Real And Relatable
With
Rosamund Pike
Following her scene-stealing performance in Saltburn and an imminent return to TV’s The Wheel of Time – not to mention the London stage later this summer – ROSAMUND PIKE has several exciting projects in the pipeline and a relentlessly busy year ahead. Here, the British actor talks to BILLIE BHATIA about being a romantic, combating self-judgement and the power of storytelling
There is something disarming about famous people doing ordinary things. It’s barely 10am and Rosamund Pike is sitting before me in a nook of The Langham hotel in London, fresh from a morning of multi-tasking. “I feel like I’ve got a lot done already,” she says. “Coming into central London from home, getting two children to school, a joiner was coming to solve a few issues at home, dealing with parking… oh my gosh, thank god I said that!”
She apologizes for the interjection as she makes a quick call and inputs details into a parking app to avoid getting a ticket. It is, of course, not news that Hollywood actors are real people who have mundane administrative tasks like the rest of us, but that’s quite easy to forget once you are in the vicinity of Pike’s enchantment – one that makes her seem as otherworldly as her sorceress character Moiraine in Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time. “These things that we do as women, it’s a never-ending list,” she ruminates as she taps away on her phone, organizing the joiner. “Problems with old houses. I like discovering things behind the layers – and sometimes what you discover is lovely, and sometimes what you discover is a fucking mess.”
Also unexpected is the genuine interest Pike shows, asking how my morning has been, about my life, my thoughts on hormone disruptors, and about how we can go about “unsmarting” our lives. We both agree, the latter might have looked like a parking ticket this morning.
In the world of Rosamund Pike, there is a lot going on – far beyond her Wednesday to-do list. The Wheel of Time – the TV adaptation of Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy series – is back for its third season this month; she has just wrapped on a subversive romantic comedy, Ladies First; is about to start filming a Guy Ritchie project, Wife and Dog; and, in July, she will make her National Theatre debut with Inter Alia – an exciting new play by Suzie Miller (of Prima Facie fame).
“I’m longing for time to be idle at the moment. But I grew up with parents who are musicians – and any self-employed person will know this: to have work is an amazing thing; and there’s never a day where I don’t appreciate that. My curiosity pulls me into more projects than I can handle.” I nod at the relatability of the last sentiment and ask if she resonates with being a ‘yes person’.
“If I feel like something needs me, then I am,” explains Pike, who not only stars in The Wheel of Time, but narrates the audio books, too. “When they first offered me the [audio book] project in the first season, I said no. But when the rest of the cast were asked, all of whom said no, and it was coming around to the launch of season one, I thought, ‘Shit, they need me to do this’. But it’s not easy doing 144 voices and conveying the breadth of this world.”
She’s now completed four of the audio books, a hugely impressive feat as a solo project – although she has enlisted some help. “I do them with my mother,” she shares. “She was a singer; and then, in her seventies, she transferred those skills brilliantly to producing audio books – because it’s the same skill set of listening acutely, sensitivity to rhythm, meaning of words, musicality, intonation, understanding the conveyance of a story, pace. And we have a really creative, fulfilling time together.”
“I’m so ROMANTIC. I’m excitable, and I love to laugh, but I convince in the DRAMATIC serious roles. People don’t see the GIRLISHNESS in me”
The Wheel of Time is a unique offering in the fantasy realm, creating a world where only women have access to magic because, historically, men abused that power. Pike was drawn initially to the genre because “fantasy was an escape; and I wanted an escape”. Moiraine is quite far from the types of characters she has often portrayed, too. “I’ve played a lot of real people; and that can be traumatic – going deep into someone’s soul to try and portray them honestly and live their life more than your own.”
“The power that they experience can be uncomfortable to wear and, to do the job well, you have to inhabit the role. Your imagination is powerful enough, as a human, that we can affect our chemistry and also our reality. So, when you’re asking your body to experience fear, the body doesn’t know it’s not in danger and will flood you with cortisol and adrenaline for real. You trick your body into believing it’s your trauma and, afterwards, you’re left with some fallout – and you don’t know what that will be until you’re in it,” she reflects. However, while she appreciates the escapism that the world of fantasy affords, she now feels the need “to step away from the cauldron, as it were. I need to go back to reality”.
An alternate reality is where Pike is headed next, as she stars in Netflix romantic comedy Ladies First, in which she faces off with fellow former Oscar nominee Sacha Baron Cohen in a parallel world where women hold all the power (a theme, it seems, across Pike’s recent projects). She senses my palpable excitement about it. “Which are your favorite romantic comedies?” she asks. I reply anything with Julia Roberts. “Oh my god, she’s the greatest,” she says with a huge smile. “I love Julia Roberts so much. She’s shooting in London right now – my stand-in, Kaia, has left a day early because she’s going off to be Julia’s stand-in!”
With a role call that is filled with dark humor and psychological thrillers – from the suspenseful film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and crime mystery I Care a Lot, to Emerald Fennell’s electric black-comedy Saltburn and exec-producing on Netflix’s acclaimed sci-fi series 3 Body Problem – was it a relief to take on a lighter genre? “I have longed to do [a romantic comedy] because I’m so romantic. I’m excitable, and I love to laugh, but I convince in the dramatic serious roles. People don’t see the girlishness in me”, she shares. “Ladies First is complicated though,” Pike continues. “It’s a little out of the mould because it’s got these quite radical ideas in it. It’s provocative and funny – and the romance is quite unexpected.”
“I haven’t BEEN on the stage for 14 YEARS – and it’s a BIG deal”
Pike’s next project is her debut performance at London’s National Theatre this summer. Following on from an incredibly successful, award-winning run with the poignant one-woman Prima Facie, which starred Jodie Comer, playwright Suzie Miller returns with Inter Alia. Pike will portray an eminent Crown Court judge who at work is “changing and challenging the system one case at a time”, while juggling parenting and home demands, too.
“I haven’t been on the stage for 14 years – and it’s a big deal,” Pike admits. It’s important to her to do the role justice, too, not least because of the parallels she draws in her own life. “It’s about being a mother of a son, of which I have two. The self-judgement on ourselves as mothers, the feeling of not being good enough, I am more than familiar with. And then they get older, and they know that you feel conflicted and they can use that against you: ‘Why are you always working?’ It’s a conversation so universally frequented among women: how do you do it all? And specifically, how do you do it well?”
There is a huge amount of dedication involved in being able to manage all of the different aspects of Pike’s busy life. Dedication to her craft, to the pursuit of art, to playing the role at hand with integrity, to her causes – she is a long-term ambassador for the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and recently undertook a trip to visit female deminers in Cambodia and Lebanon – and to being present for her family and in her home life, too.
On that note, she tells me with delight about hosting an impromptu Bob Dylan-themed karaoke in her living room with her Wheel of Time cast mates after getting together to watch A Complete Unknown. She loves to spend her days off on north London’s Hampstead Heath, endeavors to revisit playing the cello, and she has a deep appreciation for how precious time with loved ones is. She shares that she spent last night with her musician father, who is now ailed with Parkinson’s, playing the piano together – her the left hand, and him the right.
We prepare to wrap up, and I reflect that it seems to be a tenderness and sincerity that Pike brings to every role, whether she’s playing a real person or a commanding sorceress. And as she grabs her coat and bag, with a hurried but warm goodbye (and a promise to follow up on a podcast recommendation), it’s evident that Pike’s greatest power is that she is really very human.
The Wheel of Time season 3 is on Prime Video from 13 March; Inter Alia tickets are available now
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