Actress Thandie Newton on stripping naked for Westworld, new series Line of Duty, and dealing with sexism in Hollywood
THANDIE NEWTON thought she had found the world’s worst costume when she had to don a frilly cartoon-style sexpot outfit to play a robot brothel madam.
Then she was presented with the proposed look for her role as a senior police investigator in the new series of Line Of Duty.
The actress, 44, calls the cop’s style: “Awful, butt-clenching nastiness.”
And she recalled her discussion of the character’s style with show boss Jed Mercurio: “I thought, ‘She’s a working mum so obviously she’s going to look like me.’
“I gave some ideas of costume and Jed was like, ‘No, sorry no, you’re going to wear suits and bad shoes.’
“I realised we were going to do something horribly, diabolically real. I found the most horrible shoes and pop socks that I would insist on pulling up so you could see them.”
No wonder she has decided that sometimes, the best costume choice can be nothing at all.
That hit home while filming the Sky Atlantic hit Westworld, set in a Wild West-themed amusement park of the future, staffed by androids.
The Londoner noticed that when she stripped naked for scenes, all the crew workers would treat her with careful respect and even congratulate her on her bravery.
But when she wore her robot character Maeve’s Wild West-fantasy style corset and frills, the reaction was completely different.
It’s about sensuality. It’s about eroticism
She explained: “I found myself more empowered naked than I did with the saloon outfit on.
“I was more comfortable naked because the costume was the most potent objectification of a woman, with the boobs pushed right up, the tiny waist. It’s an invitation for sex.
“The fishnet tights, the little heels with the laces . . . It’s all about sensuality. It’s about eroticism. It’s about ‘Look, but don’t touch’.
“It’s all there to make the invitation for sex as provocative as possible and then the promise of satisfaction is practically just there.”
That, she says, made people uncomfortable and invited “looks”. She ended up “hating” the costume.
Thandie has often spoken out about sexism as well as racism, and is proud to tackle both issues as DCI Roz Huntley in the fourth series of Line Of Duty, which starts on BBC1 later this month.
The character is a mum of two being investigated for possible corruption by the dogged team at AC-12.
Thandie said: “Every woman will recognise the frustrations.
“In every role, in every job, every line of work, as a mother you just have to be twice as good and if you’re black you have to be twice as good on top of that.
“She’s a Senior Investigating Officer and she’s taken five years off, to raise her family and has to claw her way back to where she was. It’s a very real problem, what is most degrading is the sexual abuse that goes on whether it’s verbal or whether it’s physical it’s very tough on women.
“Roz is under a hell of a lot of pressure and the audience sees that pressure and that allows the audience to be judge and jury, which I think is fantastic.
I was not perceived as the person that boys wanted to go out with
“It forces us to have an opinion about this and there is sexism there.”
Thandie herself knows all too well about these sorts of pressures, which she first experienced growing up as the only mixed race child at her Catholic school.
Her mum is black, born in Zimbabwe, and her dad is a white Englishman.
Once she was even excluded from a school photo because her mum had braided her hair with special beads for the occasion.
She recalled: “Too bantu. I was there to be civilised.
“So any hint of joy or freedom was like, ‘Agggh! The savage is set free from her cage!’”
As a young woman Thandie became so insecure about her looks that, while studying anthropology at Cambridge University, she developed bulimia.
She said: “I was not perceived as the person that boys wanted to go out with. And that has a very strong effect on a young girl.”
The disorder left her with scarred knuckles from ramming her fingers down her throat.
And she revealed: “I was lying in bed and I remember feeling my heart against my ribcage. Because my ribs were so close to my skin it was like my heart was coming out. I thought: ‘F***, I’m going to die’.”
She has also had some awful moments since becoming an actress, in an industry where sexism can still be breathtaking.
Once a director asked her to strip off her top half but promised only to film above her bare breasts, which turned out to be a “total f***ing lie”.
And in an early audition she was asked to fondle herself with a camera between her legs and found out later the director liked to play the resulting tape at private parties.
Even Thandie’s breakthrough hit Flirting in 1991, when she was 16, has been tarnished since she revealed she was seduced by the film’s then 39-year-old director John Duigan.
She previously said: “I was a very shy, very sweet girl. I wasn’t in control of the situation. Would I have liked things to be different? Sure. But I can now value myself more for the way I got through it. I don’t see myself as a victim.”
Thandie’s 2004 film Crash, about an abused woman, won her a Bafta for best supporting actress.
I made kids’ nanny help me learn my lines
After that, Thandie went on to star in blockbusters including The Pursuit of Happyness and Run Fatboy Run as well as playing popular Kem Likasu in the hit American hospital drama ER.
However, since she started speaking out about the exploitation of actresses and models, Thandie claims some big names in the business have begun to avoid her.
She said: “The number of people who want to distance themselves from me because of how much I’m willing to say is an example of how much it’s occurring.”
Thandie has now been married to writer Ol Parker, 47 — whose screenplays include The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel — for 18 years.
They have three children, daughters Ripley, 16, and Nico, 12, and son Booker, who is two.
Young Ripley was named after Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien for reasons that are close to Thandie’s heart.
She explained: “I was pregnant when I watched Aliens. Sigourney Weaver’s character was feminine but empowered”.
Her younger children’s nanny joined the family in Northern Ireland for the filming of Line Of Duty and proved herself as useful to Thandie as the kids.
The show has been dubbed “Lines Of Duty” by its stars because of its long scripts and Thandie roped in the childcare worker to help her learn them.
She admitted: “She would dread it every night. I’d ply her with wine, really expensive wine, to sweeten her up, then I’d be going through lines, psyched because of the day of filming. Poor woman, I should have paid her a bit more.”
But Thandie was desperate to get it right, because she knew just what an honour it was to get a role on the acclaimed drama, which is moving from BBC2 to BBC1.
She binge-watched the first three series and signed up for the role without reading the new scripts.
She said: “I hadn’t seen any of it before but I had a call from my agent and she said, ‘If you ever want to work on British television this is the best thing you could ever do.’
“I watched it with my husband and I could not stop from episode to episode. I didn’t know what was going to happen in the episodes but I just signed on.”
And then there was the added bonus of filming near to where the latest series of Game Of Thrones was being made. Rivalry soon reared its head where it really counted — in downing pints.
Thandie said: “It was between us and them in the pub.”
Line Of Duty series four starts on BBC1 on March 26 at 9pm.