Heart and Soul
With
Bel Powley and Emma Appleton
They may be about to go stellar thanks to the small-screen adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love, but rising stars BEL POWLEY and EMMA APPLETON already know how to keep their feet firmly on the ground. Here, on a lively pub date with PANDORA SYKES, they share the power of female friendships and what turning 30 taught them
“Why aren’t women allowed to go out and have a good time and not feel bad about it?” asks Emma Appleton, with a cheerful slug of white wine. The actor, 30, is talking about what she calls ‘The Tinder montage’, a hilarious scene in the eagerly awaited BBC adaptation of Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton’s bestselling 2018 memoir, which follows four 22-year-olds living in north London. Appleton’s character, Maggie, and housemate Amara (played by Aliyah Odoffin) romp their way through a clutch of one-night stands, after long, raucous evenings spent drinking and dancing. “The beautiful thing about that scene is that the sex is joyous – and it’s on their terms.”
Over a carafe on a gorgeously sunny Friday in Notting Hill, west London, Appleton is telling me about her experience playing Maggie, the role inspired by Alderton herself. Alderton is my former podcast co-host of four years on The High Low, and I watched close-up as her funny, frank and sometimes heartbreaking memoir bewitched millions.
“Maggie so wants to be liked and loved. I can RELATE to that. [I remember] being in my twenties and having so much LIFE around my friends, but making myself DULLER in romantic settings”
Emma Appleton
The seven-part series, inspired by – but by no means a replica of – the book, is kinetic, nostalgic and laugh-out-loud funny, and stars Appleton, Powley, Odoffin and Marli Siu. Maggie is not Dolly (although a scene where Maggie is dancing round her flat late at night, topless, smoking a fag, is not, shall we say, a million miles away from its writer), but anyone who loves the book will be delighted by Appleton’s nuanced performance, which Alderton describes as “deeply moving and empathetic”. Maggie is vivacious, warm and bombastic, but also insecure and lonely, as her childhood best friend, Birdy, falls in love with her first boyfriend. “Maggie so wants to be liked and loved,” says Appleton. “I can relate to that. [I remember] being in my twenties and having so much life and personality around my friends, but making myself smaller, or duller, in romantic settings.”
“Dolly started a REVOLUTION… of talking about and CELEBRATING friendship. Our generation is so much better at making time for our FRIENDS”
Emma Appleton
Maggie and Birdy have been best friends since they were pre-teens growing up in suburbia: they went to university together, frequently share a bed, and make each other lunch to take to work. At one point, Birdy suggests to a crestfallen Maggie that perhaps Maggie and her boyfriend could share custody of her. Alternate weekends, perhaps? “Dolly started a revolution,” says Appleton. “Of talking about and celebrating friendship. Our generation is so much better at making time for our friends.”
Appleton’s own Birdy is a personal trainer called Alex, whom she met when they were both models and with whom she’s spent the past two years living with in Colchester. Now that life is semi back to normal, she’s in the process of moving back to London. She is in a relationship – it’s not yet long-term, but it’s a happy one, she says with a sylph-like smile that invites no further questions. “My partner is a big deal in my life, but so are my friends. Alex is my soul mate; the love of my life.”
It’s a ‘breakout year’ for Appleton, who has previously had roles in BBC Three’s Clique, Netflix’s The Witcher and Channel 4’s Traitors. Next up is Pistol, Danny Boyle’s mini-series for FX, based on Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones’s 2017 memoir, in which Appleton plays Nancy Spungen (the girlfriend of Sid Vicious), alongside Maisie Williams and Thomas Brodie-Sangster. “It was an iconic time in history and Nancy was an amazing part to play. I love her voice, her mannerisms, the ability she has to change herself into a different person. I studied videos of her religiously.” Just a week after Pistol hits screens, Everything I Know About Love is released. The past month has been a jumble of promotion for both. “It was the dreamiest year, making those two shows. I feel so spoiled.”
Appleton grew up in Witney, Oxfordshire with a younger brother, her dad – an architect – and her mum, who is a nurse for the NHS. (“Every time I have a moany moment, I just think about how no one is gonna make my mum a cup of tea at work.”) She enjoyed success modeling but quit the industry in 2015 to give acting a proper go. She enjoys fashion much more now that she’s the subject, and recently started working with stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray, who also styles Lily James, Jenna Coleman and Gemma Chan.
“Why aren’t WOMEN allowed to go out and have a GOOD time and NOT feel bad about it?”
Emma Appleton
She describes her taste as joyously eclectic: today, she’s wearing a white puffy blouse under a denim mini pinafore by Reformation, with beaten-up red Adidas trainers. She also loved Maggie’s clothing on set (think big fluffy jackets, tiny dresses and bare legs, even in winter), so, for her birthday, Alderton gave Appleton a Maggie-esque Afghan coat. In turn, Appleton gifted her a necklace with the date they started filming on the back. “Very sentimental,” she smiles. “But then, so is Dolly.”
“Pandora!” yells a petite brunette dressed in double denim from across the road. “Do you mind if we go to the pub? This cafe is always filled with actors from Game of Thrones.” This is my introduction to Bel Powley, who is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after six months off work, spent playing with her baby nephew and renovating the east London house she shares with her fiancé, fellow actor Douglas Booth. As we slide into our seats, she has a distinctly Birdy energy, I note: vivacious and leaning into the conversation with her whole body.
“I am quite Birdy,” she says of the role based on Alderton’s best friend, Farly – to whom the book is dedicated. “When I read the book I thought, if this ever gets made, I have to play this Farly character. I felt a lot of affiliation with her: I’m Jewish, I’m organized, I can be a bit anal.” Does she think she manifested the role? “No,” says Powley, bluntly. “I’m not very woo-woo, but I do believe – and I think this is my way of dealing with how hard my industry is – what is [meant] for you, won’t go by you.”
Powley plays Birdy with warmth and effervescence; a tiny, bustling figure in tight cocktail dresses who arrives two hours early for her dream job interview at [beloved British department store] John Lewis and takes a handwritten list of ‘talking points’ to her first date. “Bel is a highly skilled actor,” says Alderton, “but she also just makes me laugh so much – she brought an eccentricity to Birdy that I always wanted, while keeping her entirely grounded.”
“We’ve come to a point, post-#METOO, where people are actually MAKING shows about the FEMALE experience. I don’t think this would have been made 10 years ago”
Bel Powley
Like Appleton, Powley was deeply moved by the storyline about female friendship. “I lived with my best friend Lola for eight years. When I moved in with Douglas [in 2019], I brought Lola with me. She eventually moved out, but we still call that room ‘Lola’s room’.” Appleton, Powley, Odoffin and Siu became tightly bonded on set. “It rarely, rarely happens,” says the actor, “but we are all really close.” Making the show in Manchester “felt free and collaborative. Both of our directors [China Moo-Young and Julie Ford] are women, as is our showrunner, Dolly.” She pauses: “We’ve come to a point, post-#MeToo, where people are actually making shows about the female experience. I don’t think this would have been made 10 years ago. There was Girls, and that’s it. Certainly for me, in my career, I have never read a script so honest and raw about what it’s like to be a young woman.”
“I have had that cliché thing when you finally KNOW yourself… I’m [not] completely sorted, but I know who I am. I know what I want from my CAREER. I am not scared to say NO”
Bel Powley
Powley was 19 when she starred in in the coming-of-age film The Diary of a Teenage Girl (for which she won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Actress and the Trophée Chopard at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival) and she has since clocked up an impressive and varied body of work, including Mary Shelley, White Boy Rick, BBC series Informer, The King of Staten Island and the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show.
Her dad, Mark, is a TV actor and her mum, Janis Jaffa, a casting director. (Her younger sister, bucking the trend, is a chef.) “[My parents] actually discouraged me from being an actor. They knew how difficult the industry was. They had high hopes of me going to university,” she says. Powley was meant to go to Manchester with Lola “and then I got a Broadway show and had to break it to Lola that I wasn’t going to go. I remember taking her to the bus stop, and both of us just bawling.”
Powley and Booth met six years ago, on the set of Mary Shelley, and got engaged last summer. She shared an engagement photo on Instagram – tanned, happy and sparkly-eyed, but notes that it’s very rare for the two to post pictures of each other. “We are very much individuals.” The plus of dating an actor, she says, is that you both understand the “nomadic” nature of the job and “align our schedules, so that we go to places together”. She’s about to go to Vancouver to shoot Cold Copy – an indie film about a student who becomes obsessed with a famous journalist (played by Tracee Ellis Ross), and Booth will accompany her. After that, it’s on to A Small Light, a series for Disney+ about Miep Gies, who helped to hide Anne Frank’s family during WWII. She’s staggered that she – and I – only recently learned who Gies was, despite the vital role she played in history. “I read a script yesterday about Eleanor Roosevelt. We know a few things about her – a few famous quotes, really – but she had this insane life. Why don’t we know more about these women?”
A believer in the empowering nature of fashion, Powley also works with stylist Cher Coulter; her favorite brands include Miu Miu, Gucci, Acne Studios, Simone Rocha and Cecilie Bahnsen. Today, she’s wearing black leather Mary Janes (swiped from the set of Everything I Know About Love), a Miu Miu skirt and a Rag & Bone denim jacket.
Like Appleton, she has recently turned 30, which she celebrated with a huge party. “I have had that cliché thing when you finally know yourself. I don’t mean to say that I’m completely sorted, but that I know who I am,” she considers. “I know what I want from my career. I am not scared to say no.” And then off she dances, to claim her space in the afternoon sunshine.
Everything I Know About Love is on BBC One and BBC iPlayer (UK) from June 7
First Time, with Bel Powley & Emma Appleton
From young love and heartbreak to understanding the true power of friendship, the stars of Everything I Know About Love ask each other about precious personal firsts and the lessons they learned along the way
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