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Julie Walters interview for Indian Summers
Category: News Release
What was the attraction of Indian Summers?
I read the scripts and thought, this is seriously interesting. I loved Cynthia and I was intrigued by her relationship with this young man, Ralph [Whelan, played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes]. And they had Anand Tucker to direct… The whole thing was very attractive.
How much did you know about the Raj before taking on the role of Cynthia?
Not a lot. There was The Jewel in the Crown and Gandhi, but I didn’t know anything about the real lives, especially working class folk being out there. In my head, things about the Raj had been about upper class people ruling over the Indians. I spoke to [series creator] Paul Rutman about it, and he said that just wasn’t true. He sent me a couple of books, Plain Tales of the Raj and Women of the Raj, which were very illuminating. The majority of people out there were ordinary people, because it offered them a good life – the money was better out there.
What do you think of Cynthia?
To get a part like Cynthia is heaven at my age. She’s a Machiavellian personality, which I found really interesting: her morals are based on her practical needs rather than right and wrong. She does things that aren’t right but utterly believes they are.
She knows everybody’s secrets. And I love the entertainer side of her. She’s great fun, as well as having this darker side.
How does a working class girl come to be a doyenne of the social scene?
Paul and I worked out that she was an East End girl who would have gone out to India at about 20 years of age with her young husband, a soldier in the British army. She would have worked for Ralph’s parents and looked after him and his sister when they were little. Then they got into breeding horses, which gave them some social standing, and she would have worked at the club, probably as a barmaid, until he retired and they came to run it.
Her destiny seems heavily entwined with Ralph’s. Is it fair to say her future depends on his success?
Yes, he’s the only child she’s ever had, in a sense. He probably had more contact with her than with his mother. If he’s successful, it reflects on her, but she wants it for him as well. She does love him and he loves her. She’s taken care of problems he’s encountered on his rise.
Her attitudes towards some of the Indian characters will be pretty shocking for modern audiences. Were those scenes hard to play?
No, because I don’t have those feelings but they were absolutely prevalent in that period. It’s about her keeping her position of power, which depends on British rule: that ignorance and arrogance that “we’re better than them” was commonplace. The racism grew the more power the British had out there – at the beginning, they embraced Indian culture. Cynthia adores her servant, Kaiser, but their roles are very carefully defined – they don’t cross any boundaries. If anything happened to him, she’d be devastated.
Is it more fun playing a character who’s a bit of a monster at times?
Definitely. It’s not a side we want to acknowledge as human beings: it’s darker and more hidden, so it’s more interesting to look at. And it’s in everyone, up to a point.
Cynthia is queen bee of the social scene – did you perform the same role off-screen?
No, I’m not the right age for that! We did have little get-togethers, but I’m too old – I like going to bed…
There’s an assumption that the good roles tend to dry up for women when they reach a certain age, but that clearly hasn’t been the case for you. Why do you think that might be?
I don’t know. It does slow down. I’d already established a career, which makes it easier. The majority of stuff being made in film and television is about people in their 30s and 40s because they’re at the peak of their working lives, so there’s more drama around that. It is changing now: there are more women writing and producing, more women in positions of power. To find a strong central role is very hard at 64, but I’m very happy playing Cynthia.
The recent Bafta tributes must have been exciting – do you enjoy looking back?
It’s fun to be honoured. I thought the night at Bafta would be nerve-wracking but it wasn’t – it was very jolly and people were very warm. Looking back over stuff, I mostly thought: Oh God, why did they choose that, don’t I look terrible, what an awful piece of acting! They had clips of me drunk on stage getting my first Bafta and me at the Oscars – I’d never seen any of those!