100 Episodes, 100 Stories
Released September 16, 2018 13:16
In celebration of the 100th episode of MASTERPIECE Studio, we bring some of our favorite moments from our conversations with MASTERPIECE’s actors and creative talents. From Downton Abbey to Unforgotten and everything in between, we’re delighted to share highlights — including some as-of-yet unheard extras! — from our first 100 episodes. Here’s to the next 100!
For the past 100 episodes, you’ve heard almost everything here on MASTERPIECE Studio.
Aidan Turner: I think Demelza makes him happy. I think, I think he is happy. You know? I don't think he sits down and, and thinks about that. A lot of people don't but, um, I think, I think he's happy.
James Norton: I remember one time, when we were sort of sitting there over a coffee, waiting for the cameras to turn around, and the typical kind of chat, "What if this, what if that?" I don't know if it was me or you ...
Robson Greene: It was you, wasn't it?
James: Said, "Why doesn't Geordie and Sidney have a massive fight in the church? That would be brilliant." I think everyone went like, "Yeah, well, the writers are going to go yeah, that's never going to happen."
Amanda Abbington: Look. America's listening, and I don't-I really like Americans and I want them to like me.
Jace: From Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery...
Michelle Dockery: You know, one minute, Mary is vulnerable and sweet, and then she, you know, in a second, she can turn cold and icy. She’s strong, she can be a coward.
Jace: All the way to Grantchester’s Daisy Coulam...
Daisy Coulam: In a way we had a little bit of mourning, and a bit of drinking when we were storylining, and then we sort of came out the other side and got really excited about some of the new ideas we’ve got.
Jace: We’ve been your behind-the-scenes guide on the best of MASTERPIECE dramas, mysteries, and more since December 2015. And in honor of our 100th episode, we’ve collected some of our favorite moments from these past 100 episodes — including several as-of-yet unheard extras — for your listening pleasure. My favorite moment from our first 100 episodes came at the very end of our run of Downton Abbey, when were lucky to get a chance to sit down with Laura Carmichael to discuss the series’ finale and Edith’s journey.
Laura Carmichael: That she could go from being the ugly duckling that no one paid any attention to to having this grand finale where she has this beautiful wedding and she's also a successful businesswoman and she has a beautiful daughter and a man who adores her, I just think it's so brilliant. I think that subtle moral of keeping going and not giving up and not feeling sorry for yourself, to keep wanting something for your life and making something of yourself, I think that's great.
Jace: And I also loved talking with actor Kenneth Branagh on the wrap-up of his nordic mystery drama, Wallander.
Kenneth Brannagh: To play Kurt Wallander was always to go to a sort of quite complex and intense, but a quiet and more spacious part of the world literally and my mind. Although he sometimes troubled me with his dark demonish kind of thoughts, I would say that my sense was that his heart was often and mostly in the right place. His struggle to find a bit of truth and find a bit of improvement in people's lives and find a bit of hope was really a very, very touching thing. To be around his sort of his vulnerability and his compassion at least to other people if not himself, was a tender and sort of beautiful thing to be part of.
Jace: Actor Kevin Whately told us how it felt to say goodbye to Robbie Lewis at the end of Inspector Lewis’ run, and his nearly 30 years inhabiting that iconic role.
Kevin Whatley: For me it was 30 years of work finishing….But it's a very funny mixture of relief that you've you've done all that that work and the responsibility's off your shoulder. You've got through a whole, uh, shoot. Everybody's just about alive, um, I I never feel that that it-it's goodbye to anyone. Actors always bump into each other again….it's never goodbye so in in that way, uh, it's not a sad occasion at all, I don't think. We didn't feel sadness.
Jace: If you heard our conversation with Unforgotten star Nicola Walker, you heard about the struggles facing DCI Cassie Stuart as she sought justice for victims killed and long buried. But what you didn’t hear was our conversation about... lemons.
Nicola Walker: Now if you eat an entire lemon covered in salt that's not going to be very nice at all. I can’t believe this! You know it's a family thing. I'm sorry it does sound gross doesn’t it? But it's no sweat because if you like I mean people like tequila with slices of lemon and salt and they think it might. It doesn't come from. It comes from my East End granddad who used to bring lemons home. And so all my family cut lemons in half and to be honest, a Spanish lemon is best because they have a very thick rind and you slop. You get the salts out and you slather the top of the you know half of them in salt and you squeeze it a. So the lemon juice in the salt mix is you've got to do this tonight now and then you sort of bite into it like you're biting into an orange and then you add more salt and you repeat this until you then just eat the entire, you know you don't eat the whole lemon and you don't eat the lemon Well I say you don't. I do actually I'd be quite off the pith as well but that's not that's just me being strange. Yeah it's a family thing. I mean it takes the enamel off your teeth. Actually I wouldn't really recommend the salt must be so bad for you but we all do it and my family isnt that strange? Now that I’ve said it loud it’s really weird.
Jace: Similarly, you may have heard our interview with Downton Abbey star Allen Leech, but what didn’t make the final cut was a particularly charming game of free association with the Irish actor.
Jace: Now I want to play a little game. I you to think of the first thing that comes to mind.
Allen Leech: Oh, no.
Jace: When I say the following word or phrases which are all about you, Allen Leech, or your character, Tom Branson.
Allen: Oh God, this is dangerous.
Jace: First thing that comes to mind.
Allen: Yeah.
Jace: Trinity.
Allen: College.
Jace: A Streetcar Named Desire.
Allen: Frances McDormond.
Jace: Ireland.
Allen: Home.
Jace: Driver.
Allen: Careful.
Jace: Highclere Castle.
Allen: Work.
Jace: Marcus Agrippa.
Allen: Togas.
Jace: London.
Allen: Home.
Jace: Sybil.
Allen: Love.
Jace: Michelle Dockery.
Allen: Friend.
Jace: Rippon.
Allen: Place?
Jace: Edna.
Allen: Bitch.
Jace: Masterpiece.
Allen: Brilliant!
Jace: Downton Abbey.
Allen: Wonderful journey. So many words for Downton, I don’t know what to say.
Jace: In our more recent conversation with the fabulous Dame Angela Lansbury, we kept some of that conversation to ourselves. Here’s Lansbury talking about another icon of Hollywood, Elizabeth Taylor, with whom she starred in the 1944 film, National Velvet.
Angela Lansbury: She was such a talented young performer, Elizabeth, she really was and I was delighted to work with her because so darn good you know. And but you know it was just a movie. You know we were making a movie at MGM. We were both under contract. She was going to classes. I didn't have to go to classes, thank goodness, because they gave me a test, a sort of a high school graduation type test and it turned out that I knew enough not to have to go back to school. But she was still being you know schooled at the studio. So we had to work around that. But listen it all is part of the experience of that time.
Jace: Actor Kelly Macdonald told us all about the rather impractical way she used her pay from her role on No Country for Old Men.
Jace: True or false you used your wages from that film to buy a pair of cowboy boots.
Kelly Macdonald: I did. I did. I didn't get paid much. They were very expensive boots. And I said I loved them. They're totally unwearable though they're like they’re sparkly. They've got James doing their ridiculous personalized cowboy boots wasn't very smart, but I didn't have kids at that point and so on. Yeah. Didn't need to eat.
Jace: And now a quick message from our sponsors...
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Jace: We also asked you, our listeners, for some of your favorite interview moments from these past 100 episodes. Many — many, many, many — cited our interviews with Victoria star Rufus Sewell as a favorite moment.
Rufus Sewell: I think at first he was concerned that Albert was not a man who would appreciate this fantastic woman. I mean, you know, he was a great admirer of Victoria... the idea that someone would come along who couldn't appreciate what she actually was and to his eye, this kind of poe faced clockwork figure, this mirthless German, and turning up who seemed by all accounts to have been kind of maneuvered into the position for the sake of lineage and you know, political this, political that, that someone who doesn't see her as a woman, but just as a notch on a political belt, so to speak, for his family, such a tremendous waste. And I think, yes, that was mixed up with a certain amount of jealousy, which is just human. But I think he was a good enough man, good enough politician not to let those things actually alter his decisions.
Jace: Listener Samantha let us know how much she enjoyed the joint interview with Victoria stars Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes from the end of the series’ first season.
Jenna Coleman: So sometimes during takes… Because this scene was very, very tense, and Albert has got the long walk up along the candlelit hallway, and the moment’s coming, it’s coming, and she’s just about to say, “Will you marry me,” but before that happens, it’s…
Tom Hughes: (Squawks)
Jenna: (Laughs)
Jace: (Laughs)
Jenna: And yet, we’re both staring at each other and there’s this moment of-
Tom: (Squawks)
Jenna: (Laughs) And literally, “Should we laugh? Should we break this?”
Tom: It was in the moment… It’s before the line of, there’s a pause, I think, and then “I’ll have to kiss you first,” and in that moment, for about 11 takes, he was silent…
Jenna: Yeah.
Tom: …for the entire scene, but he knew his cue…
Jenna: (Laughs)
Tom: …and every time he’d pop up… (Squawks)
Jenna: He knew how to… There’s somebody else in that proposal scene.
Jace: (Laughs)
Tom: It was unbelievable. It’s really good of him to turn up today just to do his sound from earlier.
Jenna: I know.
Jace: And listener Jeanine loved the wrap-up of our Downton Abbey podcasts most of all.
Julian Fellowes: I always feel it's very important when you have characters, kitchen maids, or you know, call boys, or footmen, or whatever, to remind the audience that these are lives. These are lives being lived by people and people are trying to decide what to do best, and where they should go next, and how their life should shape, you know? It isn't only major characters sitting upstairs in white tie who have these decisions to make. It's everyone. I think that was one of the appeals of the show actually, was that we didn't prefer any group or any individual characters to the others. We just, we watched them all trying to work their life out and I think that was part of the emotional punch of the show, really.
Jace: Listener Joe highlighted our delightful conversation with Grantchester star Al Weaver.
Al Weaver: He's definitely a gay man. I mean, he was kind of going for the thing with Daniel as best as he could step by step and then, you know, he found him, you know, half-naked with a hunky-dory chappie on his doorstep, which broke his heart. I think he's getting there, but I mean he's, it's the ultimate sacrifice, isn't it? I mean, you know, this is the thing with the church. It's that, you know, you can't, you know, have sex before marriage or, you know, back in the day you couldn't be gay. It was just not, you ... Well, you know, it was illegal to be gay in 1955 for anyone, let alone a clergyman, so he's just trying to do the right thing.
Jace: And we loved hearing from you, our listeners and fans, on how Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women affected your lives and childhoods.
Contributor: Little Women was important to me because it was one of the first books that I ever read that had a diverse cast of leading female characters….You could be Jo, you could be Beth, you could be Meg, you could be Amy, or you could be any mixture of them, and you were gonna be okay.
Contributor: I really identified and looked up to the protagonist Jo March. She was such a rad lady, she just did not care about gender norms, she marched to the beat of her own drum and did what she wanted.
Jace: We’re grateful to the cast and creative talent behind the MASTERPIECE shows you love for joining us in the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast booth these past 100 episodes. Our show would be nothing without their generous and gracious participation.
And we’re especially grateful for you, all of our listeners — thanks for listening and learning with us these past 100 episodes of MASTERPIECE Studio. Here’s to the next 100!
MASTERPIECE Studio is hosted by me, Jace Lacob and produced by Nick Andersen. Elisheba Ittoop is our editor. Susanne Simpson is our executive producer. The executive producer of MASTERPIECE is Rebecca Eaton.
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