I
n the semi-darkness of The Old Vic’s auditorium,
empty on a Monday afternoon before the evening
show, Matt Smith is reassuring Claire Foy that she
doesn’t “have an irritating voice”.
“I do when I go on and on,” she insists, in tones
that may, it should be noted, slip in and out of various
accents for comic effect, but are not in the slightest bit
irritating. The pair are sitting in the theatre’s balcony,
munching on carrots and hummus after wrapping their Vogue
shoot, Foy, 35, dressed in a short-sleeved denim boiler suit,
the short crop she had for her role as Lisbeth Salander in
The Girl in the Spider’s Web grown out to a tousled bob;
Smith, a year older, in jeans and T-shirt, that signature floppy
mane unchanged.
They are contemplating the large stage in front of them,
and how, for three weeks this October, they will be its sole
occupants when they reunite to star in Duncan Macmillan’s
2011 play Lungs – a fast-paced, talky two-hander directed
by Matthew Warchus, The Old Vic’s artistic director – about
a couple trying to work out whether or not they want a baby,
and, more specifically, whether or not they want to bring a
life into a world buckling under the strain of climate change.
It has been two years since Smith appeared on stage, seven
for Foy – and there are, quite naturally, a few things concerning
them about the task at hand: the size of this place, for starters,
especially for such an intimate, spare play with no set; whether
the one-liners will land; whether the audience will fall asleep
(“It’s only an hour – people can stay awake that long, surely
to goodness,” tuts Foy); whether they’ll make it through the
run and remain friends. “We must never fall out,” says Smith.
“It’s only a play, old chum.”
No one else, surely, can be worried about any of this. After
all, Foy and Smith are two of Britain’s most successful actors,
thanks in no small part to their roles in global television
triumph The Crown. Their captivating, humanising, moving
portrayal of the marriage between the Queen and the Duke
of Edinburgh has been career-defining for both, their
performances a major factor in the success of Netflix’s award-winning royal saga. And while Lungs is a very different animal,
it is tried and tested ground for them, even if they’re reticent
about admitting it. There is something universal about the
behind-closed-doors intimacy of relationships – whether of
the monarchy in the 1950s or of a modern-day middle-class
couple – and Foy and Smith are supreme at illuminating it.
“When we worked together before, the things that we
were most interested in were the domestic,” says Foy. “We
wanted to project the idea that just because you have privilege
doesn’t mean you don’t have the rest of the shit that everyone
has to deal with. That’s why The Crown worked, because it
showed that you could have sympathy and empathy and
understanding for people who, from the outside, you should
hate, because they have everything that anyone could ever
dream of having. But ultimately you can’t get away from
birth and death and misery and happiness – we all experience
it. And that’s what I feel is the same with this play.”
She appreciates that audiences will be fascinated by their
reunion, though, and wants to make one thing clear: “To me,
Matt is my friend and we acted together, as opposed to me
seeing him as Prince Philip,” she says, dissolving into laughter,
barely able to say the words. “Because that would be weird.
From the inside it makes sense, from the outside, maybe not.”
Certainly the two characters in Lungs – simply referred to
as M and W, they have regular jobs, swear liberally and aren’t
married – are closer to the everyday experiences of Foy
and Smith, who were born in Stockport and Northampton
respectively, and both now live in north London. It’s clear
they relish each other’s company: they make each other laugh
frequently and loudly, and tease one another gleefully. At one
point, Foy calls Smith “Vivien Leigh”, while Smith reminds
Foy she was “as big as a house” when she was pregnant.
“Being serious has always been difficult,” admits Smith.
“Whenever I was trying to be serious in The Crown, whenever
I was swooning around...”
“Because I knew that inside you were going, ‘Look at me!
Swoon, swoon. Look at me swooning!’” Foy says, with
mock indignance. >THEATRE
ROYALS
Sparks fly on and off the stage as
The Crown’s Claire Foy and Matt Smith are reunited –
this time as a couple considering childbearing
in a world beset by climate change. By Olivia Marks.
Photographs by Paul Wetherell251
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