She’s reigned (literally) over us for years, playing the queen (among dozens of other roles) in features and series. Now Helen Mirren is bringing that royal presence to TV screens with two performances that couldn’t be more different: Cara Dutton on 1923 and Maeve Harrigan on MobLand.
Even 1923 showrunner Taylor Sheridan wanted to know how he managed to convince her to appear in his series, asking Gold Derby to share his question. “By his writing!” she says, though she admits she said yes without seeing any scripts.
More from GoldDerby
“Both Harrison [Ford] and I, for the first time in our lives, had to commit without reading a single word of the characters or the story or anything. Because Taylor said he likes to write for the actor that he’s got, he likes to write knowing who he’s writing for, which I thought was very interesting.”
But for Sheridan, she was willing to take the chance. “We knew the history of Taylor’s writing,” she tells Gold Derby (watch the full interview above). “And you know what? What a remarkable, brilliant, extraordinary talent he is. So we took a leap into the dark.”
She credits Sheridan for his ability to effortlessly reflect the chemistry that quickly built between Mirren and her on-screen husband, played by Ford. Mirren had worked with Ford years before — “when he was a huge movie star, and I was no one,” she laughs — “but the moment we walked on the set, it was just like, bang! We were together and just wonderfully easy with each other. And that was nothing to do with Taylor or anyone, really. That was just to do with me and Harrison. And I think that that relationship then informed the writing, as Taylor went on.”
With scripts being delivered as filming went on, Mirren trusted Sheridan to craft the story to its natural conclusion. “Harrison and I signed up for that without having any idea of what the story was going to be, where it was going to go. I fully expected to be killed off!” she admits. “But no, there I am at the very end. That was great. That was the surprise.”
And on the opposite end of the good-evil spectrum is Maeve Harrigan, the Lady Macbeth of MobLand, secretly pulling the strings of the Irish mob family led by her husband, played by Pierce Brosnan.
Agreeing to play that role, she says, was a matter of getting to work again with Brosnan (they were also costarring in Thursday Night Murder Club), the “wild ride” of a Guy Ritchie production, and the appeal of playing such a “terrible, terrible person.”
“She’s got energy and agency, and you don’t always find great female characters with drive,” she says.
On this series, too, she knew little of the twists and turns to come — and (spoiler alert) there are many. “But life’s like that, isn’t it?” she says. “I can’t plan for tomorrow. You don’t really know what life’s going to throw at you. So I love that feeling of the unexpected.”
Given these two powerhouse female characters, one who must brave brutal Montana winters and one who fearlessly takes on gangsters, which one is tougher?
“Oh, that’s a very good question!” she says. “Cara is tougher. Maeve is crueler. She has the obvious manifestation of toughness in the sense of being bullying and cruel and calculating and immoral. Cara’s challenge is different because she is loyal, and she has a moral compass, and she’s loving and down-to-earth and realistic. Maeve is not realistic. She lives in a fantasy world.”
That said, for Mirren, Cara’s story has come to an end — the actress is not interested in telling another part of the character’s timeline. “I’d love to revisit Cara, but you know that’s not going to happen because the great thing about [1923] is there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end,” she says. “But I would love to work with Taylor again, in a different manifestation. Absolutely. I would always love to work with him. For an actor, we deal in words, and words is what Taylor does so very, very well.”
She similarly shoots down the idea of a cameo on Shrinking, despite her chemistry with Ford. “I don’t think so, no,” she says with a laugh. “Of course, I would love to work with Harrison, no question, but I can’t see a role for me on Shrinking particularly.”
With all of her many acting accolades — including an Oscar for The Queen, multiple Emmys including Prime Suspect and Elizabeth I, and a Tony for The Audience — she’s just a Grammy shy of an EGOT. The usual path to complete the quartet is narrating an audiobook — after all, she lent her voice to Barbie so brilliantly — so what would be on her wishlist?
“I’ll tell you what I’ve always rather wanted to do — I wanted to do an album of lyrics, music lyrics without the music, just read as poetry,” she says. “I’d love that. Because some lyrics are really beautiful. Sha la la la la la la.”
Best of GoldDerby
Sign up for Gold Derby’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
