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Succession’s Harriet Walter: ‘The mother always gets blamed. It’s built into our culture’
Succession’s Harriet Walter on why Logan Roy, not her character Lady Caroline, is to blame for turning their children into brats.
By Jonathan Dean
She was overlooked for roles for years, then Harriet Walter played Logan Roy’s ex-wife in Succession.Credit: Dean Chalkley/CameraPress/Australscope
When Harriet Walter was younger, she’d look at her acting peers – she’s a contemporary of stars such as Helen Mirren and Charlotte Rampling – and their more glittering careers and wonder, “Why not me?”
This does not happen any more. Age, says the 72-year-old, has blunted her competitive edge. “I was quite insecure. Now I’m just supportive of anyone still at it in their 70s – bully for you.”
For many years this dame, an Olivier Award-winning doyenne of theatre, was not trusted to sell a play. She remembers one meeting with a West End producer who took her to lunch only to say, “Everyone in the profession knows you, but I want heads to turn in this restaurant.” They didn’t, though, so Walter feasted instead on critical acclaim throughout her long career.
Then, five years ago, came Succession, which triggered a glorious rush of prestige television parts, from Killing Eve to Ted Lasso. Now Walter wants more nuanced, complicated leads for women of a certain age, not just younger actors. “Please write them,” she gasps. “We’ve got things to bring that they haven’t got.”
This is the paradox of her industry. “When you’re young and you don’t know much, you get leading parts and the camera is on you for hours. Then, when you are older and have learnt a lot, the stories diminish. A lot of us are still alive and kicking. We have opinions and humour. I don’t always have to play a woman with dementia.”
At 172 centimetres, Walter is taller than you might expect, a picture of stillness and grace. We have met to talk about yet another series she’s in, Silo. It’s a classy, metaphor-heavy sci-fi drama about the last humans on Earth, who are stuck in a bunker while the world burns. She plays a taciturn engineer, Martha Walker, and conveys a lot by doing very little.
Roman (Kieran Culkin) grills his mother, Caroline (Harriet Walter) in Season 3 of Succession.Credit: HBO/Foxel
Of course, we are also meeting because of Succession, in which Walter played Logan Roy’s ex-wife, Lady Caroline, mother to the squabbling brats Kendall, Roman and Shiv. After stealing scenes in every season, Walter was back for the final two episodes (the last is 90 minutes long) and a certain funeral. (Warning: spoilers ahead if you’ve missed the fourth and final series of a show that has already won Walter two Emmy nominations.)
How, I want to know, did she hear that Logan, the mogul played by Brian Cox, was dead? She grins. “I went to New York for a costume fitting, and there was a room of black clothes,” she says. “I said, ‘Did somebody die?’ They laughed. I asked, ‘Who? The big one?’ ”
How did she feel? “I was shocked for Brian,” she says, “and when I watch the series I really mourn the loss of this giant. It’s a period of mourning.”
Walter was born into privilege – she is a descendant of John Walter, the founder of The Times newspaper, and is the niece of actor Christopher Lee – and knew many people like her character Lady Caroline. “I’ve got an amalgam I refer to in my head when I play the role,” Walter says, “because she comes from fuddy-duddy aristocracy and I grew up on the fringes of that world. There were people I knew who, like her, rejected their background for a wild time with drugs and adventure. She’s a bit naughty, a bit damaged.”
Walter, right, in the new series Silo, where she plays engineer Martha Walker.Credit: AP
Her best scenes involved her being difficult with her bratty children. Cox told me in a recent interview that the children were not messed up by domineering Logan. Instead, he blamed Lady Caroline. “Bollocks!” Walter blurts out. “Who have they spent most of their lives with?” (She is perhaps forgetting that Lady Caroline says in one episode, “I should have had dogs.”)
Reflecting on the role she says, “At first, I found it hard to believe that I [as Lady Caroline] had those children; partly because they’re American, partly because I haven’t got children of my own. But either way, the mother always gets blamed. It’s built into our culture. Mothers are expected to be perfect and fathers are allowed to be tricky. I hate to say it, but that’s how I treated my own mother. Now she’s gone I regret that I didn’t treat her as a 360-degree human being who had her own needs.”
Walter is a revealing person to spend time with. For instance, she says she always watches herself on screen, hoping her performance won’t be as bad as she fears. “But it’s never quite how you want it.”
Walter always wanted to act. Born in London in 1950, she went to drama school and, by the time she turned 30, was in the Royal Shakespeare Company. She thrived in that thespian utopia, topping up frequent stage time with appearances in Play for Today on the BBC and other occasional TV shows. She was in Downton Abbey and even a recent Star Wars – though only for seven seconds.
It’s mainly in the past five years, though, that her career has lifted off, thanks to a change of agent. Succession and her Russian assassin, Dasha, in Killing Eve were springboards to a role on Ted Lasso and playing Matt Damon’s mother in the medieval epic The Last Duel. Also worth seeking out is Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport, a mockumentary set in 1994 in which Walter and Cate Blanchett play hairdressers in northern England.
“We have opinions and humour. I don’t always have to play a woman with dementia.”Credit: Dean Chalkley/CameraPress/Australscope
I ask Walter how the industry has changed during her 50-year career. “Oh, in so many ways,” she says, her mind brimming. And not all the changes have been for the better. First, she is fearful of a “brain drain” from the theatre as writers head to TV and young actors say, “I don’t really want to play Isabella in Measure for Measure. I’m being offered Princess Blah Blah.”
“Also,” she continues, “in my idealistic youth, I thought I might be able to actually change people’s attitudes through drama. I came from a generation for whom art was about shocking, because society was pleased with itself and needed a jolt up the arse.
“But now we’re not pleased with ourselves. We’re not comfortable. So I don’t want to be shocked and horrified – there’s plenty of that going on. I want something that makes me feel hopeful.”
Or comforted? “Yes. Drama for centuries has been, partly, about telling other human beings not to worry, that you’re not alone.”
Succession has done that with Logan’s death; the show spent time revealing how the children grieve, a help for people dealing with loss. Walter married actor Guy Paul 12 years ago. Before that, in 2004, she lost her long-term partner, Peter Blythe, to cancer.
“Yes, of all the things that happen to us,” she says, quietly, “grief is the one where people say, ‘Let it take its course – you are not going to do it the same as anyone else.’ That’s brilliantly portrayed in the show.”
Walter smiles. “Not that anyone wants to model themselves on that family, but they are reassuring. Grief is like a river. It will meet obstructions, but it will find its way out.”
The Sunday Times (UK)
Silo is currently streaming on Apple TV+.
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