From Evelyn Plummer to Mrs Potty, Maureen Lipman talks to Deana Luchia about plum roles, late love and learning to sing in her seventies...
I’m not sure what to expect when I meet Maureen Lipman in a smart hotel in Richmond. I’m here as part of a press junket and they’re never ideal for interviews. What’s more, I have an afternoon slot and Maureen will have been answering the same sort of questions for hours by the time I sit across from her.
But Maureen isn’t at all tired. Or lacking in enthusiasm.
Right from the start she chats at a hundred miles an hour, and when my allocated 15 minutes are up, she is more than happy to answer one last question about finding love in your 70s. More on that later.
Dressed in a chic grey boiler suit and with freshly-done white and grey streaks in her hair, the evergreen actress and comedian looks at least a decade younger than her 78 years. When I comment on her chattiness she gamely describes herself as “a big show-off”.
“But I’m just the same at a bus stop as I am on Drury Lane,” she adds.
Whilst Maureen, made a Dame in 2020, is perhaps best known for her Coronation Street role of Evelyn Plummer – a woman she gleefully describes as a “belligerent old bag” – today is all about her upcoming appearance in Richmond Theatre’s romantic pantomime, Beauty and the Beast. Starring alongside comedic magician Pete Firman as Silly Billy, Maureen plays Mrs Potty, a talking, singing and dancing teapot who helps a distraught Beauty see beyond the frighteningly fierce demeanour of the Beast.
Panto schedules are tough. With just the odd day off, Maureen will perform twice daily between December 7th and January 5th. How will she cope?
“I don’t know, I really don’t,” she laughs. “But somehow I will, and if I don’t, then I’m sorry for the people who’ve paid to see me.”
We talk about understudies and she tells me a story about standing in, aged 25, for Diana Rigg in Jumpers at the Old Vic.
“I can remember to this day the sound when they announced, ‘Unfortunately Diana Rigg is not…’ and the whole audience went ‘Oh no!’ and I was sitting there in her wig, which was twice the size of my head. I had to go on for a whole week. But theatre is live, it’s dangerous and you have to do the best you can. Sometimes things go wrong and that’s the joy of it.”
Maureen, I sense, will take whatever happens in her stride.
“We’ll have fun, and that fun will get me through to the next show, and that will get me through the week,” she says.
It’s more than a sense of fun, however, that has kept her on stage and screen (big and small) for over 50 years. Born in Hull, she moved south to train at LAMDA – London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art – and has showcased her acting chops in diverse roles ever since. She’s also written a column, numerous books and, as a comedian, appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe. Does her skill set also encompass singing and dancing?
“I did have a singing class the other day,” she says, laughing again. “It’s the best fun I’ve ever had. You come out feeling as if you’re part of the air, like a bird, and you’ve made this noise and you think: ‘Ooh, where did that come from?’ As a woman you are taught not to make a noise, but if you really open your lungs it actually feels really good.”
Evelyn Plummer, whom she’s played since 2018, is a meaty role. Does she feel that interesting parts like this are in short supply for older women actors?
“I don’t know what people are on about,” she insists. “Every time I turn on the television, there’s a woman. She’s doing autopsies, she’s a policewoman, she’s in Happy Valley, she’s in Miserable Valley. It’s just nothing but women.
“We’ve always done quite well on stage and screen, you know. Coronation Street was always full of matriarchs. I know that equality is taking a long time, but in this business – as opposed to, say, science – we do very well, thank you.”
In fact, says Maureen, her best roles have come in her seventies.
“I got Rose, the title character of the Martin Sherman play I did last year [a one-woman drama that explores Jewish identity]. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done or ever will do. And then there’s Evelyn: we’ve all known women like her. There’s a sort of integrity to her lack of integrity, so it’s just a gift. I shall be very sorry not to play her for a while.”
Maureen is taking a break from the cobbles to play Mrs Potty. She’s done so before, for Rose, but this time she’s not sure when she’ll return.
“I won’t have her killed off though,” she insists. “I love my [screen] family. I adore Alan Halsall [Evelyn’s grandson Tyrone Dobbs]. He’s such a good actor. And I love Jennie [McAlpine] who plays Fiz, and the kids. There are about 90 actors on the Street, but I wish there wasn’t quite so much separation. We act in blocks and there’s all manner of people I never get to work with. I’d love to act with Patti Claire who plays Mary.”
My 15 minutes are up: time for just one more question.
Maureen was married to the dramatist Jack Rosenthal, with whom she had two children, until his death in 2004, and then had a long relationship with partner Guido Castro, who died in 2021. In September, she got engaged to businessman David Turner, asking him to marry her whilst they were on a train. Does she have any tips on finding love?
“Yes! Be open to all sorts of things that you wouldn’t normally do on your own,” she says, smiling broadly. “I was very happy on my own. I love my friends and I did collage and I’ve got my iPad that I paint on, and my work, and I’ve never felt lonely. So this came as a surprise.”
Responding to a poem that David had posted on his website, she invited him out that evening.
“And then we went for a walk. It was my first date in years, his first in decades. I can’t experience anybody else’s life, nobody can, but I just think you have to let yourself be a bit vulnerable and open to the world rather than say: ‘Right, that’s it, I’m finished.’”
As I leave, Maureen waves cheerfully, showing no sign at all of flagging. I don’t think there’ll be much call for her understudy at Richmond this December.
Beauty and the Beast is at Richmond Theatre, Dec 7 – Jan 5; atgtickets.com/venues/richmond-theatre
