BOOKS & ARTS
‘I should just shut up’
Dominic West talks to Melissa Kite about #MeToo
and the perils of discussing politicsL
ounging confidently on the sofa of a
Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has
been beaming at me, but now his hand-
some smile dissolves into a hurt look.
I have just asked him to explain why he, in
common with so many actors, feels the need
to voice his political views.
‘I should just pipe down and carry on act-
ing?’ he asks, leaning forward to pour tea. I
don’t like to be rude, so I raise my eyebrows
and shrug as the most polite way of saying,
‘Well, it’s an idea.’
West, who is giving interviews to pro-
mote his new film Colette, has also made a
campaign video calling for a second EU
referendum. In it, he warns people that
Britain won’t be able to make trade deals
with America, Turkey or India on its own.
‘You can’t cut a deal with these strongmen
and their giant economies. You do what
they dictate,’ he tells the camera, pulling a
haggard face, rather like in those charity
appeals.
I try to explain to him what it is like
to be a member of the Brexit-voting
unwashed masses, going to see a film
and wishing you didn’t have to sit there
remembering that the actors on the screen
in front of you in real life regard you as
sadly mistaken, pathetically hoodwinked
— because that’s the Remain narrative,
isn’t it? I tell him that we Brexit oiks are
more than half his audience. Does he not
want us to enjoy his movies?
‘What, you’re not going to watch a film
because Remainers are in it?’ he laughs
incredulously.
I tell him no, but actors give us escap-
ism. We value that highly. So when an
actor intervenes in politics, it takes away
from our ability to suspend our disbelief.
As I watched Colette, the first thing I had
to do was battle out of my head invad-
ing images of West and his co-star Keira
Knightley appearing in referendum prop-
aganda.
Knightley is enchanting as the sexual-
ly adventurous French novelist who writes
under her domineering husband’s pen name.
But I wish I didn’t have the image of her in
my head doing a conceited turn in that awful
ad calling on young people to vote, entitled
‘Don’t Fuck My Future’.
‘The sensible thing is to realise you exist
in the public eye as an entertainer but not as
anything political,’ he back-pedals.
‘The clever ones don’t say anything, you
don’t know what they’re thinking. I wish I
could do the same. I go against my instincts
to be just an actor. I have views and...’
He looks wistfully into the middle dis-
tance before declaring: ‘I should just shut up.
I’m sure it’s counterproductive to my career.’
West is proud of his collaboration with
Knightley bringing to the screen the life
of the writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette,
who ghost-wrote the semi-autobiographi-
cal Claudine novels for her husband Henry
Gauthier-Villars, known as Willy. Together
they became the toast of turn-of-the-century
Paris as Willy enjoyed rave reviews for the
books and engaged in outrageous promo-
tional stunts.West is fabulous as the rumbustious
Willy, and the film has been named a pos-
sible Oscar contender. It is the dynamic
between him and Knightley that makes it
work. Their portrayal of the couple is touch-
ing because they do not lapse into an easy
characterisation of Willy as exploiter and
Colette as victim, but rather evoke a meet-
ing of minds between a great showman and
a quiet country girl who wrote beautifully
nuanced erotic fiction but who might never
have reached an audience had she not mar-
ried a loveable conman. For me, the filmexplores the timely idea of how the exploit-
ed might exploit the exploiter, and West
does not disavow me of this.
‘She used him for what she could get. I
don’t think she was ever a victim. She used
him to get the hell out of Burgundy and as
a passport to literary Paris. And when he
ceased to be of use to her, she ditched him
pretty sharpish. So the exploitation is cer-
tainly not on one side.’
I ask him whether there are parallels with
women now making historical accusations of
a sexual nature against powerful men. Like
Colette, they might be said to have had the
best out of the situation.
‘It’s certainly true of Colette,’ he says
tactfully, before adding ‘and probably true
of anyone who seeks fame and fortune.
Anyone who is prepared to sell their per-
sonal life for public consumption is bound
to end up exploiting somebody if only
themselves.’
The obvious thing would be to promote
the film as the latest great exposé of misogy-
ny down the ages. But West says: ‘I did feel a
certain affection for the character of Willy,
whether that is because he’s familiar to us
as the chauvinistic old uncle. There’s a
sense that we relish the political incorrect-
ness, the defiance of what might be seen
as quite rigid causes of outrage now.
‘It’s what the French women were say-
ing when they came out en masse against
the #MeToo movement: we want men to
fulfil their traditional roles.’
Well, there’s plenty of that in Colette.
When Willy locks his wife in her room
and orders her to write it is presented as
all rather raunchy. ‘I think it’s essential if
we are going to talk about the story of a
courageous woman to have her meet her
match in a man and spar with a strong
man, otherwise she’s not as interesting as
she could be. She loved, most women do,
the difference between the sexes and the
antagonism that goes on.’
I ask him if we have gone backwards
with our modern moralising, if people
were freer in belle époque Paris.
‘It was much more permissive than we
are today. The norm [now] is a sense of
outrage and dogmatic moralistic confine-
ment. I think social media is a huge cata-
lyst and organ for that outrage.’
He blames the noise of the Twitter-
sphere on ‘a need for people to be noticed, to
show off, for mediocrity to be given attention.
It tends to come from a voice you wouldn’t
otherwise listen to. It’s hard to ignore out-
rage. Outrage is the refuge of mediocrity.
Outrage stifles the sort of freedom we are
talking about.’
He is hitting his stride, and I think what
a pity it is he doesn’t make campaign films
that try to change hearts and minds on this
subject.Collette will be in cinemas in January 2019.‘I go against my instincts to be just an actor’PHOTO BY ROBBY KLEIN/GETTY IMAGES