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<\/p>\nLucy Punch has no idea that a Christmas special of a popular show can be a very big deal. \u201cReally? I haven\u2019t had a Christmas in England for years.\u201d Last year\u2019s Gavin & Stacey, I tell her, was a cultural extravaganza on a par with a royal wedding. \u201cWas it? Oh, wow.\u201d<\/p>\n
For my part, I had no idea that Punch is a big deal in America. To British fans of Motherland and its spin-off, Amandaland, Punch, 47, is the quintessential nightmare London mum, recognisable to anyone who has ever stood at a primary-school gate. Her character, Amanda, is the smug, glossy one in designerwear who makes the flustered mums in Primark joggers feel inadequate. We all know an Amanda.<\/p>\n
But Punch left London for Hollywood almost 20 years ago, where she has worked alongside the biggest names: Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Naomi Watts in the Woody Allen movie You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher, Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp in Into the Woods, Steve Carell in Dinner for Schmucks and Al Pacino in Stand Up Guys. She lives with her partner, the British artist Dinos Chapman, and their two sons in LA\u2019s glitzy Laurel Canyon, a location that could not be less like unlovely Harlesden, to where Amanda has been exiled post-divorce in Amandaland.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Clockwise from top left: with Samuel Anderson as Mal in the Amandaland Christmas special; on stage with Jerry Hall in The Graduate, 2000; with Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher, 2011; with Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin in Stand Up Guys, 2012<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
The school gates of London were so far from Punch\u2019s real life, for a long time she didn\u2019t even realise Motherland had become a big deal in Britain. The BBC comedy drama wasn\u2019t broadcast in the US, \u201cso I never really had much of a sense of people liking the show until towards its end\u201d.<\/p>\n
She might wish she had remained in the dark, because when the producers suggested making a spin-off, promoting Amanda to the new show\u2019s lead, Punch panicked. \u201cI expected there to be a sort of disappointment of it not being Motherland. And missing all those brilliant characters, the beloved characters in that show.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also worried that \u201cpeople love to hate Amanda. Putting that character front of centre, would it work? Would people care about her? I genuinely had a lot of fear about how it would be received.\u201d<\/p>\n
Punch herself, despite the impressive acting credits, had never been a leading lady. \u201cI\u2019ve never been front and centre before.\u201d When Amandaland came out in February<\/a> she was \u201cfar too nervous\u201d to read the reviews, but they were so glowing her agent sent her the headlines. \u201cThere was one that went something like, \u2018Lucy\u2019s finally made it at 47\u2019, and I realised I hadn\u2019t let myself think of it like that. It made me realise it was a bigger deal maybe than I\u2019d allowed myself to think. And I\u2019m obviously so grateful it has happened, because it\u2019s a huge deal for me.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve met outside a photographic studio in Hackney. Her trademark mane is hidden under a woolly hat, so I don\u2019t recognise her until she calls to me across the courtyard. Punch has that mysterious, chameleon-like gift, common in character actors, of looking completely different in every role she plays. It\u2019s bitterly cold, so we decamp to a caf\u00e9 where she buys us cakes and coffee.<\/p>\n Turtleneck, \u00a3100, Emello. Coat, \u00a32,870, Lanvin<\/p>\n PHIL DUNLOP<\/p>\n Double-sleeve turtleneck, \u00a3390, Toteme. Velvet trousers, \u00a31,200, Tory Burch. Ankle boots, \u00a3490, Jude. Rings, Punch\u2019s own<\/p>\n PHIL DUNLOP<\/p>\n She is friendly, smiley, warm and chatty \u2014 and impenetrably opaque. I have interviewed MI5 operatives more forthcoming about their private selves than Punch, who takes care to reveal very little. Her inscrutability may be partly due to unfamiliarity with the media spotlight \u2014 or to her self-image as a character actor, not a celebrity. Alternatively, it might all be down to her personality. But it\u2019s hard to work out what that personality might be.<\/p>\n The personalities she performs are seldom pleasant. In the past she has joked, \u201cIf the character is smug, bitchy, trashy or has dubious morals, call me!\u201d, and, \u201cQuite often I\u2019m, you know, the posh bitch.\u201d Actors who perfect a particular kind of role often, in my experience, share some of their fictional characters\u2019 traits, but there is absolutely no evidence of this in Punch. She puts the typecasting down to her \u201cbeady eyes and pointy nose\u201d, which seems like the only plausible explanation.<\/p>\n Amandaland\u2019s central relationship is Amanda\u2019s mean-girl \u201cfriendship\u201d with the dowdy, adoring Anne, whom she uses but despises. Their toxic co-dependence is taken to new comic heights in the Christmas special, when Anne gatecrashes Amanda\u2019s family gathering in the Cotswolds. Although farcical, the dynamic between them is so believable that I ask Punch if she drew on her life experience to play it. \u201cYou might not have that sort of relationship now, but you might have known of that sort of dynamic when you were a teenager. That\u2019s what it feels like to me. Teenage-girl friendship. Status and snipes and criticism and power play and manipulation.\u201d Was Punch a bitchy, mean-girl teen? \u201cI wasn\u2019t. But I was a teenage girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Punch grew up in west London, the daughter of a father who worked in advertising and a mother in market research, and went to the private girls\u2019 school Godolphin & Latymer. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that mean and bitchy, but it was a competitive and very academic school, and I was always sort of on the edge, a slightly outsider type of person, until I did National Youth Theatre, which really transformed things for me.\u201d<\/p>\n She studied history of art at University College London, but dropped out when Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French offered her a part in their 1999 sitcom, Let Them Eat Cake. The show ran for just one series, and Punch didn\u2019t cross paths with Saunders again until she was cast as Amanda\u2019s aunt in the Christmas special. \u201cShe\u2019s a complete heroine of mine, so I was starstruck.\u201d Saunders steals the show, so I wonder how the rest of the cast could keep a straight face on set. \u201cWell, she was just laughing all the time and very generous and laughing at everyone else.\u201d Joanna Lumley plays Amanda\u2019s cuttingly snobbish mother, but, Punch says, she \u201cis a dream. Joanna\u2019s absolutely amazing, I love all our scenes together.\u201d<\/p>\n The English class system is played to perfection in the show, but Punch says: \u201cI hate all that sort of class stuff here.\u201d She had plenty of work as a young actress in London \u2014 on stage alongside Jerry Hall in The Graduate and in Midsomer Murders, Poirot and Doc Martin on TV \u2014 but moved to LA in 2006 because, she has said, \u201cI kept getting cast as posh idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n A part in the American sitcom The Class, created by the team who made Friends, promised early stardom, but it ran for just one season, after which the work dried up. By 2010 her mother was advising her to retrain as a chiropodist, but in the nick of time Woody Allen cast her in his movie, and she has barely stopped working since. She and Chapman have been together since 2014, but the couple are so private that as recently as February a British newspaper described him as her \u201cmystery husband\u201d. They aren\u2019t married but have a nine-year-old son, Rex, and a four-year-old son whose name remains undisclosed.<\/p>\n With her partner, the artist Dinos Chapman<\/p>\n OWEN KOLASINSKI\/BFA.COM\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019m just a fairly private person, and private even with people who are close to me. I also feel that anything interesting about myself is the last thing I\u2019d want to share in an interview.\u201d She adds hastily: \u201cIt\u2019s not like there\u2019s anything particularly interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking worried, she adds: \u201cI\u2019ve made it seem like there\u2019s something. It\u2019s just, it\u2019s just \u2014 oh, now I\u2019m getting tongue-tied. I don\u2019t know. I just think we\u2019ve all become so accepting of a lack of privacy in our lives, and there\u2019s so little left. There\u2019s no more secrets and there\u2019s no more mystery, and I think that\u2019s weird and sad. It seems like only your thoughts, only what\u2019s in here,\u201d and she taps her head, \u201cis safe.\u201d<\/p>\n She sounds quite detached from her life in LA. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I belong there at all. LA\u2019s a very transient place. I\u2019m more comfortable feeling in-between.\u201d We\u2019re meeting the day before Thanksgiving, but \u201cwe\u2019re just skipping it\u201d. Her family are with her in London.<\/p>\n They have rented a home in the capital while she films season two of Amandaland, and her elder son is enrolled in school here for the duration, as he was when she filmed the first series. \u201cHe likes having a double life \u2014 he can dip between schools here and back there. We\u2019re a little sort of travelling circus.\u201d<\/p>\n No show has captured the particular social culture of the English primary school gate with more pitiless accuracy than Motherland. Its writers, who include Sharon Horgan, of Catastrophe fame, tried to make an American version but the pilot episode bombed, so I ask Punch why. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like the English Office, where it\u2019s a little bit nasty and unfriendly and there\u2019s not a lot of sweetness.\u201d<\/p>\n She has previously said that 50 per cent of the school mums in LA are Amandas, so does she think Amandaland is better suited to a US remake? \u201cI think it maybe would translate better, especially Amanda\u2019s character, with all her chutzpah and wanting to win and succeed. Her ambition and reinvention might make her a more relatable type there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 The star of Amandaland is needy and shallow \u2014 and I love her<\/a><\/p>\n What Punch doesn\u2019t mention is that, unlike most of the Motherland cast, she looks like the sort of gorgeous leggy blonde Americans expect to see on their TV screens. Her skin is so flawless, I ask what she has done to look this good. \u201cI don\u2019t do anything. Look.\u201d She wiggles her eyebrows and pulls elastic expressions. I tell her I was hoping for hilarious LA anecdotes about placenta infusions. \u201cTruthfully, the past few years, I haven\u2019t been working as much, and I haven\u2019t felt like I could afford to spend money on stuff on my face.\u201d Then again, she goes on, she\u2019s not sure she would want to. She tells me about going out recently with a girlfriend for cocktails in an LA bar. \u201cAnd the women were all so gorgeous, they did look beautiful. It\u2019s not that you don\u2019t think they\u2019re beautiful. But it\u2019s almost slightly AI. Me and my girlfriend just looked more human. I understand for, you know, movie stars there\u2019s a huge pressure, but I think that you need to have some humanity in your face. And that\u2019s really important for a character or comedy actor. I can\u2019t do anything to my face because I feel like that\u2019s not what\u2019s got me jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Christmas special Amanda\u2019s children \u2014 now in their early teens \u2014 spend the entire journey from Harlesden to their great-aunt\u2019s home outside Cirencester glued to their phones. Saunders plays a classic, old-money English country lady whose grand house is covered in dust, freezing cold, overrun by ungovernable dogs and \u2014 to the teens\u2019 consternation \u2014 wi-fi free. Amanda is cheerfully indulgent of their phone addiction, so I ask Punch about her own smartphone policy for her children.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of my friends have older kids, so I\u2019ve seen what they\u2019re dealing with. And that\u2019s really terrifying to me.\u201d Is she hoping to keep them off social media until they turn 14? \u201cThat seems so young to me. I would be like, when he\u2019s 18 \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Shirt, \u00a3665, and trousers, \u00a3750, Petar Petrov. Ankle boots, \u00a3490, Jude<\/p>\n PHIL DUNLOP<\/p>\n They are about to spend their first family Christmas in England, because she\u2019s filming through December, and her brother is flying in from his home in New York. \u201cBefore I had kids I didn\u2019t really celebrate Christmas. I would go with my brother to Costa Rica or Cuba or somewhere and have an anti-Christmas. Now, obviously, with children we take it up a hundred notches and spend far too much money and try to make it really lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n As a former Christmas refusenik, does she enjoy it? \u201cThrough them I do. I really do, actually. I love it for them and I love them doing it. I throw a bit of extra money at it and then hope everyone has got enough and is happy with all their bits and pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Amandaland and my life as the daughter of a narcissist<\/a><\/p>\n Like her fictional character, she will be having a country Christmas, at her mother\u2019s house in Sussex. Her mother\u2019s suggestion to her unemployed actress daughter that she retrain as a chiropodist sounds exactly like the sort of thing Amanda\u2019s mother would say, so I ask if she is anything like Lumley\u2019s Amandaland character. \u201cNo! She\u2019s not at all. No, she\u2019s the sweetest. She\u2019s absolutely lovely. She\u2019s very social and adventurous \u2014 she\u2019s got vim and vigour, so she\u2019ll be hosting.\u201d<\/p>\n Will Punch, I ask, be cooking? She looks at me as if I must be mad. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n The Amandaland Christmas special is on BBC1 and iPlayer at 9.15pm on Christmas Day<\/p>\n Hair Gordon Chapples. Make-up Phoebe Taylor using Shiseido<\/p>\n Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a> , the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to watch<\/a> and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucy Punch has no idea that a Christmas special of a popular show can be a very big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-194436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/\/1e7ea487-2ce0-4f54-93f3-90179037fcb6.jpg\")
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