What intrigued you about the role, initially?

It’s a great part of British history – y’know, the king who abdicated. And he abdicated to marry a divorcee American, which at the time was incredibly scandalous. And I liked the complexity of that: is this a man who deserted his duties, or is this the greatest love affair of the Twentieth Century. And depending on who you talk to, people have wildly opposing views about that. I like the fact that this is a story about women. There aren’t that many films that are female-centric, and I thought that was quite courageous. I like that it took this very big, global story and somewhat contextualised it by seeing it through the prism of a modern day character. So the film becomes a meditation about what you would be prepared to sacrifice for love – which I think it accessible to me, as an audience member. Whereas, if I just look at the headlines of the story – y’know, “King Edward abdicates”, I have no connection to that, that’s too far away from me.

Madonna spent ten years researching the story. Did you find that a bit daunting before arriving at the set?

No, I thought it was exciting. I mean, working with a director, you want them to be prepared, you don’t want them to show up not knowing anything. So you want them to have all the information. You hope that the director will have the answers for you, because there are a lot of questions when you’re starting out. Madonna compares with Peter Weir in terms of sheer preparation. I was totally blown away by her.

What was she like to work with as a director? She was everyone’s personal mentor – more so than your average filmmaker – in terms of getting out of her actors what she had interpreted of their parts…

That’s as it should be. They are the person who’s vision you’re there to serve. What I really admire about Madonna is that she had a very clear vision of the story she wanted to tell, and that’s not always the case on every set: sometimes directors are uncertain, and that leads to confusion and un-confidence.

Did you feel you had a personal connection with Madonna? She was challenging you to learn knew skills – such as dancing and horse-riding – for the part.

Yeah. The bit that most terrified me about the entire endeavour was learning to dance. I’m not the world’s most natural dancer, and the dance I learned didn’t even make it into the film in the end. But it was like something out of Strictly Come Dancing – it was very complex. And honestly, doing that in front of one of the most famous dancers in the world is not a picnic. But as you say, she challenged us to not allow time for the word ‘no’, and to feel the fear and do it anyway. You feel pretty good about yourself when you realise you can do things you never thought you could.

And for the role did you do a lot of your own…

Stunts? Yes, all of them!

Well I knew that, that was fairly obvious [D’arcy laughs]. The many stunts that there are in it, obviously…What I meant to ask was how extensively you researched for the role.

I read a lot – as much as I could in the time allowed. At some point it has to fall away though, because the real blueprint is the script. That’s the thing that you have to try and serve. And in the case of Wallis and Edward, there are so many conflicting stories out there about them that at some point it starts to become slightly counter-productive to keep reading, because you can’t play all of it – you can’t be true to all of those books. We’re not making a documentary here, we’re not historians, we’re telling a story.

You feel that the love affair sparks up immediately. Have you got quite a healthy relationship with Andrea off-screen?

Yeah, we get on really great. We did from the minute we met, actually. We had a very fun and playful relationship immediately, which made things very easy on set.

W.E. is out today.

Words: Jack Mills

The post W.E. – James D’arcy appeared first on Wonderland.

What intrigued you about playing Wallis Simpson?

Well, the script was the first thing that arrived to me. Madonna had seen me play Margaret Thatcher in this film called The Long Walk to Finchley . I thought it was unique in the sense that it was exploring loss in Wallis Simpson’s life but through the eyes of a future fictional character. And then Wally, the future character and Wallace the historical character have their own relationships going on. Then I was interested to meet Madonna and see what her vision for it was. I remember the first time I met her, she crept around a door and was incredibly graceful and fine-boned and very ethereal looking. She was totally ignited by her passion for the story and conveyed that to me. It became infectious, like a rash – it started catching.

How did you go about preparing for the role?

I immediately started researching Wallace, and went straight into watching the footage of her and finding out about the reasons for all the physical manifestations she went through – really where that came from and started piecing together her life from there and perhaps just capturing a little bit of her spirit. So by the time I went to meet Madonna, I had a feel for her physicality. Aesthetically perhaps I started to lean towards her – I certainly had a centre parting by that point [laughs]. I was dressed pretty matronly, too.

By the time you met her, she was already heavily into her own personal research. Did you find this daunting?

She was ten years into it, yes. I didn’t find it daunting, I found it wonderful and exciting and I wanted to get on the train. So fortunately the day we met, she responded to me the way I responded to her and we were together every day for seven months, until the film ended. It was really a fantastic experience mining what this woman’s life might have been.

She obviously did so much work in developing her understanding of what was required… How did she go about bringing her vision out in you?

The research me and Tom did only affirmed what we’d read in the script, emotionally I mean. There’s one thing to research something for ten years and to write a brilliantly unbiased historical account of something, and there’s another thing to research something and to have a certain empathy with it that leads to a piece of art. That really demands a huge emotional capacity in a person – which Madonna has in bounds.

And the role of Wallis carries a huge emotional weight…

Yes. Of course, there was the great tragedy that I think was expressed very well in the movie, and she saw the writing on the wall before it ever happened – she tried to back out of marriage. How does one person – man or woman – live up to the responsibility of a kingdom?

W.E. opens across the UK on the 20th
Words: Jack Mills

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