Six Questions for Samantha Bond
British actor Samantha Bond has been known and loved by Downton Abbey fans for well over a decade, with her on-screen gifts reaffirmed for MASTERPIECE viewers first in Home Fires and now, to everyone’s great delight, in the mystery series The Marlow Murder Club. In her interview with MASTERPIECE, Bond shares behind-the-scenes insights on wild swimming in the Thames, sisterhood on and off screen, and more, as well as heartfelt recollections of her dear friend Maggie Smith.
We’re obsessed with the gorgeous house of your character, Judith. What’s your favorite part about it?
My favorite part about Judith’s house is the expansive reception room, and that’s full of artifacts from Judith’s past that live completely in harmony with Great Aunt Jessie’s past and her favorite things. I suspect that Judith hasn’t thrown out anything since she inherited. Yeah, so that’s my favorite bit of the house except the stairs. The stairs are quite frightening because they’re incredibly wide and there’s only handles at various points… Judith’s stairs are hazardous.
Fortunately, not many of us have reasons to join a murder club. But what do you think might be the essentials for a murder club to be successful?
Curiosity, tenacity and industry. I think Judith is initially drawn to the first murder because she hears something. With tenacity, she doesn’t let that go. She holds onto it. And industry—she works very hard to try and resolve the situation. I’d like to say she works with the police, but sometimes she is ahead of them. Also, because of her past, she is a retired archeologist, so she looks at everything very thoroughly and investigates all the minutiae of a situation. If they’re not going to do their job properly, she’ll do it for them.
What was your experience filming Judith’s wild-swimming scenes in the Thames?
There are beautiful bits of the Thames by Marlow. There are things called—well, you have them, you have creeks—and so you’ve got a tributary. And they’re clean and they’re quiet. There’s a scene when she’s on the punt…and that was beautiful. It was a beautiful day and the water was warm and the sun was shining and the tide was behind me and my swimming double—because I do have a swimming double—said, “You’re going to be great, you’re going to be fine.” And I did the whole take on the first take and I was really cross because I wanted to go, “No, I can do this again. This one I can do again.”
Then there’s another moment when the rowers go past her, and that was in the middle of the Thames at Marlow. I live by the Thames in London, and where I live, it’s a relatively small Thames. In Marlow, it’s immense and it’s freezing, and the current is very strong and it’s very frightening. And that was a terrible day. It was really, really frightening.
And then there were little bits outside Judith’s house, when she comes out of her bath house where she changes and strips, and gets in the water naked, and that was real. But that wasn’t quite so frightening because you’re only in about four feet of water, so if you panicked, you could touch the ground. But the Thames, she is a thing. She is a powerful thing, and you need to respect her.
The humor in the series is a complete delight, including the surprise animoji filter launching during an attempted FaceTime call. Do you have any personal favorite funny moments from the show?
No, not really. But I should say that I am as much a technophobe as Judith is, so when we shot the scene, I had an iPad and everyone around me was trying to instruct me as to what to press and what to swipe. And then all of a sudden, miraculously, you do become a mouse. And I still don’t know how that happened. So, no, it was great fun, but again, it’s very hard work. Fun and laughter is for lunchtime, really.
The sisterhood among the characters is a tremendous part of the show’s appeal. Does a similar camaraderie exist off-screen?
There’s an enormous camaraderie now, but when we started shooting Season 1, we barely knew each other, just like the women barely knew each other. So Judith and Becks and Suzie meet as strangers and really, me and Jo and Cara started work as strangers. People always ask, “Did you spend time after work together?” But because the filming day is so long, and there are so many words to learn for the next day and for a week ahead, which is always how I work, it was very much learning to like, and then love, each other on location in the set, in front of a camera. It made Season 2, which we’ve just finished filming, really joyful because we all knew each other, we all had each other’s shorthand. We knew each other’s vulnerabilities and indeed strengths. When I watch Season 1 now, I’m very pleased to watch the development of their friendship, but when you get to Season 2, it’s already there.
Speaking of friendship, sadly, as the world has recently lost an icon of the stage and screen in Maggie Smith, so too have you lost a dear friend. Can you share any lasting impressions of working with her on Downton Abbey, which our viewers so cherish, and in the early days of your friendship as you first worked together in Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women?
I’ll do my best. So I first worked with Mags when I was about, well, it’s about 30 years ago, so I was 33 or 34, and I’m about to be 63. And we did Edward Albee’s brilliant Three Tall Women in which I played her younger self. And it’s kind of breathtaking working with someone like Maggie. I’ve said before, but I’ll say again, it’s like finding yourself on a stage with a thoroughbred and you’re feeling a bit like a donkey at the seaside with a hat on your head. And every sinew in your body strives to be as good as you can be so that she can be as brilliant as she was.
While we were doing Three Tall Women, my mum was diagnosed with cancer and Maggie couldn’t have been more supportive and loving and wise for me. And I know people talk about the fact that she could be sharp—and she could be sharp, and her sense of comedy and satire were acute. It wasn’t good to be on the wrong side, but if you weren’t on the wrong side, it was magical.
And then when we came to Downton, we had a shorthand. We’d sort of played that relationship before. She was very, very funny. There are some magical moments, as your audience know, in Downton. One of my favorite moments is when she sits on a chair that suddenly swivels, which at that time would’ve been really unusual. And I said to her, “Did you put that in?” And she said, “No, that was in the script. I just played it.” Which is what she did.
And then in more recent years, I’m chair of a theatrical charity here [The Royal Theatrical Fund, which was started by Charles Dickens], and she was one of our vice presidents. But post COVID, which I think Mags found very, very difficult, she would come to monthly meetings and we’d quite often have lunch. One of our other vice presidents is Derek Jacobi, and they met each other when they were in their early 20s. As you say, it’s a great loss.
