Very British Scandal star Claire Foy on cats, The Crown and why success scares her

“And I’m very firmly neither one nor the other,” she continues. Never has sitting on the fence seemed quite so conclusive.

“I’m going to be edging towards dog,” Foy eventually concedes. “We’re getting a dog. That is happening. Ask me in a year and I’ll be either, ‘I hate them, or I can’t live without them.’”

it is October 2021, and the London Film Festival is in full swing. Which is why Foy is in said hotel room answering questions about cats and dogs and any other animal you care to mention (“Definitely not fish or small rodent-like creatures either. I’m not a rabbit person or a guinea pig person.”)

I think it’s fair to say that The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, which sees Benedict Cumberbatch in the titular role, with Foy playing his wife Elizabeth, is very much a cat film. Wain, after all, was a Victorian painter with an obsession (one that eventually tipped into mental illness) with painting felines.

The film, which is in cinemas today, Covid willing, is the latest credit on Foy’s lengthy CV that dates back to the BBC’s adaptation of Little Dorrit in 2008 and takes in Upstairs Downstairs, Wolf Hall and some minor TV show called The Crown.

It also comes hard on the heels of her latest screen appearance in the BBC’s Christmas drama, A Very British Scandal, writer Sarah Phelps’s feisty, feminist take on the story of Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll and the sex scandal that engulfed her in the 1960s when she was trying to divorce her husband (played by Paul Bettany). A smorgasbord of posh costumes, clipped accents, sexual liaisons and Inveraray Castle.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain deals with difficult themes too. (Mental health for a start. And then there’s the … Ah, no, that comes under the heading of “spoiler”.)

But it’s a more colourful, indeed even playful piece of work. And that was part of the appeal for Foy in playing Elizabeth, which gives her the chance to dress up in long dresses, give her very manga eyes and expressive neck a rest and try her hand at painting too.

“She’s very alive and she’s sort of a bit naughty. I really liked her,” Foy says of Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth, I thought, was the complete antithesis of lots of characters that I’ve been playing. She was not uncomplicated, but she didn’t mess around, and she was very kind and simple and unique and eccentric and all those lovely things.”

Is Foy anything like Elizabeth? “God, I hope I’m like her a lot.”

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Shall we check? Let’s do a pop quiz, Claire, I say. Can you draw or paint yourself?

“Not well. I’ve done a couple of things that I’m incredibly proud of. But that doesn’t mean they’re good.

“Art can look like a photograph, but if there is no emotion or feeling in it, it doesn’t matter.

“That’s why Picasso … Some of his things aren’t remotely like a human being, but you feel the emotion of it and that makes you see it.”

That’s the same, she hopes, for her own artistic creations. “They were driven by emotion. But they look shocking,” she adds, laughing.

So, Claire, you’re basically telling me you’re as good as Picasso.

She breaks into a proper belly laugh. “Just like Picasso,” she says between snorts.

OK. Elizabeth and Louis have a tryst in a men’s toilet. When you were last in one?

“Oh, really recently. Why was that? Oh yeah, I was filming something in a court. Where was it? Ealing Crown Court or something and there were lots of SAs [supporting artists, aka extras] in the women’s toilets

“So, I went into the men’s toilets. It was not a pleasant experience. I don’t know what happens in there, but it needs to be sorted out … You guys need to take care of that because that was really rank.”

And, finally, do you, like Elizabeth, enjoy dressing up in men’s clothes?

“All the time! If I can get hold of them, I’ll wear them. I’m a fan of a tailored suit. I don’t think a suit should be a gendered thing, but I love them. I’ve always wanted to play a stowaway on a ship who has to dress like a boy, but that part has not come my way unfortunately.”

Next panto season, Claire. “The dream.”

Paul Bettany and Claire Foy in A Very British Scandal

I’m not sure we see enough of this chatty, funny version of Claire Foy on our screens. One of the appeals of The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is that it allows her to show off her sense of fun. It’s on display talking to me today too. That combined with a frankly naked attempt to butter up your humble interviewer: “You’ve got the best name,” she says as we are introduced. “Makes you instantly likeable being called Teddy.” (Needless to say, it works.)

The last time I met Foy was six years ago when she was six and a half months’ pregnant and had just had her head cut off (playing Anne Boleyn in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall).

Since then, she’s become a mum (to daughter Ivy Rose), separated from her husband, the actor Stephen Campbell-Moore, and reached name-above-the-title status after being cast as Her Maj in Netflix’s big-big-budget TV drama The Crown, which in turn opened the door for her to work with Steven Soderbergh (Unsane) and on the Hollywood remake of The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

All change, in short.

“Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it, because I think becoming a parent [means] life goes very quickly, and you suddenly have an ever-present clock. You see time changing.

“I think a lot of people, when they have children, start living life very fast. And that is my experience. But it’s also the fact that my career changed massively at that point as well.”

Indeed. She was five months pregnant when she auditioned for The Crown and her daughter was four months old when she started filming it.

“But it’s been a wonderful six years,” she continues. “There have been many exciting and challenging things. I’ve had a wonderful time, thanks. It’s been great. I’m now glossing over all the hardship, but that’s what you can do with hindsight.”

At 37 Foy is not a star perhaps, but certainly a familiar face. The Crown had much to do with that. How does she look back on that experience now? What was it like to be at the heart of something was such a huge undertaking in terms of scale and budget?

“I never really thought I was, I suppose. It always felt much bigger than I was and I’m always in denial about the significance of the roles I play.”

Claire, that’s a bit difficult to believe when you’re playing the Queen?

“Not really because Peter Morgan’s Elizabeth doesn’t relish being the centre of attention. If anything, she hates it. And it’s that thing of people thinking, ‘Gosh, you’re [at] all-powerful demigod levels.

“And I think anyone in that position, unless they are genuinely an egotistical maniac, doesn’t sit there going, ‘Hah, hah, hah’. If anything, it’s, ‘Oh my God, everybody sees me completely differently to how I am. They don’t know me, and who I am is the opposite of that’.

“So, yeah, it never went to my head, the power … that I could not wield,” she concludes, laughing again.

And, anyway, she also was getting on with being a mum too, she reminds me. “I had bigger fish to fry.”

Well, yes. Parenthood is a much bigger adventure. Still, Foy was suddenly the centre of attention. And not just on the set. She became public property. Was that strange?

“There were elements about it that were disconcerting, but they didn’t last very long, really. Because people’s interest moves off very quickly, especially when you’re not a celebrity.”

And you’re not? “You have to put work into being that person who people care about. So, it didn’t last long mercifully and I’m very fortunate that it didn’t.

“And that’s not real life, is it? It’s not real life. It’s a virtual world. People like you create it. It’s an abstract thing. It’s not me. It’s just who they see me as and I’m just very lucky that a lot of people know me for a part that they really loved. They really loved that character. I’m grateful for that.”

Foy with Matt Smith in The Crown

To go from The Crown to something like Unsane which Steve Soderbergh filmed on his phone must have been interesting.

“That film was never going to come out. He was never going to release that film. He lied. He told me no one’s every going to see it and I thought, ‘Great, I’m just going to do whatever I want.’

“And then, lo and behold, ‘Oh, so it’s going to be in cinemas.’ I did my own make-up and it’s going to be in cinemas.’

“It was just like doing a small student film with one of the most successful movie directors of all time. It was a dream. And it was a 10-day shoot, and it was completely thinking on your feet and being instinctive and not dwelling and moving on and letting go of a scene and doing something else.

“And that’s what I needed. I’d been doing a TV show for almost two years I needed to do something to get out of it. I needed a very cold shower and that’s what it was.”

She says fear of boredom is one of the main things that guides her acting choices. That and who is directing, what character she’s being offered, who she will get to work with.

“In the dream world it all happens at the same time it’s the writer, the director, the character and the other actors. I’ve had quite a few of those. I’ve been really lucky.

“But other times it’s a job as well. You have to make a choice for either monetary reasons, or for the fact that you need to have a different experience because you live through work sometimes. You get the opportunity to go to different countries, you get the opportunity to experience different things. Once I did a job in Puerto Rico for like five months. ‘Oh my God, yeah, I want to go to Puerto Rico.’”

She smiles remembering that wouldn’t be possible now. “Pre-child obviously.”

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What is she not interested in doing? “I’m not really interested in being a superhero. I’m not really interested in being an action hero. I just think that’s a bit of a stretch. But then also I’d probably give it a go.”

Surely, you kind of were in Girl in the Spider’s Web? “Not in my head.”

All that bombing around on a motorbike? “But that’s not a superhero, is it? You just get a motorcycle licence.”

Born in 1984, Foy grew up in Stockport and went to uni in Liverpool. If you could go back and talk to the teenage you, I say, what would you tell her?

“Anything I said to my teenage self she wouldn’t listen, I don’t think. I don’t think I could prepare her for what was to come. She would not believe it.

“And also, I think you’ve got to sing your own kind of music. You’ve got to do it your own way and even though I would have saved myself so much pain and trauma and awful feelings I wouldn’t change any of it, apart from saying, ‘You’ll be all right. I’ll take care of you.’ That’s the only thing I’d say.”

In the past Foy has been open about her issues with anxiety which started when she was young and, if anything, grew as she became public property.

It’s not a subject I raise in our conversation, but maybe you can hear it beat away in the background of her words.

Like when I start asking her if she seeks validation in her work.

“No. No, no,” she says. “When it happens, if anything, it’s terrifying.”

Validation is terrifying? Yes, she says. We’ve been taught to see validation as the reward, she explains. “And then you get there. and you go, ‘Oh dear no. It’s a terribly lonely place and I’m so confused by what these people are saying to me, at me, about me. Because that’s not what I see.’

“I can’t speak for everybody. I mean I’m sure lots of people go, ‘Yeah, they get it. I’m amazing.’

“But, no, for me, if anything, it was a very out-of-body-wanting-to-crawl-into-a-hole-adrenalin-filled period of time where I had to come to terms with what is happening.

“And that meant having a big old talk to myself.”

We’ve come a long way from Picasso comparisons, haven’t we? I must admit, I wasn’t expecting to tap into such a deep well. All I can think to ask is, are things better now?

“Yeah, that’s being an adult. I’m really grateful that I had that experience and I’m so lucky to do what I really enjoy doing for a living.

“But I think there is this very bizarre myth that we tell ourselves in society that people who are seemingly successful are 1) incredibly happy and 2) have basically achieved something that is mind bogglingly extraordinary.

“And that to me seems insane.

“I find it really bizarre because I think that just discounts billions of people’s lives. If that means 0.1 per cent of people are special and great that’s just not the truth. Of all the people I’ve met in my whole life I know that not to be the case. So, I am concerned with how much we put emphasis on that in our culture.

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Claire Foy is not a cat person. She’s familiar but not famous and she is not certain fame is a worthwhile measure of humanity. She can also make you laugh. That’s a marker of her success, I’d say. Not very original, but true, nonetheless.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is out now

Who was Louis Wain?

LOUIS Wain was most definitely a cat person.

The painter, born in 1860, became famous for his paintings of anthropomorphic felines. In his paintings tom cats wear top hats, kittens are spanked in school for their naughtiness. moggies play cricket, ride bicycles, or get stuck into the gardening

“He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world,” the author HG Wells claimed. “English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

From 1880 to the outbreak of the First World War the Louis Wain cat was hugely popular. But he was a poor businessman and struggled to make money from his popularity. Eventually that led him into poverty. His mental health also suffered and in June 1924 he was certified insane and committed to Springfield Hospital in Tooting.

It took a campaign by admirers of his work including the Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald to get him transferred to Bethlem Hospital. He continued to draw until his death in 1939.