Monica Dolan in 'The Lost Children of Tuam' Courtesy of Element Pictures Monica Dolan (Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Pride, Wolf Hall, Black Mirror) is quietly having a banner year. At the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the English character actress is pulling triple duty, appearing in no fewer than three films.
In the real-life The Lost Children of Tuam, produced by Liam Neeson and directed by Frank Berry, Dolan stars as history enthusiast Catherine Corless, who researched the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland, only to uncover that as many as 796 children had been buried in unmarked graves on the property. The movie world-premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in July, where it won the best Irish film award, and will screen in the Centerpiece Program at Toronto, beginning on Sunday, Sept. 13.
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Also at Toronto, you can see Dolan in the world premiere of John Madden’s Onwards and Sideways, starring Laura Linney and Rhys Ifans as two people with a lot in common – a great sense of humor, a love of dance, and, as just diagnosed, Parkinson’s. Dolan plays the sister of Ifans’ character.
And then there is Simon Stone’s Elsinore, which is already attracting awards season buzz after its Venice world premiere before it heads to Toronto. Starring Andrew Scott as British actor Ian Charleson, who throws himself into playing Hamlet while succumbing to AIDS, the film’s ensemble cast features Dolan as the sarcastic receptionist at the National Theatre in London.
If you needed any more proof of Dolan’s versatility, earlier this year, she also featured in the supporting cast of season 2 of BBC comedy series Smoggie Queens. Her role: the ex-wife of the drag queen character Mam, played by Mark Benton.
Dolan studied drama at the Guildhall School in London and then went into television, soon turning heads, including with characters who have darker sides. Among others, she played a real-life stalker in U Be Dead and serial killer Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult opposite Dominic West, a role for which she won the BAFTA TV Award. More recently, she drew praise, nominations and awards for her portrayal of a real-life woman in charge of a local post office branch in ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office. You may also remember her for portraying George Mackay’s bigoted mother in the 2014 film Pride.
On stage, she won the 2019 Laurence Olivier Award for best supporting actress for playing Karen Richards in the West End production of All About Eve.
Rhys Ifans and Monica Dolan in ‘Onwards and Sideways’ Courtesy of BBC/Hilltop Screen Dolan talked to THR about her TIFF films, needing a coach to nail the right Irish regional accent in The Lost Children of Tuam despite having Irish parents, how she chooses roles, and why she likes to explore a wide range of human behavior.
How does it feel to have three films at the Toronto festival? Or is this something you do regularly? (laughs)
No, I’ve never had this before. It is really incredible. Actually, I was very, very excited when I heard I’d got two, and my agent and I were trying to organize all the logistics. And then I just got another little one-line email saying, “By the way, Elsinore is in there as well.” But really luckily, they all fall over the same weekend, so I can be there for all three. I’m really happy about that.
In The Lost Children of Tuam, you are the protagonist, while in the other two films, you’re part of great ensembles. Is the work much different for you when leading a project?
Yes, they’re quite different skills. I’m quite lucky in that I’ve played lots of lead roles in the theater, and when you do that, you’re leading the whole company for quite a long time. It is sort of a marathon rather than a sprint. But when you’re in an ensemble, the important thing to remember, always, is that you’re telling a story. And when you’re in an ensemble, part of your job is to support and just to treat that seriously.
It’s quite uncommon for me to lead a film, but I absolutely love the experience, and I’ve been watching other leading actors closely. So, hopefully, I didn’t make too much of a mess of it.
Well, I didn’t know Catherine Corless before The Lost Children of Tuam, but I was captivated by her as portrayed by you. Did you get to spend much time with her in preparing for the role and what did you look for?
I was really, really lucky with Catherine because she’s a beautiful person. She’s incredibly approachable, and she just thinks in a very unusual way. If I asked off-the-wall questions at whatever time of day or night, it never really fazed her. I might go from asking something very specific about maps and death certificates to saying, “Do you wear your jewelry at night?” Because you’re creating a whole person. She was really wonderful.
I visited their small [agricultural] holding. I met Aidan, Catherine’s husband. I met their dogs. And I met some of her family, and I was there when the cows ran into the garden, so that was fun.
Catherine also made a physical model of the Mother and Baby Home. There were so few photographs, and she wanted to be able to visualize it. And she wanted the survivors to be able to visualize it as well. So she showed me that and talked me through that. That was quite illuminating. Once I started talking to her about the model, everything became a bit more three-dimensional. And I realized that I actually just wanted to know what she cared about and what was important to her.
And they got a wonderful field at the back, and we went for a walk around there, and I think maybe that was my most valuable time with her. Information about herself just flowed more freely, and it was also more two-way because I was talking about myself as well. I think we went on the walk because I asked, “What’s your favorite thing?” and she said, “my garden.” So I got a real sense of what she really cares about. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has more care and value and love for living things.
Monica Dolan in ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office,’ courtesy of ITV PBS/ITV/Masterpiece Theatre / Courtesy Everett Collection That’s fascinating! Are there any things you always ask when portraying a real-life person?
One thing that I’ve developed, which I’ve found really useful, is to ask the person, if it is a real person, and if they don’t mind – I wouldn’t ask everyone – to record just 15 minutes of their life story. What’s really good about that is that you get their voice and you get their background in one. And if it is about 15 minutes, you can listen to it on your way from the unit base to the set. Also, if you’re asking somebody to tell you about themselves, they’re not thinking about their voice as much. If you’re asking them something that they know a lot about, and they can hopefully get involved in, and they’re obviously emotionally involved in because it’s themselves, they [don’t think and worry too much] about their voice.
How else do you get into a character, especially when she is not based on a real-life person?
We also had a really terrific script here. Rebecca Lenkiewicz (She Said, Ida) spent a lot of time with Catherine.
It might sound like quite a radical thing to say, but most of the time when I’m reading a script, I mainly look at the behavior of the people and not really at what they’re saying. One of the characters I played actually was at her most chatty when she was about to do something really awful, but didn’t say very much otherwise.
If I were speaking to younger people at drama school, I think I’d tell them that as a tip – to look at the character’s behavior. Catherine, early on, really found it very hard to believe that once people knew the truth, they wouldn’t act on it. She spends a lot of the film being quite bewildered, and she did spend a lot of her time being quite bewildered about that in real life. She realizes that they’re purposely ignoring her, and that creates an enormous amount of anger and depression.
With anything where you’re pursuing a cause or request, most of the time the person or the character has something that makes them very personally invested. I think that in her darkest moments, that was what kept her going. Catherine did speak to me about her relationship with her mother, and their relationship wasn’t the easiest. After her death, Catherine and her husband researched her mother’s background and discovered that she was illegitimate [and had been raised by foster families].
So, it’s about her personal motivation and also how she’s trying to do the right thing, while it’s becoming really apparent that nobody else is. I think she’s an extraordinary woman in that. I think other people, practically anybody else, could have had all of the information that she had, but wouldn’t have been able to put it together in the way that she did and wouldn’t have been able to even notice what she did notice.
Gillian Anderson and Monica Dolan in ‘All About Eve’
Jan VersweyveldI read that your parents are Irish. Could you tap into their Irish for the role of Catherine?
My mum’s from Enniscorthy in County Wexford, and my dad’s from Swords in Dublin, neither of which accents [is from] the West of Ireland, so I sort of had to start from scratch. I had a really wonderful coach, Paul.
Why did you become an actress in the first place?
I’ve always been quite nosy and sort of gossipy. You must have that as a journalist as well. (laughs)
So, I like doing detective work about people. I don’t always notice it at the time, but I realize it later. I think it’s partly because I was the youngest of four, and I was five years younger than the next one up. So I needed to do quite a bit of showing off to get any attention. Everyone else was very academic and very clever in my family.
With acting, you can behave in the most extreme and appalling and exciting ways, and there aren’t any consequences because it’s all a game. I mean, hopefully there are not any personal consequences, but you’re sometimes dealing with quite extreme things. You’re exploring sides of human nature and putting yourself in someone else’s skin, experiencing that. I think it creates more empathy in oneself. And I’d go as far as to say I’ve definitely learnt from each of the characters I’ve played, and hopefully they sort of stretch you as a person.
You’ve played some really dark and scary characters in dramas, and then I saw you earlier this year in the BBC comedy Smoggie Queens, about the chosen family and lives of a group of LGBTQ+ friends. How do you choose roles, or how did that comedy role come about?
A lot of it depends on what I’m offered. With Smoggie Queens, I saw the first [season] and I absolutely loved it. My friend Mark Benton, who I’ve known for years, was in it playing Mam. So, I texted him and said, “Oh my gosh, I love this series. If there’s ever a part for me, can you let me know?” And so, then, in the next [season], I was playing his ex-wife Paula. That group of people and that production is incredibly well organized and incredibly humane and enormous fun. It was just wonderful being around those people. They are so big-hearted and witty.
At this stage in your career, do you have any preference for film, TV or theater?
The atmosphere and the production on every series and every film will be different. And the dynamic of every production is different, be it theater, film or television. I really enjoy variety.
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