KEELEY HAWES
Bodyguard, Line Of Duty, The Durrells and now the highly anticipated Scoop – she’s the muse of modern TV. Stylist’s Lisa Smosarski meets the magnetic Keeley Hawes…
Keeley Hawes is dripping in colour. Primary colours at that. She’s head to toe in the kind of shades that remind you of gloopy pots of paint in a children’s nursery. Bright royal blues, vivacious reds and a yellow that practically yells summer; it’s a far cry from the period costumes and police uniforms that we’ve come to know from one of Britain’s most popular small-screen heroes. “Oh, it’s really not me,” Hawes laughs. “This is about as crazy as I get,” she says, pointing at the grey jumper and quiet-luxe cream corduroy joggers she normally wears. “Primary colours are not for me. I love and appreciate fashion, but I’ve just got a thing for grey jumpers and black coats. It’s good to be pushed out of my comfort zone, though.” That creative bravery and tolerance of the discomfort zone is something that Hawes has been embracing a lot in recent months – from her eight-week run on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in London for , a new play that charts the origins of the NHS via the lens of a midlife romance (“It’s probably been one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever undertaken,” admits Hawes. “It feels huge but I’m winning.”), to tackling big, biopic roles on screen. The most recent of these sees her play Amanda Thirsk, a former royal aide, in Netflix’s , a fictionalised retelling of the story behind the now famous BBC interview with Prince Andrew. The 2019 interview, led by Emily Maitlis and booked by journalist Samantha McAlister, was agreed by Thirsk’s editor at the time. It’s a formidable cast of female actors playing a truly impressive group of women. Was that the appeal of the role? “I wasn’t looking to work. At the beginning of last year, I made a decision that I wanted to be at home. I had one child doing GCSEs, another doing A-levels and another doing a degree and about to graduate. I’d been working and Matthew [Macfadyen, her actor husband] was working, so I thought I’m lucky to be able to make this decision to have some time at home. And then I was sent this script and thought: ‘Oh shit, I have to do it.’ It’s always the way. It was the character, the writing… and Gillian and Billie were on board.”
