The postponement of the 2023 Emmys to January 2024, due to strikes by Writers and Actors in Hollywood, took away some of the Succession fever that marked the year of the series’ final season. Everything. the cast should emerge victorious at the awards, but there is one particularly special performance that cannot be underestimated: Harriet Walter‘s participation as the callous and complex mother of the three Roys, Caroline Collingwood.

If it weren’t for being in the cast of Silo playing the opposite profile, Harriet would be the worst mother on screen. In addition to Caroline, she was also a mother with questionable instincts in Ted Lasso and equally irritating and impressive. Her participation as Dasha in Killing Eve was no different, not even in Patrick Melrose, Doctor Who, The Spanish Princess, or even films like The Last Duel or Sense and Sensibility. Obnoxious and practical women seem to be her specialty, something that is completely opposite to the real Harriet, who doesn’t even have children in real life.

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Harriet Walter was best known in England as an incomparable performer on stage, excelling in Shakespeare’s leading female as well as male characters, when the Donmar Warehouse reversed some roles in 2010. Perhaps it was the award-winning Sense and Sensibility from 1995 that introduced Harriet to the world, so finding her in period films or series has been “normal”. She was also in the cast of Downton Abbey as Lady Shackleton, always with class and practicality. That’s why when she breaks the pattern, she surprises even more. Dasha, from Killing Eve, was a former Russian Olympic gymnast and KGB agent with a penchant for leopard print and was a mentor to Villanelle (Jodie Comer). In Silo, still in production, she is Martha Walker, the surrogate mother and mentor of Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson), an astute engineer and suffering from Agoraphobia Syndrome. However, the actress does not seem to escape the cruel mother syndrome when she is on the British series once again in a role like the ones she plays, now as the mother of the character Adam Kay (Ben Whishaw) in This is Going to Hurt. Another BAFTA is in sight.

Although the roles bring recognition, the actress knows that she is ‘stuck’ with a stereotype, generally that of a rich and cold woman. “It was always about being able to put yourself out there. That’s where I haven’t been very good. There are people who can play much better than me. And that’s why I should have hired stronger agents sooner because they play the game for you,” she said in an interview a few years ago. There is also the fact of ageism. At 73 years old, the options are not varied, but it is a fact that if she is on the scene, no one will beat her. The eyes go to her and her brilliance is clear. She may be polished and smooth, but she is always lethal.

Playing women from rich, traditional families is relatively too close to Harriet’s reality. She comes from the Walter family, which founded The Times newspaper in 1785. Another fact that is always mentioned is the fact that she is the niece of the cinema legend, Sir Christopher Lee. Both are details that she never highlights in her conversations. She always remembers that she was not influenced by her uncle, but the fact that he was an actor and had achieved prominence helped her parents not to interfere with her plans when she decided to follow the artistic path.

Young Harriet dreamed of the stage, not the screen. She was rejected by several schools when she started trying out at 18, but when she was accepted, she turned down a place at Oxford, chose Lamda Drama School instead, and marked her first professional steps in political and community plays. She only gave in to TV and cinema offers after the age of 28 and recognizes that she has never had such an intense challenge on screen as the ones that theater provided. In her modesty and practicality (which somehow reflects what we are used to associating with her), in the same interview she claims that because she was “not young or beautiful”, the cinema did not rush to knock on her door. In her opinion, advancing age “compensates” for this obstacle by creating roles with more personality for older people. “Let’s be realistic, there is a much higher than average percentage of beautiful people who star in films. It is a medium that loves beauty. And I didn’t have that beauty. I don’t mean to say that I looked horrible, I just didn’t have that camera-friendly perfection that is pleasing to the eye and attracts people,” she assessed. Can we disagree, I think she is very beautiful? Besides, as she herself acknowledged, many of the female roles at the time were less interesting.

Her most famous character in 2023, however, was clearly the irritatingly cold Caroline from Succession, who she “defends” as a woman who uses the attack as self-defense and whom she doesn’t consider a monster (although she wouldn’t want to meet her in real life either). , jokes). She obviously earned another Emmy nomination for her. “She [Caroline] is damaged rather than cold and horrible. For me, she grew up as a lonely child in a cold, aristocratic country house, very cold, where no one knew how to show affection,” she explained in an interview.

In her personal life, Harriet Walker went through tough trials too. At the age of 28, she was diagnosed with Anorexia, something that is still part of her personal battle today. She lived with actor Peter Blythe from 1996 until his death in 2004 and never imagined that she would find love again on stage, when she worked with Guy Paul, in 2009, in a production of Mary Stuart, on Broadway. They have been married since then.

For Harriet, the fact that she is now associated with cruel mothers is a reflection of who tells the stories. “My theory is that a lot of people who are writing things now are in their late 30s, or 40s and are looking to their fathers and their mother role models. If you loved your mother and she was sweet, don’t write about her. But if she were a demon in her eyes, you would exorcise that demon by writing,” she suggested in an interview. According to her, if she had been a writer she might have fallen into the same trap. “Believe me, when you’re 70, you want to say to your mother, ‘I get it, you’re a person, and I only knew one aspect of you, which was the ‘I need this from you’ facet rather than ‘How do you feel? feel? How it is? You know what you want? What didn’t you do?’” she suggests. “I would love for this to be reflected more in the roles and make the old woman the center of the story and not always the thing you are fighting back, the kind of constant that has to be fought against,” she adds. Are you listening, writers?

Well, the bets are that Harriett will be the big winner at the Emmys and it couldn’t be fairer. A great moment for a great actress.

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