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‘Mum’ is the word for Brit actress Manville

She stars in show about widow finding new life after 60

By Rick Bentley, Tribune News Service
Published: May 13, 2018, 5:55am

LOS ANGELES — A casual comparison of Oscar-nominee Lesley Manville’s feature film “Phantom Thread” and her television series “Mum” would suggest the projects are radically different. Manville argues the moody and emotionally anchored movie about a noted designer and a TV production dealing with what strange events life can present to a mature mother and widow aren’t that far apart.

“I hadn’t done a lot, as it were, drama that was really labeled as comedy, and I would argue that ‘Mum’ is somewhere in between drama and comedy anyway. A lot of it, as you know if you’ve seen it, is very, very tragic and very moving and very human, and it’s interspersed with a lot of very funny characters, ostensibly, as opposed to necessarily funny kind of joke lines,” Manville told TV critics.

The show Manville’s talking about, which is described in press material as “a family comedy,” is a series that looks at the world through the eyes of Cathy (Manville), a mother who has just turned 60 and is finding her footing following the premature death of her husband. The second season of the six episodes of “Mum,” slated to be available through the streaming service BritBox, continues the examination of a woman rediscovering herself with the help of family and friends including Michael (Peter Mullan).

Because “Mum” deals with serious issues — even when some come across as funny — Manville sees her career as being more of shifting in the dramatic world and not so much leaping from genre to genre.

“I love the whole thing of jumping between different types of drama. I’m doing ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ now, which is an unequivocal tragedy, and ‘Phantom Thread’ with Paul Thomas Anderson was just a wonderful experience in itself to be with that directing genius and with Daniel Day-Lewis, who was just wonderful to work with,” Manville says. “So I’m very lucky, really. I’m having a really, really good time at the moment doing all these different things.”

Manville, 62, has been working as a professional actor since she was a teen and has compiled a massive list of stage, screen and TV credits, including “All or Nothing,” “Another Year,” “Law & Order: UK,” “River,” “Harlots” and “Maleficent.” Those acting jobs have been mixed with theater work, including “The Cherry Orchard,” “The Alchemist,” “Grief” and “Ghosts.”

Manville credits her extensive theater work as helping her avoid a slowing in her career because whenever there are no TV or film roles immediately available, she always has the theater.

Each role — whether in front of a camera or an audience — has pressed Manville in different ways, but “Mum” has felt very familiar. Along with being a real-life mom, the fact she’s in her 60s and playing a woman who is dealing with that milestone age gives her a connection to the role. She’s happy there’s been a shift in the way people think about people reaching retirement age.

“I think 60 is being redefined by this generation of people who are 60. There’s always going to be exceptions. There really is in any generation, but I think that women particularly are breaking the stereotypical role that’s been set for them over the decades, over the previous decades, about how they should be when they’re 60,” Manville says. “Certainly, my mother, who was arguably very youthful and very glamorous, she looked very different at 60 to how I look now and how other 60-year-olds look now.

“I think it’s that we’re just not being pigeonholed anymore. Culture allows us to be sexually active and attractive and nobody’s pigeonholing us any longer.”

The reaction Manville has gotten from the first season is viewers of all ages have been able to relate to “Mum” because at the heart it is a love story about two people finding their romantic feet again. They just happen to be over the age of 60.

Manville’s portrayal has clicked with viewers because they see Cathy as the strong center of the series who is surrounded by enough slightly ridiculous characters the show gets pushed into the comedy category. Manville looks at “Mum” as a very human story told in very tender terms through the writing of series creator Stefan Golaszewski.

All that unfolded so beautifully in the first season, Manville was concerned that trying to do a second batch of episodes might not go as well. Her mind changed quickly.

“You are always worried about the second series because you worry that they’ll never be as good. And I remember reading Series 2 and immediately ringing my agent and saying, ‘It is unbelievable how he has surpassed himself, the writer, with Series 2. It’s even better than Series 1.’ And what he’s done so brilliantly is take it less so with Cathy and Michael, because they’re a constant,” Manville says. “Their emotions are all over the place with each other, but they don’t change, really. They are steadfast.

“But what he’s done very brilliantly is see what the amazing actors who are in it have done with their characters in Series 1, and he’s taken all of those elements and really run with them and just used them up for Series 2 and given them wonderful, wonderful things to do and wonderful dialogue to say. And they’re just really amazing. So I think that you can look forward to a lot more funny stuff from them. Yeah. It’s really, really, really beautifully written.”

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