Married to the mob
While she may be best known for playing lady’s maid Anna Bates in Downton Abbey, Joanne Froggatt has built a career defined by variety. Here, she tells DQ about her latest part – starring opposite Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren in Guy Ritchie’s new TV drama, MobLand.
When Joanne Froggatt steps out onto the red carpet this week for the world premiere of MobLand, it will have been less than 24 hours since she wrapped production on director Guy Ritchie’s 10-part global crime series.
Editing on the show has been in motion almost in parallel with production, meaning that even with a two-week delay, the series will be ready for its grand unveiling so soon after the final scenes were shot.
Broadcaster Paramount+ isn’t hanging around either, with MobLand set to debut to subscribers in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia this Sunday. A worldwide roll-out will follow later this year.
Speaking to DQ ahead of the London premiere, Froggatt says: “We’re still filming. We haven’t finished yet. We finish on Wednesday, the premiere is on Thursday. We’ve got a hard deadline now.
“We’ve gone over by about two weeks, so it was always a very tight turnaround. But as it’s 10 episodes and we have different directors, once one director has finished their block of filming, they start editing those episodes, which is the normally the way it works on a series. But usually it wouldn’t come out quite so quickly, so everyone’s been quite up against it.”
Froggatt was on set yesterday and returns today and tomorrow for the final scenes, which she promises will bring the show to a close in suitably action-packed style.
“I obviously can’t reveal what it is, but the end of the season is big and there are big surprises,” the actor says. “Even when I read it, I was like, ‘Wow.’ If I was watching this I’d be like, ‘No way, I can’t believe they’ve done that.’ There are a lot of exciting cliffhangers in the show and, as the episodes progress, the cliffhangers seem to get bigger and bigger. It’s exciting.”
The British actor joins an all-star cast for the London-set series, which is led by Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. She plays Jan Da Souza, wife of Hardy’s fixer Harry, who works for the Harrigan crime family led by Conrad and Maeve (Brosnan and Mirren). Harry finds himself caught in the crossfire when tensions begin to simmer between the Harrigans and rival gang the Stevensons, as part of a power struggle within a global crime syndicate.
Ritchie is lead director on MobLand, which is written by Ronan Bennett (Top Boy) and Jez Butterworth (Britannia). As the show begins, Jan is a little disillusioned and is starting to imagine what her life will become when their daughter leaves the family home.
“Harry is further and further embroiled in his work with the Harrigans, but as the series unfolds and the war between the Harrigans and the Stevensons unfolds, all the characters on the edge of the Harrigans’ and Harry’s world become more and more embroiled in that drama,” Froggatt says. “Jan can’t help but be dragged into the drama of the warring factions.
“Jan is the only person in the story that really tells Harry the truth – and that Harry would take it from. With everyone else, Harry’s the big man. But at home, they’re very much on an equal footing, so that’s an interesting dynamic, and Jan certainly tells it how it is. It’s a fun journey to watch them try to navigate what is hopefully a very realistic relationship in this very heightened, dramatic, dangerous world they’re living in.”
The actor says landing a role in a Ritchie project ticks off an item on her bucket list, having long admired the work of a director best known for feature films Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and a pair of Sherlock Holmes movies. His series credits include The Gentlemen.
“I’ve always wanted to do a gangster story. I’ve always wanted to be a gangster, a gangster’s wife, one of those. So I was super excited, and what a fun ride to go on,” she says.
Froggatt wasn’t always in the frame to play Jan, however, as she initially auditioned for the part of a different character. “I actually called my agent and said, ‘I think I’m more a Jan than this character.’ Then they came back and offered me Jan, which was great,” she remembers. “Ronan Bennet, Jez Butterworth, Guy Ritchie, Tom Hardy, Piers Brosnan, Helen Mirren – you couldn’t say no to that, could you? It’s amazing. I was just thrilled to be on board and it’s been so much fun.”
Playing a role in an original series meant Froggatt got the chance to build Jan with a considerable amount of freedom, tapping into the show’s dark humour to infuse the character with a dry, sarcastic sense of humour. “I sensed a little bit from the writing that maybe that’s where she could go and I was like, ‘Oh, I like that. I quite want her to have a little dry sarcasm.’ She’s straight-talking. With Jan, I could create her from my imagination a little bit more.”
It’s a far cry from the preparation process she faced going into ITV three-parter Breathtaking, a fact-based drama in which she played Dr Abbey Henderson, an NHS doctor on the front line of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“With something like Breathtaking, it’s based on reality. It’s based on real people’s experiences. And playing a doctor, you have to be believable that you have been a consultant for 17 years, you know how to do these procedures, you know how to say these words and you know how to behave in a hospital and how to behave with patients,” Froggatt explains. “There was a huge amount of intricate research I needed to do to make that believable.”
With Jan, meanwhile, “I did watch a few interviews with old-school gangsters and women who have been attached with gangsters and things like that, but a lot of it was just created from imagination, which is also really fun to do because you can make her whoever you want,” she adds.
Froggatt jokes that being on set feels like “I chose to run away with the circus,” getting to spend time with a team that moves between locations each day and “creating these fun, crazy worlds you’re living in.” Working with Ritchie “was great,” she continues. “He’s very decisive. He knows what he wants. He knows when he’s got it and he knows when he doesn’t have it, so you really know where you are with him. He’s a really lovely man, he’s really good fun and he breeds confidence in people, because he’s confident in what he wants.
“It makes for a quite streamlined process. It’s always lovely to have a director who really is decisive and has their vision and you just follow in their footsteps on set, which is great. That’s what you ideally want from a director.”
Since breaking out on television in British soap Coronation Street, Froggatt has taken on a huge variety of roles, from parts in Bad Girls and Life on Mars to Robin Hood and The Royle Family. She even voiced Wendy in the 2015 edition of children’s animated favourite Bob the Builder.
It’s a CV that sums up her approach to acting. “What I love about my job is that every show, every role, is different and that’s what keeps it exciting, with new challenges every time, which is great,” she says.
But taking on a starring role in MobLand, an original gangster drama, proved to be an altogether different challenge from returning to play lady’s maid Anna Bates in the third and final Downton Abbey movie, which is set to be released later this year. It will bring to an end a chapter of Froggatt’s career that started in 2010 with the launch of the period drama’s first season on ITV. She would go on to win a Golden Globe award for her role as Anna, playing the character in all six seasons and three films.
“It was such a lovely year last year. It was great because we finished our third and final Downton movie and said a sweet goodbye to what’s been an amazing and wonderful part of all our lives and careers,” she says. “Then I started something really fresh and exciting. My character Jan in MobLand is worlds apart from Anna Bates. I love both of them but they couldn’t be more different, which is perfect for an actor because that’s what you strive for. I’ve really enjoyed playing Jan. It’s been a great ride and it’s been really fun.”
Despite playing Anna in Downton Abbey for so many years, Froggatt has avoided being pigeonholed as a period drama star, taking on darker, more dramatic roles in series such as Angela Black, Liar, Sherwood and Last Light. She even headed down under for two Australian series, The Commons and North Shore.
“After so many years, you are seen as an actor, not just one role,” she says. “When you do lots of different roles and you have a diverse career, that’s what stands out. I’ve purposely tried to choose roles that are different from ones before.
“Sometimes it’s just being brave and going, ‘Actually, I was a maid in Downton so I’m probably not going to play a maid again for a while. I’m going to say no to that. I’m going to maybe look for something that’s very different from her,’ and waiting for those opportunities to come along. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a waiting game, but I do that because that’s what I enjoy, because I enjoy the variations in roles and the different challenges. That’s what keeps me passionate about what I do.”
Saying goodbye to Downton “was a really incredible moment,” she says, describing the last day on set as “very surreal.” “It was a wonderful day; lots of us were there and there were lots of tears and hugs. It was amazing,” she adds. “It was very special, and I was heavily pregnant at the time – so Anna was also heavily pregnant. It felt like a very full-circle moment, and it was a lovely way to end what’s been a huge part of our lives.”
Froggatt puts the success of Downton Abbey firmly at the feet of its creator and writer, Julian Fellowes, praising the Oscar winner’s vision and storytelling. “People love it, and we all love playing it,” she says. “It is original storytelling but in a period setting. It’s not an adaptation, so he’s been able to move the story in whichever direction he felt he wanted to, and he just has the knack, doesn’t he? He has the knack of telling stories that people want to watch. He does it so brilliantly, so I guess the secret ingredient is Julian.”
For her next role, Froggatt says she’s going to “wait and see” what opportunities arise, while taking some time out to spend with her young daughter. “I’m just going to wait until something fabulous comes my way,” she says. “I’ve worked a lot this past 12 months so I’m happy to just wait for the right thing to come along.”
It’s not only on-screen roles she’s looking for, however. Froggatt is also looking at new projects to develop and bring to the screen herself as a producer through her Insight Pictures production company. “I’m always looking at stories and I’ve been developing a few things over the years, so hopefully one day I’ll find the right thing at the right time,” she says.
tagged in: Guy Ritchie, Joanne Froggatt, MobLand, Paramount