Page 551 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

practicalities or intricacies of actually, you know, how to get a job or how to be. And one
of the books was The Pursuit Of Love.”

So she was delighted when Emily Mortimer, who has written the adaptation and is
directing it, cast her as the “fearless feminist” Linda Radlett in the new version, which is
a BBC co-production with Amazon Prime. Linda is in pursuit of a husband, by partying
all over Europe. Set between the two world wars, it is currently shooting in lush period
locations in Somerset and Oxford, with a cast Mortimer appears to have chosen for
their shaggability: Dominic West (of whom more later), Andrew Scott et al. One scene,
already previewed in the Daily Mail’s showbiz pages, features James and her co-star
Emily Beecham apparently gleefully naked and leggy in a bath together. Set to be
screened this winter, it might just save the nation from second lockdown despair.

‘I really miss going to clubs. When am I going to be sweaty, dancing next to someone
again?’ Photograph: Buzz White at One Represents

It took a while for filming to warm up, because of Covid restrictions. The actors remove
their masks to shoot their scenes; if the script requires kissing, then they kiss. But the
rest of the time, there is a “sort of Covid policeman called Ollie who goes around the set
saying, ‘Mask on!’ He manages to do it with some humour, thank God, but when you
suddenly see someone smile, you’re like, ‘Wow, hi!’” The cast are tested twice a week,
and if they have to leave their filming bubble, they must then isolate for a week before
they can re-enter it.

I ask about her co-stars: she says Scott is wonderful and playing someone “totally
different” from the Hot Priest character in Fleabag, while she and Dominic West go
back a decade to her first play, Othello, in which she played Desdemona to his Iago. “So
I’ve known him a really long time. He’s a brilliant Uncle Matthew, another mad sort of
character. I have a great line in it where I say, ‘Matthew is frightening and I disapprove