breakfast scene in Hay Fever.<\/p>\n
CB: And upstage you, my darling?<\/p>\n