Olivia Colman
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
No, I'm out in the countryside, in the sticks.
I mean, it's funny talking to all of you guys about it, because you all know.
My first work was in comedy, and I loved it.
And sometimes you just need someone to take a punt to give you a chance to do the other thing.
Comedy has my heart, because that's where I got work.
But I always wanted to do something dramatic and I was so pleased.
It was Paddy Considine gave me the chance to do a film called Tyrannosaur.
It started as a short film and then he decided he wanted to know what happened to these characters and made it a longer film.
Well, it sort of, at the time, yeah, Sundance loved it, which makes me love Sundance very much.
And then it sort of built as the years went by.
Film lovers have seen it, but at the time it was quite a slow burn, I think.
I mean, do you all remember the moment when you went, okay, don't suck?
Yeah, maybe, I did my first ever school play when I was 16, and that's the first time I'd done any acting.
And yeah, I've got to say, I really enjoyed afterwards people.
And my mum and dad, who just couldn't really speak afterwards, went, oh, fuck.
Which I obviously didn't have a clue what it meant at the time.
And looking back now, it was all sort of about fascism.
Well, I sort of, I never really admitted it to anyone out loud, but in my head I thought, I wonder if I'm allowed to be an actor.
Because I didn't come from that, you know, so I didn't know.
And so I didn't tell, I went off to teacher training college.
which I left after a term and then worked as a cleaner for a long time and still sort of secretly thinking, I really want to try the acting thing.
Yes, I went to the teacher training college where I met my husband who was at the university.
And I walked into the rehearsal room and saw him and got thunderbolts.
And we did a play together and he was doing law, but was sort of, didn't really like it.
And then I said, run away with me and we'll go and be artists and join the circus.
He finished his degree because he's, you know, proper clever.
He got in first, and then I got in the year after, and we did drama school together.
And then I got a job just before my last term, which was a sketch show.
And I don't think it was particularly great.
But the fact that I'd got a job, I was so excited.
And then I felt like I'd earned some money, and I could actually put actor on my passport.
Well, that was Robin David, who I'd met when I'd left my teacher training college.
They had spent the interim time writing and working hard and then they met Sam and Jesse who wrote Peep Show.
And I was called into the BBC for an audition.
I was so excited and I couldn't work out why.
And they'd also got me in for the sketch show.
Yeah, and I mean, I couldn't write for shit.
If Ogund was to my head, I couldn't write anything funny, but they can.
We say their words and, you know, you appear to be funny, which is nice.
I think... And, you know, I don't know how you feel about it.
You have to sort of be, have an enormous dollop of humility, I think, to be able to, for people to laugh at you.
I think some people aren't comfortable with it.
And I think that helps with, you've got to show vulnerability in the drama side.
Because quite brave to show yourself, to be an idiot in front of people and for them to laugh.
Sorry, my husband's just brought me a massive gin and tonic.
Yeah, so, well, that was a jumping off point.
So, yes, you know, Tony McNamara, amazing, Tony McNamara writer, he has loved War of the Roses, as we all did, and he's slightly changed it a bit, and so it's called The Roses, but that was definitely a big influence.
And on Channel 4 here, every morning, we have Cheers and Frasier and King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond, all those lovely comedies that I remember.
But literally, and Friends and Arrested Development and, you know, and we are all, we can sort of quote most of
All my friends adore American comedy, and I find American comedy very sophisticated.
But I do sort of feel that way about watching all of you perform.
And I think in the early years, you know, not working very often was actually brilliant because it's made me very grateful for work.
And I think it's better that way around than doing really well straight away, I think.
I'm getting slightly better at saying no because I want to be at home a lot.
Up until COVID, I had never been away from home.
Ed, for longer than two weeks, which in our world is quite unusual.
I didn't really take jobs away from home, and I made sure I got back, because I get quite homesick.
No, and I feel when people talk about difference between genders, I sort of...
And they're all equally emotional and funny.
We were home and dry and went back in and had another.
So our big one is in his second year of uni.
And second one is, literally did his last A-level today.
Which is words that never came out of my mouth after an exam.
So we knew for a year, obviously, he was going to go to uni.
And every time he walked past me, I'd burst into tears.
And I just imagined him going back to being a baby in my arms.
And then my husband was going, he'll be great.
And then on the day that we were driving him to uni,
our youngest came out of the gate and watched us drive down the road and just stood there waving.
It's like the blueprint for, you know, hopefully parents will reply in that way.
That's been a lovely response, actually, whenever anyone... Often men over the age of 40 get really teared up and go...
Yeah, so he is a writer, and we have a production company, and he sort of runs that.
Ed and Sonny March, that's Benedict's company, and Fox Searchlight, and yeah.
I'm called an EP on it, but I did absolutely fuck all.
Our characters live in America, but we did...
Forgive me, UK, for getting Devon and Dorset in a muddle.
But we filmed in one of those, and it was very beautiful.
I'm going to have to come over and live in America with you now.
I just got two counties in a muddle, and they'll get really upset by that.
No, we played English because they thought, I think, Tony liked the idea of our Englishness in America.
And the way we properly slag each other off and the incredible American cast, by the way.
Did Michelle Pfeiffer, name drop, say, she does the film for free, it's the press they pay her for?
They'd advertised it so much here, big posters everywhere, and everyone loved it, which made me go, I'm not going to watch it.
But then, of course, I watched it and absolutely loved it.
And then my agent called me once when I was driving and said, they'd like to see you for, she said, The Crown.
And I hadn't really thought about the weight of what it would be.
Also, to be fair, I had a huge tax bill as well that year.
I did start to regret my decision a bit because I thought, oh, actually, this is massive.
Yeah, and everyone knows what she looks like.
Yeah, and I did start to go, oh, fuck, I shouldn't have done this.
He's not pleased that I keep reminding him of this, but he did say, more queen, less farmer, as I was walking.
And you're like, okay, I'm now about to— I know, that first time you open your mouth, and you can sense everyone going, oh, no.
And I can watch back that first scene I did, and I can tell that I wasn't...
I think they did try to do things chronologically, so it was the stamp reveal.
They update our stamps as the monarch ages, and so they went from Clairfoy's face, beautiful young Clairfoy, to me.
I think I had a skirt below my knees, but my knees were absolutely going up and down.
And I sounded quite, it was really quite tight in the back of the seat.
I don't want to know when people might have been writing and going, what the fuck, why is she doing it?
Sort of saying, oh, I've just got to keep going.
Well, my husband will show me if it's a good one.
And if anyone's been mean, I don't want to see it.
But don't you ask someone else, a trusted friend, to look for you?
Yeah, you have to want to watch it, don't you?
You're very good at bringing it back around.
And like a great big intelligent human Labrador.
There were some scenes where we were all together, like a dinner table scene, and it was so hard to get through the day.
I think because I've never written comedy, and we were talking about this, Benedict and I, we're very much, Tony McNamara's written it, and our job is to do the script.
And then we're sort of, it's fairly boring of us.
But then you're in a room with Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, for example, and you go, oh, fuck.
And I think know your strengths, know your limits.
And I'm so thrilled to have seen them do what they do.
I think it was because I'd done The Lobster with Yorgos Lanthimos.
Oh my God, and I read the script, and you know when you get proper, sometimes you go, I think I like it, but this one you go, oh my God, I could potentially try and run someone over if they were up for the same job.
Yeah, it was so clear on the page, I thought.
Also, some actor friends of mine, they read a script and they read it as one thing and then they read it again in another way and they read it again and they see all this and I've never had that.
And I sort of, you know, when they talk about their way of doing things, I panic.
I think, oh, God, I think I'm a very simple person.
And so that reading The Favourite, I just went, oh, God, I can picture exactly.
And then I was doing Broadchurch, I think the third season, and I couldn't fit it in.
And I sort of, you know, that lump in your throat when you go,
Well, because he's from theater background, and he does, we did, I think, three weeks of rehearsal.
Also, he does it with sort of theater games.
So you might do, he loves to do the whole script from start to finish, but without maybe saying it, you might go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in the sort of gist of what you're saying, and you all just go blah, blah, blah, blah to each other and get through the whole story.
Or you do it all holding hands and you're tying yourselves in a massive knot.
So you end up with your face near someone's bum and someone's foot in your armpit.
And so you end up with no inhibitions, pissing yourselves, laughing together.
Or a couple of ibuprofen and a few coffees.
And I put it in my hand luggage because I didn't want it to go into the hold of the plane.
And then air stewards and the stewardess is asking, can we see it?
Because I find I don't have anything out on show at home.
Yeah, it was in a cupboard in our sitting room.
But we've discovered the cupboard's a bit damp.
He opened the cupboard and went, are you fucking kidding?
And so he made me take it out, and I've now got it on a bookshelf put behind a book.
I know it's there, and I can say hello to him.
I think I tell everybody everything, so nothing's really very secret.
Love Island I've never seen, but Too Hot to Handle is, please watch it.
So it's all these really oversexed, incredibly hot, beautiful people who are on this island, and they're told they're there for a show, a dating show.
And then, it's great, and then the presenter comes on and says, actually, you're all here for Too Hot to Handle.
And you can see them going, oh, God, because it means that they're not allowed to touch each other.
And they start with a money pot of like 100 grand.
And they forget that there's a million cameras in this house.
And anyone, so masturbation is like five grand.
And then the next morning, this sort of, it's like a, what are those?
Those gadgets in the house that you can talk to.
So this Alexa-type thing goes, let's all meet on the sofa.
And then she says, the money pot is now down to 90 grand.
And then they go to, like, a hand moving under the duvet.
We go on holiday every year with four families and we play Mafia every night.
Do you find, if you get murdered, you know it's your kids that have done it?
And we have the same guy called Guy, who is the best guy at running it.
He's got a gentle Welsh accent and it really works.
I was incredibly nervous for the first half of this.
I'll see you in London and we'll play math again.
I'm a huge fan of all of you and I'm really grateful you had me on.