not using it? Well, you know what, I know a guy who
can fix it.”
We’re meant to be talking about Pistol, the new
FX TV drama charting the rise and demise of the
Sex Pistols, as seen through the eyes of Steve Jones,
the band’s wild-child guitarist. Directed by Danny
Boyle — “the nicest guy, someone who punches up
rather than down”, Riley says — it’s a raucous blast
back to the Seventies, all drugs and punk and the
Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Riley plays Vivienne West-
wood, who dressed the Sex Pistols; her real-life
boyfriend, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, 32, portrays
Malcolm McLaren, Westwood’s partner at the time
and the band’s manager.
Taking on a modern-day icon was daunting.
“Obviously playing much-loved fictional characters
like Mary Bennet there’s a responsibility with that,”
she says, referencing her role in the 2005 film
Pride & Prejudice. “But an actual human being who’s
alive, whose life you are portraying, was strange [...]
It must be very odd to be on the other end of.”
The Sex Pistols’ frontman, Johnny Rotten, aka
John Lydon, unsuccessfully fought in court to stop
the band’s music being played on the six-episode
series, but Westwood, 81, was more co-operative andspilt the beans on those anarchic days. “Vivienne
was very sweet and she’s luminously gorgeous —
white coiffed hair, immaculately dressed obviously,”
Riley recalls, adding that she didn’t know what to
give the designer when they met. “I took her some
forced rhubarb because it happened to be in season.
She was really pleased with it, I think.”
The rhubarb worked — Westwood gave Riley the
stamp of approval. If she hadn’t, perhaps the actress
would never have found romance with Brodie-
Sangster, who starred in Netflix’s The Queen’s
Gambit and played Sam, Liam Neeson’s young
stepson, in Love Actually almost two decades ago.
“We hadn’t really acknowledged each other as a
romantic possibility or potential until the moment
that we both did,” Riley says coyly. “And it was the
same moment a number of months after having
worked together and been good friends.” What
changed? “Absolutely no idea. It was very strange.”
The actress’s own upbringing in Hemel Hemp-
stead, Hertfordshire, was more ponies than punk.
“Some of my happiest childhood memories are
quiet moments with my pony,” she says, motioning
nuzzling into a horse’s neck. “The best smell in the
world to me is Mollichaff [horse feed] and horse
manure.” An only child, she grew up with her
father, Doug Milburn, a former head of the National
Crime Squad turned screenwriter, and her mother,
Una Riley, who founded a security systems company
while pregnant. “Mummy is fabulous and a real
door-kicker,” she says, likening her mother building
something from nothing to Musk’s creations.
After leaving Haberdashers’ Girls’ School, a local
private school, and having taken classes at the Sylvia
Young Saturday stage school, Riley fully threw
herself into acting.
In 2008 and then a 22-year-old rising star thanks
to St Trinian’s, she found herself one night at Whisky
Mist, a London nightclub. She remembers wearing
a ballgown (she had come straight from a charity
event) and sitting next to an intriguing South
African stranger who enthused about cars and
rockets. At the time Musk was 37, freshly separated
from Justine, his first wife and the mother of his five
young sons, and had already pocketed almost $176
million after PayPal was sold to eBay; what was
Riley’s first impression? “Very diffident, very shy,
quite awkward, sweet.” She agreed to meet him for
breakfast the next day, which turned into lunch,
which turned into dinner, and so on for four days (“I
went home at night,” she clarifies). The pair walked
around the capital together, amazed at how the map
on his iPhone had a blue dot tracking their move-
ments — “which of course now is ubiquitous, but at
the time was very exciting”.
She soon flew to Los Angeles to continue the
whirlwind and, after spending a total of ten days
together, Musk proposed (although the three
engagement rings came later). The speed didn’t faze
Riley: “I think my father proposed to my mother at
the end of their first date, so I think I just assumed
that was how it was done. It seemed perfectly logicalRiley with her boyfriend,
Thomas Brodie-SangsterGetty Images, Disney, Ealing Studios, Fragile Films12 • The Sunday Times Style