We asked Michelle Fairley to wear “anything but black” for our photoshoot, so she turned up wearing black. She doesn’t like being photographed: she wore a beanie pulled down so far over her face that it might as well have been a paper bag. Our photographer says she is the most camera-shy subject he has come across. These are some accolades for a woman who, thanks to Game of Thrones, now gets recognised all round the world.
“I love my job, but there’s a side to it I’m not good at and don’t like,” she says. “I’m an actor. I like the doing, not the promoting and the glitz.”
What’s on offer today could hardly be described as glitz: we meet in the costume store of a rehearsal studio over a pot of Pret soup. Fairley is working with the director Nicholas Hytner, honing her role as Cassius in a new production of Julius Caesar. She is a strange mix of strident and scared, with a soft, smiling face, but fierce, angry eyes. I ask what this Julius Caesar is about and she’s instantly animated.
“It’s Trump. You have to have a Caesar worth killing. Not just because you’re power-hungry — he’s got to be doing and representing something you don’t agree with.”
Yet when it comes to talking about herself — and being photographed — her instinct is to withdraw. She doesn’t like seeing her own face and hates the show side of her business: “It’s about having respect for yourself. I know it sounds really w***y, but you have to ask, can I live with myself?”
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It is possible to be a shy actor, one who emerges only when playing a role, but it’s harder when you’re famous. And portraying Catelyn Stark in Game of Thrones made Fairley very, very famous. She is much missed; rumours still whirl around that her character might return as some sort of spectral presence, much as she did in George RR Martin’s books. Fairley gives them short shrift. “I signed up to a fixed contract, and it ended.”
Does she still watch Thrones? Did she ever? She pulls a face and looks to the floor. I should have known the answer. “I don’t really watch anything I’m in, or only if I have to.”
This Julius Caesar sees Fairley team up with Ben Whishaw as Brutus, with David Morrissey as Mark Antony. It’s an unusual production, not least because Cassius is a woman. “She’s the one who’s able to go, ‘This man is not right for this society — he’s a philanderer, people are suffering because of him.’ Cassius is not prepared to take this any more. I guess I don’t need to point out the parallels.”
In addition, it is being staged not only in the round, but with 400 of the audience on stage in promenade, like a cross between Punchdrunk and the Globe. Quite how this will all play out on the night remains to be seen. The audience, Fairley explains, will be as close to her as I am now. “There are sections where Nick [Hytner] is really hoping they are going to participate. There’s a leaflet drop, there are lots of flags. At times, it should be like being at a rally.”
That sounds insane. Won’t it just be legions of Thrones fans jostling for a shot of Cat Stark? “We’re pretty high up, so they might get a foot in the face,” she says with a gravelly laugh. “We just don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s exciting. But terrifying.”
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Terror is something Fairley refers to often in discussing her work, and she doesn’t mean stage fright. “Terrified to me is not getting the character. It’s not understanding. Cassius is a broken mirror, and I’m trying to put that mirror back together in the right way, from my interpretation.”
You’d have thought the terror might have abated after a near 30-year career that has taken in Oleanna at the Royal Court, Othello at the Donmar, Dancing at Lughnasa at the Old Vic in 2009 and a return to the Royal Court last year in Jim Cartwright’s Road. “Not for me. It’s the same every time — experience doesn’t necessarily mean confidence. For me, it’s the fear of failure.”
In person Fairley does seem, if not terrified, then restless. She is most interested in talking about her Cassius, least interested in going back over her time on Thrones. That doesn’t stop people all over the world wishing her time hadn’t been up. “There’s always somebody, but most of the time, if you give them a reason to gawp, they will gawp. So you just put your head down and on you go. And I don’t go out looking for it.”
This is some understatement: Fairley could slink into a confession booth unnoticed. She admits she is quite “remote” — until, that is, she gets to work. “You come into a rehearsal room and it’s about connecting with your director and the other actors, and enjoying that connection. But to piece it together, you do have to have a lot of quiet time to think about it and to walk around, talking to yourself. For me, it’s about a lot of solitary thinking.”
She comes from a large family in Co Londonderry, where her father was — still is — a publican and her mother a nurse. “Nobody in my family is involved in the arts,” she says, half proud. She went to a convent school where drama was neither spoken of nor taught. But her dad bought a Betamax and she watched film after film — at least while they still came out on Betamax. In particular, she recalls watching The Deer Hunter, analysing what Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep were doing and wondering if she could do it too. So, as a teenager, she joined the Ulster Youth Theatre.
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It’s striking that, unlike many Thrones alumni, Fairley has returned to the theatre. She says she was offered big US scripts after Thrones, but turned them down. “I think you’ve got to be honest with yourself about what you want out of your career. Do you want an easy life, or do you want to keep pushing and forcing yourself?”
No prizes for guessing which option she chose.
Julius Caesar, Bridge Theatre, London SE1