Page 552 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

of him, but I feel he sets the bar for English manhood.’” She smiles with some relish.
“What a great line.” A few weeks after we meet, the tabloids go to town over
photographs of James and West sharing a scooter and embracing in Rome. They go to
town again when West flies home to appear in front of photographers with his wife and
a handwritten note, insisting “our marriage is strong”. James declined to comment.

Usually, a film or TV production is a place of rapid
friendships for James, “with the sort of humour and
banter that develops on set. I love that camaraderie.”
They have that now (she is clearly loving this
experience a lot more than Rebecca) “but it takes a
lot longer to get to know people when everyone is
wearing masks. And I’m really paranoid now because
we’re nearing the end of it, and I just don’t want it to
fall apart.”

A US TV show in which she was going to be the “most
unlikely character you could imagine me playing” is on hold for now; she can’t tell me
any more about it because she’s praying it will restart. Like most people, she misses
normal life. “I really miss going to the cinema, but dancing in some sort of club is what I
miss the most. When you’re in a dark room and you’re losing yourself in dance with a
group of people – I do think that is one of the best feelings. It feels quite a religious
experience, for me, something tribal,” she says. A lot of her lockdown viewing was
chosen from Edgar Wright’s list of his 1,000 favourite films (she played the getaway
driver’s girlfriend in his film Baby Driver), and when crowd scenes came on, she would
gasp.

“You just think, when am I going to be sweaty, dancing next to someone? When am I
going to be sort-of-not wanting to be groped again?” She laughs. As an actor she is also
duty bound to say she misses crowded theatres, “being in a dark room watching a
play, if it’s good – but often it’s not.” Though one theatre-maker she loves is the young
Australian Simon Stone, who directed the Young Vic’s Yerma with Billie Piper, and with
whom she has made a “deeply beautiful” Netflix film called The Dig, which has yet to be
released.

‘Trying to say: ‘I’m playing the young version of Meryl Streep’? That bit, I sort of winced at.’
James in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Photograph: Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures