Sarandon’s marvellously naturalistic, easy performance as the older Mary has been warmly received. It has come at a good moment for her, because her long held and outspoken support for Palestine led her agency UTA to drop her as a client after she spoke at a pro-Palestine rally in November 2023. “All my projects were pulled,” she says. “I was fired from everything in the US. So I was very fortunate to come over here and find people who would rep me. I have friends here, I’ve worked here but not on stage. I feel safe here.”
She doesn’t intend to settle. “I’ve got way too many spawn and grand spawn back in the States,” she says with another laugh, about her three children and their offspring. For now, however, she is enjoying herself. “I don’t know if it happens in every cast, but everyone here is so supportive of each other and loving and friendly. There have been no big diva scenes.”
It’s clear that the experience of working alongside one another – watching each other embody the same character – has been a rich one for all concerned. “Susan is just magnificent,” says McEwen. “She’s one of the gang. We are all in it together.”
Oddly, McEwen has recently finished filming the Amazon prime series Scarpetta, where once again she is playing the younger self of an Oscar-winner, this time in the shape of Nicole Kidman. The two experiences have had uncanny echoes of one another. “With filming, if you are not in a scene together you never see them, but it has been a similar experience,” she says. “Nicole and I rehearsed a bit at the beginning and found stuff together, then we’d go off and film and it would grow and become something different. But by the end of shooting, we’d both come to quite similar conclusions without really trying. The character connects you. It’s a lovely thing to do.”
Riseborough, who is making her return to the stage after a 15-year absence, has also just finished a film, The Queen of Fashion, about the fashion stylist Isabella Blow, written and directed by Alex Marx, which she has produced through her own production company. “It’s mostly a story about mental health but there’s a lot of levity in it. She was hugely funny.” She has been working on bringing the story to screen for about eight years. “Producing is a mountain; it takes a lot of patience.”
She is thrilled to be back on stage, and to be working again with Warchus. He directed Matilda the Musical both on stage and screen – and there is an inadvertent Matilda reunion going on behind the scenes at Mary Page Marlowe. Riseborough played Mrs Wormwood in the film version, which starred Alisha Weir as Matilda. Worthington Cox was Matilda on stage – her first acting role.
“It’s hilarious,” says Worthington Cox, now. “But obviously also lovely because they knew me as a little girl, and it’s so brilliant getting to know these people again as an adult.” For Weir, a remarkably poised 16-year-old, the pleasure of working with Warchus again – “everything he does is extraordinary” – is amplified by the excitement of making her stage debut.
“It felt weird at the start, making everything bigger for the audience,” she says. “The more I do it, the more I get used to it.” Riseborough looks at her with affection and says: “You are gorgeous in your scene. And I think one of the things I’ve loved about theatre from the start, is that everything is reaching for something that is honest. Although you have to rely on technique, it feels creative. We all want each other to feel good and to be wonderful.
“I think the audience feels that, and there’s this huge body of people breathing the play in, and each person has their own experiences with it. Which is beautiful.”
Mary Page Marlowe is at the Old Vic until 1 November 2025
