{"id":287671,"date":"2026-02-17T03:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/287671\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T03:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:36:10","slug":"the-hewitson-profile-felicity-kendal-hesitates-to-give-away-her-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/287671\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hewitson Profile: Felicity Kendal hesitates to give away her secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The ostensible reason for talking to Felicity Kendal \u2013 oh, of course you know who Felicity Kendal is \u2013 is that she is appearing in comedian Tom Sainsbury\u2019s telly series Small Town Scandal, which is screening on Neon and Sky Comedy. She plays Sue, the deceptively dotty mother of the
\n hapless Toby, a disgraced hack who is sacked from his job on a shady Australian tabloid for writing a story about a pet-food company putting former pets into cans and selling them as pet food. Or something absurdly convoluted like that. None of which turned out to be true.\n <\/p>\n

Toby returns to his small home town in New Zealand and moves in with his mother. His millionaire uncle is discovered dead, run over by one of the robotic motor mowers that made his fortune. Toby decides to investigate and turns his investigation into a podcast. It is a parody of true-crime podcasts and a love letter to the idiosyncrasies of small-town New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Kendal didn\u2019t actually come to New Zealand. I did wonder why I couldn\u2019t find any mention of her slipping into the country unobserved. \u201cWell, I did it really cleverly by not coming.\u201d She read and liked the script and wanted to do it, but she was busy with other work and to come all that way for the three days required to shoot her role \u201cwouldn\u2019t have been sensible\u201d. Her part was shot in the UK with other cast members travelling there.<\/p>\n

She liked the writing, \u201cfunny and lovely\u201d; she liked Sainsbury, who she met for the first time over Zoom, and she liked Sue. \u201cShe\u2019s very lovely and scatty, adores her son but he drives her mad. It\u2019s a lovely relationship between mother and son because it\u2019s got all the frustrations of the character; he\u2019s not exactly the image of a successful, perfect son. But they love each other and she\u2019s full of life and positiveness and she\u2019s just a lovely character to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, not too much of a stretch then. It must really be rather odd being Felicity Kendal. Think about it. She played Barbara Good, who was full of life and positiveness in the telly show The Good Life from 1975 until 1977. That accounts for two years of her acting career. She is 79 and has been acting since forever, and still is. She started acting as a child in India in the roving repertory theatre run by her father, Geoffrey Kendal. She first appeared on a stage at the age of nine months, as the changeling child in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/p>\n

\"KendalKendal with The Good Life co-stars Richard Briers, Penelope Keith and Eddington in 1978. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yet to many people, including me, she will forever be Barbara, that perennially perky, sensibly sunshiny foil to her annoyingly hopeless husband Tom. He was always botching things up in the suburban backyard they had converted into a ramshackle mini farm, attempting to live a sustainable life. They had a goat called Geraldine, a pair of pigs and a rambunctious rooster called Lenin. They made wine out of pea pods. It is predictably and legendarily disgusting. \u201cYeah, I can\u2019t imagine anything worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their snobby social-climbing neighbour Margo, played by Penelope Keith, looked upon these capers with tight-lipped horror. Margo wore floaty kaftans while plumping the cushions. Barbara wore denim. She became a dungaree-clad sex symbol. That is a tricky look to pull off. She might be the only actor who has ever achieved it. The British Film Institute\u2019s entry reads that she was \u201cthe epitome of friendly suburban sexiness in her tight blue jeans\u201d. Men and women loved her.<\/p>\n

Even Margo, if reluctantly, loved her. I still love her. And what I really want her to tell me is how to look sexy in dungarees, because I have abjectly failed. <\/p>\n

\u201cHa, ha, ha. You must wear a tight T and big dungarees and you\u2019ll be fine. They\u2019re lovely. I love dungarees. Nothing like a dungaree.\u201d <\/p>\n

She used to get a bit of Botox done, but \u201coh, long gone. When you get to my age, you don\u2019t wear dungarees and you don\u2019t do that sort of thing any more. I\u2019m afraid you let gravity take its course.\u201d<\/p>\n

But still, she has been acting for more than 70 years, so you\u2019d think she might find it a bit irksome always being asked about a character she played half a century ago.<\/p>\n

She was once in a greengrocer buying carrots and somebody said: \u201cWhy are you buying carrots? Why don\u2019t you go and pick some?\u201d She thought it was funny. It is impossible, almost, to imagine her getting irked. Lynn Barber, the former profile writer for The Observer, once described her as having a sugar coating and that is about right. But a sugar coating exists for a purpose. It protects what is within. It is a tough coating.<\/p>\n

\"ActingActing in TV’s The Good Life (right, with costar Paul Eddington) was just a tiny part of Felicity Kendal’s 70-year acting career. Photos \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a bit like the late Queen, really: she doesn\u2019t complain and she is not very keen on explaining. Her private life, she told Barber, was kept \u201cbehind the blinds\u201d. She can be crisp. When I spoke to her, she was appearing at London\u2019s Hampstead Theatre in a revival of Indian Ink, that the playwright Tom Stoppard wrote for her. She played the poet Flora 30 years ago when it premiered.<\/p>\n

I stupidly call Stoppard \u201cher\u201d Tom. She \u2013 yes, as crisply as a Granny Smith apple \u2013 says, \u201cWell, he\u2019s not my Tom. He was happily married for 15 years.\u201d <\/p>\n

Oh. I was under the impression Stoppard was the love of her life. \u201cYou mustn\u2019t believe what you read in the papers.\u201d She was married to actor Drewe Henley from 1968 until 1979. She married Michael Rudman in 1983, they divorced in 1990, then reunited in 1998 but never bothered remarrying. He died in 2023, and he was the love of her life, she says. She has two grown-up sons, one with Henley and the other with Rudman. She seems to have been with Stoppard from 1991 until 1998. She has said she can\u2019t talk about him and he can\u2019t talk about her. They had a pact not to. Other than this blinds are firmly down so any attempt at unravelling her quite complicated love life would be futile. Stoppard died last year. <\/p>\n

Anyway, the revival has had brilliant reviews and all performances were sold out. She hasn\u2019t read the reviews. \u201cI used to and now I just think I will tomorrow. So, I\u2019ve just put it off in the end. You sort of get the gist of it. If they\u2019re not good, people will tell you.\u201d Aren\u2019t people kind. \u201cOh yes, they are. Actually, you know, having lived a few years, I\u2019ve realised that two of the most surprising things to me are, one, how incredibly kind people are and, two, how incredibly unkind they are. And you just, if you\u2019re lucky, don\u2019t stick around the unkind ones. Don\u2019t stick around the unkind ones. That\u2019s my advice to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is kind, we all know that. She has a kind face and calls people, including me, darling, although that might possibly be because she has forgotten my name. Also, Barbara was kind, so Felicity must be. \u201cI\u2019m definitely kind. I mean, I would say I think it\u2019s a fundamental thing. I think you will reap what you sow, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smelling the Roses<\/p>\n

She was raised a Catholic, but converted to Judaism in her 30s. What it means to her daily life is \u201calmost like saying, \u2018What does it mean to have a head of hair?\u2019 It\u2019s part of who I am. It isn\u2019t a separate part of me now.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wondered what her relationship with her public profile is because it must, at times, get a bit tedious being portrayed as that nice Felicity Kendal. And nobody is nice all of the time, surely. People, as in journalists, do tend to gush over her. She is not a gusher. She is certainly not an over-sharer. <\/p>\n

She said, \u2018Well, I don\u2019t do social media at all. I never have and I never will, so I don\u2019t have that kind of public profile, which a lot of people do. So it\u2019s very much, I guess, my working self, which includes giving interviews and talking about my work. And then there\u2019s me at home doing my thing and reading and being with family and going on holiday and taking the dog for a walk, and they\u2019re both legitimate but they don\u2019t cross over exactly. I don\u2019t send things of me baking a cake or pictures of my wonderful family on Christmas Eve. It\u2019s entirely my business. I have a work side, which I will share, and then I have another side, which I have no intention of sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GoodGood lives (from left) with husband Michael Rudman, Julie Walters in 2013, Tom Stoppard in 2012 and son Jacob Rudman in 2015. Photos \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

She once said that her life, \u201capart from the tragedies, is fucking marvellous\u201d. She says now: \u201cThat\u2019s about right, yeah. Tragedies are things that are seriously, seriously, unavoidable painful. And I think they must be taken seriously. But I also think that being alive and having a choice is also to be cherished. And I think, as many, many wise people have said, you know, get up and smell the roses. Don\u2019t get up and think how mean and nasty people are to you \u2026 And my bottle of vodka is always full. I am not a half-empty person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her tragedies undoubtedly include the death of her sister, actor Jennifer Kendal, in 1984, aged 51, and the death of Rudman. But she doesn\u2019t bang on about things. She\u2019s too busy smelling those roses.<\/p>\n

It would be tempting to paint her as an eternal optimist. But that would make her a Pollyanna, and nobody really likes Polly\u00adannas, do they? They\u2019re just cloyingly annoying. I would say what she actually is is a pragmatist, in that peculiarly old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip British way. She is of a generation whose parents told their progeny things are definitely not fair. \u201cDon\u2019t tell me that things are fair. They\u2019re not fair. Get used to it. Make the most of things and get on. Don\u2019t be negative if you can be positive, because there\u2019s enough pain you can do nothing about.\u201d<\/p>\n

She sounds terribly posh. \u201cNo, not remotely. I think people maybe think I\u2019m posh. I play posh people. But that\u2019s a total misconception. I\u2019m very working class. It\u2019s pretending. You pretend to be somebody you\u2019re not. And I guess the definition of success is the people believe you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She lives in London\u2019s Chelsea in a very nice house. I saw a picture of her reclining on a couch, which looked a bit posh in a comfy and welcoming way. She manages to do sexy in a low-key sort of way, and somehow, I don\u2019t know, Barbara-ishly. In the picture she is wearing sensible white sneakers, tightly laced. She is speaking to me from her dressing room that she shares with the other two actors in the Hampstead Theatre. She does two shows a day and in between shows, \u201cwe lie underneath the dressing table and have a nap on our yoga mats. It\u2019s the very opposite of glamorous.\u201d<\/p>\n

She likes to walk her dog, Rufus, who barks at strangers, \u201cwhich I have to attend to soon\u201d. She would make a good dog trainer. She\u2019d be firm but fair and would, if you were a dog, give you a treat if you behaved nicely. <\/p>\n

She is nice. Like sugar and spice. Perhaps, actually, more spice than sugar. She\u2019s good at swearing. She can be tart. All of which amounts to her charm, which is considerable. But one must not gush. <\/p>\n

Small Town Scandal is screening now on SkyComedy and Neon.<\/p>\n

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