When she’s up for a TV role, Lesley Manville doesn’t care which platform the show in question is going out on. “My job is just to go there and deliver a character,” she says, “so whether it’s for the BBC, ITV, Netflix, it doesn’t really make any difference to me.”
Not that the star whose credits include “Mum,” “Sherwood” and “The Crown” has been on our screens much recently. Instead, she’s just won a Tony award for “Oedipus” on Broadway after winning an Olivier for the same production in the West End and returned to London this spring for “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” at the National Theatre.
That’s why when Variety talks to her at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, she smiles about being president of the fiction jury: “Because I’ve been on stage with two different plays for the last nine months, I have quite literally watched no television until now. All I watched when I was on Broadway was Stephen Colbert’s chat show late at night and all I watched while I was doing ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ is maybe the news when I got in at midnight.”
Speaking ahead of the awards ceremony on Tuesday evening, the actress isn’t at liberty to discuss the jury’s thoughts on this year’s shortlisted series. “Some of them are deeply impressive, but of course it’s all subjective. But as a jury fortunately we were all very much on the same page.”
