Monica Dolan says women writers aren't "nurtured" in same way way as men – and we "need more"
The Mr Bates vs The Post Office star spoke to Radio Times magazine about her BAFTA nomination, work and lack of female writers in TV.
What isn’t clear from watching either of Monica Dolan’s brilliant BAFTA-nominated performances is how excellent she is at being Monica Dolan. Because she so immerses herself in the part, whether that part is a real person such as subpostmistress Jo Hamilton in Mr Bates vs The Post Office, for which she’s landed a Leading Actress nod, or a fictional one such as the venomous Ann Branson in Sherwood, for which she’s been nominated as Supporting Actress, you lose sight of Dolan completely.
When I first interviewed her in 2018, I had no idea who to expect: a no-nonsense character like W1A’s press officer Tracey Pritchard, or someone a little more menacing akin to Rose West, who she played electrifyingly in Appropriate Adult – for which Dolan won the Supporting Actress BAFTA in 2012. “That was quite a while ago now,” she muses on her win. “I think I’m due another one.”
As, saying this, she can’t quite manage to keep a straight face, the real Dolan emerges. Witty, warm and mischievous, she takes her work seriously. Herself, not so much. As demonstrated by the way she sweeps into the interview in an amazing gown – chomping on a cheeseburger. And when I compliment her on her décolletage in said gown, she replies giddily. “Who knew!?”
She may be dressed to the nines, but Dolan’s feet are firmly on the ground. “When I’ve got this many people around me, looking at me, making notes, filming me, photographing me, it does make you feel successful for a day, but then you go home. You probably wouldn’t be in a very good place mentally if you needed all this to be going on all the time to feel successful. One of the most unhealthy things you can suffer from is ‘How am I doing?’ syndrome. Unfortunately, the time we’re in lends itself to constantly comparing and asking: ‘How do I appear?’ and ‘How’s it all going?’ I think the antidote to that is to do something. To do some work.”
Dolan is definitely doing the work. She says she was “massively surprised and utterly thrilled” to be nominated in two categories, but it’s not all sunshine and lollipops. “I don’t know what kind of night I’ll have, because I’ll be nervous to the end [when Leading Actress is presented] and I do like taking my shoes off at these things, but that’s not going to be an option.”
Of winning a BAFTA, she says, “It’s a bit of fairy dust, in that you get seen for more things and get more opportunities. Before I got a BAFTA, people would thank me on the way out of an interview [for a part]. Once I had my BAFTA, they’d thank me on the way in.”
Dolan is not one of those actors who claims that “it’s all in the script”. As befits someone who hails from a family of engineers and scientists, she’s methodical in her research and forensic in her attention to detail. “One of the reasons I like playing real people is that I’m quite lazy and a lot of the work is done for you with real people in terms of archive footage of them, or maybe their letters have survived.”
But the 56-year-old actor, who was last nominated for a BAFTA in 2019 for playing Marion Thorpe in A Very English Scandal, warns against elevating true stories and dramas based on real life above fictional ones. “We probably extol the virtues of something being true too much. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s interesting. One of my favourites is Charlie Brooker and while his stories are coming true, they are ‘what ifs’. Crucially, you don’t know how the story ends.”
Who writes the stories also occupies Dolan. In her ideal world, she says, scripts would be judged entirely on their own merit. But we don’t live in an ideal world: of the 12 shows that are nominated for Drama Series, Limited Drama and Scripted Comedy, only three were created and written by women. “We definitely need more women writers,” says Dolan, describing diversity as “a massive resource because we need lots of different voices in the room.”
But it’s not an issue confined to TV. “Certainly in theatre, I feel as if sometimes, if there’s been a slot and the writer or creator has been a woman, they think, ‘We’ve done that, so we don’t need another for a while’ – because we do live in a bit of a tick-boxy culture. I’ve seen some incredible plays by women, then wait for the next one, and I just don’t think they get nurtured in the same way as male playwrights do. And, even though women are 51 per cent of the population, for some reason I think the male voice is seen as the objective voice.”
Speaking of writing, has she prepared acceptance speeches and practised them in the mirror? “It’s disingenuous not to think of something to say and who you’d like to thank, but I try not to practise things in the mirror. It gives you a third eye and I was told at drama school, ‘self-consciousness is the enemy of involvement’!”
Before Dolan departs, I ask if she agrees with fellow nominee Sophie Willan that “winning a BAFTA is like getting a penis”. Dolan wrinkles her nose. “I think I’d rather have a BAFTA.”
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