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FEATURE
EMILY MORTIMER
– best known for her role in
The Newsroom
– relished the chance to write
and star with her real life best friend, comedienne Dolly Wells, in the TV series
DOLLY & EM
,
a semi-improvised comedy that explores what happens when an English actress hires
her childhood friend to be her personal assistant.
Dolly & Em
Season 5
is out Dec 4
DVD&BD
22
DECEMBER 2014
JB Hi-Fi
www.jbhifi.co.nzBest of Friends
Doll and I have been collaborating
and working together off
camera for many years
Have you learned anything that you
didn’t previously know about Dolly
during this process?
There are things that I already knew
that I’m not sure she knew about
herself. I knew how brilliant she is and
how hilarious, clever and original she
is. I don’t know anyone whose mind
works like hers. When I’m with Dolly,
I laugh harder than I ever do, she’s
really funny. She never thought of
herself as an artist, but she’s become
a great comedy actress. In the time
I’ve been writing with her, I think she’s
learning that she is an artist as well.
She doesn’t totally believe it yet, but I
can feel her starting to understand.
Is there anything you want viewers to take
away from watching the series?
We’re being honest about friendships
and how difficult it can be to
understand life. Doll and I didn’t want
to dictate who the audience’s sympathy
should lie with, so neither of us are
bad people, we just put ourselves
in an awful situation where we can
both behave rather badly.You should,
hopefully, be able to sympathise with
both and be irritated by both at times
as well.That’s a very important thing
about friendships, and life.
There aren’t good people and
bad people, we’re all good
and bad and messy.
You’re playing alternate versions of
yourselves in the series. Have you
approached these roles like any other
or has it been different?
It has been different in that I’ve done
much less work than I would normally do
in preparation for a role.The genesis of the
story was in my trailer on the set of
The
Newsroom,
where we filmed a pilot on the
fly, guerrilla style. I was working in LA and
we were very kindly given permission to
shoot on set for half a day and we shot in the
house I was really staying in.When we were
filming in my trailer, I was throwing water on
Dolly’s face for a crying scene before having
to go out and film
The Newsroom
and we
were pissing ourselves laughing. It was just
fun. It was just me being me and acting on
my wits, and it was weirdly easy because I
know what I’m like and what Dolly’s like and
I know how we talk to each other.We did put
time into thinking about the story and how
the scenes would work, but flying by the seat
of my pants is how I’ve gone about preparing
for this.
visit
www.stack.net.nzHave you enjoyed your
Dolly
& Em
experience?
EMILY MORTIMER:
So far, it
has been, touch wood, amazing.
It has been a total antidote to all
the stresses and strains of normal
life.What has been so great is that
it’s been an escape and yet we’ve
managed to bring our families with us.
We’ve been able to take our whole lives with
us and make them a part of it. Our husbands
and children are here, then we have family
and friends on the crew. It’s so cool to be on
this adventure together. It has been magical.
What has it been like to work with
your best friend?
Doll and I have been collaborating and
working together off camera for many years,
trying to write something with it never
coming together. So we’d gone through the
whole learning curve of what it is to work
with your best friend before we arrived here.
Between us, we’ve had four children in the
time it’s taken us to write this: For a long time,
I think our husbands thought it was just an
excuse to run up extortionate phone bills
across the Atlantic and get on planes to visit
each other as often as possible! But I think we
were learning what we were interested in and
how to work and write together.We had this
idea very recently, and it’s amazing how when
you suddenly get a good idea you realise how
rubbish all your others were.This was so
easy by comparison.