We’ve never used one before, so the props guy had to show us She was much better at it than I was. I started gagging, then I had a simultaneous fit of laughter, and they kept the cameras rolling.”Redgrave is back again for a dramatic new twist this series “We had a really grim episode to do. It was the first time I actually lost my sense of humour about her, and the blurring of lines between personal and acting stuff. I thought, ‘I wish I hadn’t asked her to do it.’ I won’t say what happens but there’s a plane crash that she’s in and it was just too much for me. I know that she’s my mother and this is a TV show, and we’re just acting, but she is flying over, and it is just too, too close. It was unpleasant.”They first acted together as mother and daughter in Peter Hall’s stage production of Lady Windemere’s Fan (2001). At the time Joely was clearly apprehensive about their working relationship But she says now, “It was very easy and smooth She blew me away.

Even someone as close as your mother, you think you know them so well, but then there are bits of them that you find out about only in a work environment. I suddenly realised, ‘This is almost more real for her than moments in real life.’ She’s so present, whereas normally she can seem distracted. And her work ethic was phenomenal.”On first meeting, Richardson can also seem distracted, brittle even. She asks constant questions, so you have to think on your feet. But as she warms up, and conversation is punctuated by that wonderful throaty laugh, you sense here is a real person. People assume she’s a man’s woman, I’d say she is anything but She falls over herself to praise female contemporaries. And, yes, she has an entourage but Team Richardson, from her agent to her regular make-up artist, appear sane.Later, I watch her in action at the press conference for Wallis and Edward, where male tabloid journalists are obsessed by her weight and her diet tips.

She handles it beautifully, resorting to dry one-liners when pushed too far. “What do I want for Christmas? Why, are you going to buy it for me?”In the film, Wallis is hounded by the paparazzi, a parallel not lost on Richardson. Does she dread returning to England? “I get homesick when I’m away so to be back is great. Also getting older means you don’t think about it in the same way as you did when you were 25, when it might ruin your day.” What about the obsession with her love life? “You have to try not to buy into it.