Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure in not just one but two nations. The actor, born in Britain and best known for her roles in Harry Potter, her work with Monty Python and her stage appearances, became an Australian citizen in 2013. Her partner of more than 50 years is Australian, and last year she travelled more than 10,000km around Australia over two months for a new ABC documentary called Almost Australian.
Guardian Australia spoke to Margolyes in isolation in her home in London, where she’s inhabiting a very different world from the one depicted in her documentary: the open road.
‘I’m going to turn off my phone’
“One of my neighbours died – on the same road, a few doors down,” she says. “Lambeth is one of the boroughs with the most cases.”
Margolyes might be firmly in the at-risk zone – “I’m self-isolating. I have to. I’m one of the vulnerable ones” – but she’s far from cut off from the world. During the course of our conversation, the doorbell rings twice with deliveries: a bottle of gin from the Spectator magazine (a subscription gift) and a mop head (she ordered that one). “Thank you for doing an essential service!” she yells after the postman.
“I’ve been keeping myself occupied by reading, watching TV, clearing the clutter and friends are phoning me at a great rate,” she says. “The phone keeps ringing. People who’ve never rung me on a landline before keep ringing. It drives me mental.”
And then there’s video chat. (She spoke to Guardian Australia via telephone.)
“I’ve been doing a lot of zooming and skyping. I attended a shiva by Zoom – it was very moving. There were 63 people on the screen and they were able to share their memories of the lovely person who died. But you do feel exhausted by it all after a while. I am a gregarious, social kind of person – I like people and I like contact but I want to choose when I get contact and now I don’t get to choose when I speak to people. I’m going to turn off my phone.”
‘The comments in the Daily Telegraph are terrifying’
The response to the virus by some in the UK has made her feel pessimistic.
“What has astonished me is that [for some people] the economy is more important than people and we should come out of the lockdown and go back to normal,” she says. “And they seem perfectly prepared to sacrifice old people. Old people have been described as not important to the economy and contributing nothing.
“One of the things I need to stop myself from doing is reading the comments below the article. The comments in the Daily Telegraph are terrifying. Social media commenting should stop! We should muzzle the potential of people to express these views, particularly under phoney names.”
‘I am not happy in England’
Margolyes is a citizen of Australia. Her partner, Heather, lives in Amsterdam. When I ask what it’s like living in the UK at the moment, Margolyes doesn’t hold back.
“There’s so much hatred. The country’s in a terrible state and that’s because of Brexit, and then there’s the virus. It’s vile. I am not happy in England. The government is utterly deplorable. The world is in chaos. I’m not an optimistic person at the moment.”
The enforced separation from her partner during the pandemic has crystallised one thing, though. “We want to start living together now. We are very keen to come to Australia. But I don’t know if I would actually fully emigrate because I feel very strongly about the NHS.”
‘I was absolutely shattered when the Liberals got in’
Margolyes first moved to Australia in 1993. She bought a house in Bondi, which she still owns, and has been back and forth ever since. So she has opinions about the state of things there.
“I don’t think Australia has got it right. I am a political person so I see things politically. The great days were the tall guy … Gough Whitlam. I’m with Gough. The Australia that Gough made is the Australia that I love.”
What about today’s Australia?
“I was absolutely shattered when the Liberals got in [in the 2019 federal election],” she says. “I was so sure that Labor would make it this time. It just broke my heart.
“I do fear the country is in danger of becoming a colony of America – look at the rise of the right wing and the cruelty to migrants. When I first came to Australia in the 1980s it wasn’t like that. But Australia is a country that can be made. Unlike England, it’s still got energy – it can go down a different, better path.”
‘I come across as a friendly old lady’
Some people are so naturally outgoing that they will find a way to make new connections, even if you lock them inside. Ninety minutes into our conversation, I’ve invited Margolyes and her partner to stay at my place if ever they are ever in country Victoria, and Margolyes – being polite and English – has offered me the use of her house in the Southern Highlands in return.
In Almost Australian, she uses this natural gregariousness to great effect, speaking to families affected by drought, people in remote Indigenous communities, and asylum seekers. What is it that gives her the ability to genuinely connect with people from all walks of life?
“I don’t come across as a celebrity; I come across as a friendly old lady,” she says. “I am still in touch with some of the people I met for the show. We email.
“Whenever I make things, I don’t have an objectivity towards the people I speak to. I have to engage with them in a personal way. I’m not a journalist, I don’t have those skills, I only have my own personality to use as the bridge between me and the other people. And everything in the show is spontaneous. I don’t know who I am going to meet, or anything about them.”
She told the producers of Almost Australian that she wanted to ensure they went into Indigenous communities.
“But I feel troubled by the relationship between white Australians and First Nations. I want it to be better.”
Australians can be sensitive to criticism, particularly from the English, Margolyes says. “[People] say, ‘Who the fuck is she – she comes in builds a house, enjoys it, then trashes the place?’ But I want [Australia] to be better.”
• Almost Australian airs Tuesday 19 May at 8.30pm on ABC and iView
