If you haven’t watched Netflix’s haunting mystery 1899 yet prepare to add it to your Christmas watch list. It’s one of the most intense TV shows - ever - so it’s no wonder its star, Emily Beecham had to resort to Wim Hoff breathing techniques to get through filming, as she tells Josh Smith for the latest GLAMOUR UK column, ‘Josh Smith Meets…’
It’s one of those, ‘clinging on until we get to the Christmas break days’ when Emily Beecham joins me over Zoom. Bright, breezy and with a cup of PG tips in hand, Emily is like an instant hit of fresh air, unlike her haunting character, Maura in Netflix’s mysterious show, 1899.
If you haven’t watched 1899 yet, well strap yourself IN. With 11 different languages spoken, it’s a multilingual melting pot of a drama that plays out on a vast ship, The Kerberos, and its claustrophobic spaces as the Victorian migrants onboard make an alarming discovery, another ship that went missing days before. But not all is what it seems and if you love a show with twists, turns and you have to REALLY concentrate, this is for you.
The central linchpin to the drama is Maura, who we are first introduced to through a series of flashbacks that show her being held captive in an asylum desperately insisting something sinister is afoot. She is the anti-heroine we all love to see on screen, and a complex character that Emily thrived off playing. “Maura has got a dark side to her,” she says, “but also she's vulnerable and strong. She also has an aggressive side and she's thwarted by having panic attacks which are crippling her.” Quite the cocktail of a character then?!
Personally, like many who have watched the show, was shooketh by the sheer magnitude of plot twists in 1899. But when was Emily herself shook by the plot? “The final scene for sure,” she responds, and don’t worry there’s no spoilers today! “I was told the overall reveal so I was aware of that throughout but the little clues along the way like the ring, the noises, the triangles, the ball, everything was constant questions. I was irritating the show runners endlessly with my constant questions and they also didn't like too many questions as it's quite a delicate writing process. So it was a balancing act really between how much to harass them and how much just do you use my instincts. But it was very challenging.”
It is certainly a storyline that is challenging to keep up with but luckily Emily had a plan. “I had a chart,” she shares. “I always do that anyway because you are always filming out of sequence, so I keep going back to the map. But this one was extra! I did have the main key points in each scene and then also Maura’s choice like ‘now in this scene I decide to trust Daniel or I start suspecting something about the boy.’ I didn't want her to be helpless and lost like a jellyfish flailing around throughout the whole thing because that would be horribly dull! I wanted to make sure that she had some growing autonomy or direction.”
Maura herself certainly has an inbuilt direction to upset the status quo in the stuffy patriarchal Victorian era as one of the first women to study medicine in England and as specialist in the brain. I wonder what stereotypes or boxes Emily herself has refused to adhere to? “Being an actress in your twenties but a few years ago women's roles changed and casting in general changed,” Emily responds.”
“Before it was very rigid, the same types [of people] were getting certain roles and there was a message that only a certain type was worthy of their story being told or interesting enough of the story to be told. It's much more varied now, which is good. When I was a jobbing actor in my twenties and as a woman in your twenties you are underestimated and viewed from a superficial perspective. Back then you were lucky to be able to push through that and to actually feel like you had some kind of autonomy or a voice or any kind of direction to be able to do things that actually stimulated you and interested you. My career changed the same year that all that there was this surge of new interesting, unusual protagonists.”
1899 with its exploration and celebration of so many different languages and cultures certainly wouldn’t have been made even a few years ago. “It's a celebration of all our different cultures, but also our togetherness - our sameness really,” Emily smiles, reflecting on what the show symbolises. “There's these obvious divisions of language because we can't literally understand what each other are saying and there are also cultural divisions, class divisions. But here are all these characters coming together in this claustrophobic situation. There’s a sense of commonness between every single character through their experiences of life and the bonds that they are forming between each other. I think it says a lot because it’s very divided right now, life is quite chaotic right now and some very devastating things are happening. It's a good representation of our sameness, oneness and working together.”
The togetherness didn’t just play out on screen, the cast came together during filming too, to help each other through the gruelling six month - five days a week - shooting schedule through a lot of jokes, laughter and a group text. But unfortunately for Emily, she didn’t get to have ALL the fun. “The others were doing a lot of karaoke! I only really had the weekends off. There's amazing forests and lakes around the studio but I actually didn't want to see any more water for a while,” she laughs. “I can't get on another boat or lake without thinking, ‘am I turning into Maura?’ I tried to get time off in the city though. Berlin is such a cool city. It just seems very open and accepting and I love it.” Emily assures me even though she felt very much like she ‘needed a nightclub’ the pull of Berlin’s nightclubbing scene didn’t quite lure her in during filming.
Filming a TV show doesn’t get much bigger than 1899 with vast sets, and a revolutionary 360 degree sound stage, but it was the ‘little too close for comfort’ moments that made Emily dig the deepest. “I found the little tiny sets, the more claustrophobic sets actually a bit more challenging or more exposing,” she reveals. “ Louis Hofmann who did Dark (the previous TV show by the creators of 1899) recommended the Wim Hoff breathing technique so that's what I did between shots to remind my body that you're in control because when you're playing a character like that all the time your body starts to rebel and say, ‘how dare you, what are you doing to me?’”
1899 aside, Emily has certainly embraced an assortment of challenges in her career to date from playing Fanny in The Pursuit of Love opposite Lily James, to being murdered by a Dalmation whilst playing Cruella’s mother in Disney’s Cruella. That is what I call RANGE! “It’s ironic because I grew up with a dalmatian in my family home,” Emily laughs. “As a kid I was quite lazy. So the others took her out for runs. So maybe it’s karma coming back to me because I didn't participate enough with the dog responsibilities.”
Whilst her dog walking skills might not be award worthy, it was her role playing Alice, a revolutionary plant breeder who creates a plant with anti-depressant qualities in the movie, Little Joe that gave Emily one of the greatest accolades of her career to date, the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. I wonder what that taught her about the meaning of success? “I mean that was a bolt outta the blue, it was a wonderful experience” she replies. “External validation is a bit of a rush, but it's not a long standing thing. People could shower you with a million gifts but if you aren’t doing things for yourself, for the right reasons, it's not gonna last very long.”
It’s that exact refreshing outlook on such a topsy-turvy industry alongside her vast talent that is leading Emily to even bigger projects next year, from starring alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in The Interpreter to Kristin Scott Thomas directing debut, My Mother’s Wedding with Scarlett Johansson and Sienna Miller. “Scarlett is great fun,” Emily smiles. “She was hiring us pizza trucks, we had waffle trucks. I mean she's great fun, she would also make us margaritas after set! She’s such a pro” The stuff dreams are made of and hopefully there will be many more dreams realised for Emily Beecham.
1899 is streaming on Netflix now
