Charlotte Hope On Laughter As Medicine, How Everything is Connected and the Final Season of 'The Spanish Princess'
Charlotte was photographed virtually in London by Alison Engstrom.
Hi Charlotte, it’s great to see you again! I loved your sense of humor during our portrait session. Would you say humor has helped you through this period?
My therapist and I laugh a lot, the moment I get into therapy she is like okay, lay it all down, what are the scenarios and then in five minutes we are laughing about it. She says, that’s a bonus. I actually think it’s a very English sensibility to laugh in the face of total devastation. This is really dark but I remember when my grandma died—I must have been nine or ten—and my dad was driving us home from visiting her in the hospital one last time. We were all just laughing. He said, it’s really important even when things are really dark to laugh at it otherwise it’s too bleak. I was listening to a podcast this morning and it said: it’s important for the human capacity to feel trauma or darkness and like ten minutes later to have washed it through our system and feel light again. We have an incredible ability to survive even when things are really rough. I am a really emotional person, which I am really grateful for, because I just feel everything. Even when I am crying, I know that in ten minutes time I am going to feel okay again.
I think it’s so beneficial to actually feel your emotions, otherwise you just hold onto things.
I think we distract, distract, distract instead of sit in it and really think about it all.
When I was doing my research I saw that you are also a fellow Libra! Would you say you inhabit typical libra qualities?
Totally, the thing that I have found the most difficult about this time is the fact that I love structure and I am a real doer. The thing that I found hardest about in the acting industry in general is that you aren’t going to be busy all of the time. You have to be able to sit with uncertainty. I am a total type A personality—uncertainty really unsettles me. The first chunk of my career, I spent so much of my time mentoring and working on other peoples auditions, so I was constantly feeling proactive even when I was not working. This has been the first time where I am desperately trying to create as much structure for myself as I can, but there are a lot of hours in a day (laughs). I’ve created a routine where I go and personally train my friend at 8:30 in the morning. I decided that since I am probably not going to be working for a while, I was going to pretend like I have an action movie in 2021 that I am training for, so I am just getting incredibly strong. Exercise is the thing that has been the best thing for my head most of my life but especially during this time. In a really selfish way, when I am helping other people, it gives me purpose. I know the exercise will really help them but it also means that I have to show up for someone else and it makes me like I have a purpose.
So is that how you are staying creative and engaged as an artist?
Yes and I am also reading a lot of acting books and acting out scenes. It is more than anything else a muscle and I was really aware of this from the first season of The Spanish Princess. I did two jobs in the middle and then I did the second season of the show and I was aware of how much better I had gotten as an actress from just getting to do it all of the time. I got warm and I learned what worked and what didn’t work, so by the new season, I could look back at some of my self-tapes from a year ago and feel like I am a better actress now just because I have practiced a lot. I am trying not to loose that muscle memory by practicing in my living room or looking at anyone else’s auditions who I could help—I just want to be doing it as much as I can.
Would you say there was a certain moment that you realized you wanted to perform?
My love of acting is just the basic thrill of doing a scene with someone that has always been the thing that I love. I remember being like five or six and doing an acting exercise in our school—it was like a drug to me, it was the best thing ever (laughs). It was such a thrill but I guess I thought that everyone felt like that. I thought it was like cake and everyone thinks it’s delicious because that’s just what it is. I realized that later on, most people don’t like acting out scenes and pretending to be other people (laughs). I come from the middle of nowhere, the Dorset, New Forest area of England. No one I grew up with were actors; I had no frame of reference. I didn't know what acting looked like as a profession and I didn’t know what drama school was. When I was 17, if you would have said to me, why don’t you apply to drama school, I would have been like, what’s drama school? I am a real nerd so I decided at 13, I wanted to go to Oxford. I am very determined, so I worked really hard and went to Oxford. It wasn’t really until I went there that I started to do plays at university. I did this street casting thing for a French movie and then suddenly I realized, oh maybe this is a job. I then wrote to a ton of agents and got them to watch a play I was in at Oxford, then I got an agent while I was in university. I didn’t start acting though until I was 21. I was pretty late to the game but I wish I had started earlier.
What would you say was your first big role that cemented your career in a way?
It’s tricky because the first five years were like slog, slog, slog, but probably The Game of Thrones. It’s interesting because when I was doing it, I didn’t feel any massive change in my career. I have never felt like I have had a break, but I am also aware that each job has led to the next one. Even things like, I did a movie in New York and because I was there, I got to audition for a play since the director was there. I wouldn’t have gotten to do that play if I hadn’t done that movie. If I didn’t do that play, I wouldn’t have done another play with Ed Harris with and an amazing director, Scott Elliot. Then I got to work with them again. Everything is connected.
It’s so true; I like to look at things as levels, each time you do something else, it gets layered onto what you already did.
There are some people who get incredible breaks. I did the first season of The Spanish Princess and then the Netflix job, The English Game was with the same director. I quite like it that way because it means I like working with people that I know. Birgitte (Stærmose), I think she is the most phenomenal director. Getting to do two jobs back to back with the same director, you have such a shorthand. She can be really honest with me—she’s Danish—she’d just tell me when it wasn’t good and it was liberating. No one is pandering my ego or my insecurities. We just know how each other works and how to get the best output.
Would you say you like working with female directors better?
I really like it; I’m a real girls girl. All of my friends are girls and I really feel like girls support each other. I remember even from my time at Oxford, the way that they teach you is, you know how there is carrot or stick? They are set up on stick. They just tell you aren’t good enough and then you’ll work harder to be better. I am a real carrot person. I know that when I do work with women, I feel really supported and that is a really great space for me to be in. I was also aware on the first season of The Spanish Princess there were a lot of women who had been working really hard for a long time and we were finally given the opportunity to run with it. We were all in that position. You got the feeling that we were all waiting for this for a long time and now that we got the opportunity, we were really hungry for it. It was also like we were all in the trenches together. We were given opportunities where maybe ten years ago we wouldn’t have been given and that has bound us together.
The Spanish Princess is incredible from the costumes to the locations; congratulations on a second part of this miniseries. How did the role initially come to you?
Very, very difficultly (laughs). This is what I mean about slog (laughs). I was doing a play in New York and so I couldn’t go in and audition in person, so I was making self-tape after self-tape—some of them even in Spanish. My agent called me and said, it’s not going to go your way, I’m really sorry. I was devastated but also weirdly sanguine, because I was doing the play, I had a distraction, I was like, okay, I still have purpose (laughs). Then I got back to London and I got a call from my agent who was like, okay, actually they are going to offer it to you after all. It was such a nice thing because so often when you audition and you are waiting to hear back more and more hope fades each day. It was lovely because I had really let it go and then it came back.
That’s incredible, congratulations, I love a good story like that.
It is so now every time my agent says I haven’t gotten the job I am like, we’ll see?
The scenery is incredible, where did you film it?
In Bristol and some parts were in Spain. Bristol is such a magical city, I am basically desperate to move there. The first season was this big heady adventure; we filmed it in the summer and I just got to go down the rabbit hole and completely submerge myself into this job, into this world and with people who became my best friends. It’s funny because I had been acting for seven years and watching other people have that experience and not myself, then I was finally like, this is my time. I still think back to that summer, it was one of the most magical times of my life.
Can you walk me through some of the prep work you had to do before stepping into the role of Catherine of Aragon, who is such a historical character?
The first season, I read a lot of history books. But this season, it was really important for me to have Catherine’s story feel more modern. When I think about it, she is ultimately a woman who looses so many children in miscarriages, stillbirths or babies dying; she goes through divorce and heartbreak, which to me feels like a really modern story. I think to be able to tell a story about someone who has gone through that much infertility and the weight and toll that takes on in a relationship is something that I know from a lot of friends. They have been through IVF and how emotionally and financially draining it can be. It’s such an overwhelming amount of pressure on a relationship. I read a lot of memoir, I read an amazing book called Notes to Self by Emily Pine where she talks about wanting to have a baby and not being able to. I was even speaking to Georgie (Henley), my co-star last night, and she said, I have never seen that amount of time on screen dedicated to what an ordeal this is for both my character Catherine and Henry. But it is and so many women are going through it now. It felt important to me that we were speaking as much to that audience who wants an escapist romp.
It’s such a real topic and something that so many women can relate with.
When I think about it, I am a 28-year-old woman, I want to get married and have a happy relationship, I want to be able to have kids but I don’t know if I am going to be able to because I have PCOS, so it’s always been a back in my mind question that it might be hard for me to get pregnant. I also want to have a career and I want to be able to balance all of those.
And you are a Libra, so that makes it even trickier, the concept of balance.
Exactly so those are the things that I have constant anxiety and those are the same exact anxieties that Catherine was going through. It’s the same shit, but the stakes are higher but the period is different. She’s a woman who is trying to do it all and she can’t do it all.
It’s such a modern day dilemma, too, it’s like which do you sacrifice, work or family? I don’t want to choose!
Pass the struggle of getting pregnant, what if I get pregnant and how does that effect my career. What do I prioritize?
This is something I talk to with a lot of women my age, because we are all asking the same questions. My sister always says, just do it, you’ll figure it out.
Agree, you just have to do it. I spend so much time worrying about it but you just have to wakeup at the end of the day and just do it.
Can we expect a part III of the series?
No, sadly it was only ever going to be two. It really does break my heart because I could have done that job for the next seven years and be so happy. I did everything with her that I wanted to; I went with her on that journey. It’s really hard to say goodbye to a character who means so much to me. I think more than anything getting to play such a strong woman, who goes through so much and never stops fighting. I’m a very small person, in real life I look like a little imp (laughs). Boyfriends have always teased me, they were like in real life you look like this tiny little gremlin and then on screen you are this powerful queen, it doesn’t make any sense (laughs). I mean it’s in a nice way—you probably can’t tell over Zoom!
You have me in tears, that’s so hilarious!
I started doing therapy on Zoom and then I met my therapist in real life and she was like, wow, you are smaller than I imagined (laughs). So when you are a tiny imp and you get to play this force of nature character is just so empowering. I just never thought I would get to play that type of part, I thought I would just be playing quiet crying women (laughs).
After filming something so intense, how did you recharge at the end of the day or at the end of the project?
No unfortunately, no, I am not someone who can just click in and click out. If I am being really honest about it, I know what darkness feels like, so it’s really important to me that it’s truthfully told on screen. There was no version that I ever wanted to be fake in any of the dark places that she existed, which also meant that it did get under my skin, I got really porous. We shot long days, so if you lived in that place for as long as I did, it’s really hard to not effect your body in some way. I was grateful for the first few months of lockdown, it gave me a chance to get her out of my system. I’m such a workaholic that if I had my choice, I would have gone straight into the next job. It was important for me to sit still and work through it.
It’s also so important to celebrate your major win and success of the show. Are there any roles or material that you would like to explore for the future?
I would love to do comedy, I think I am quite funny (laughs). Most people tell me I am not funny at all unless inadvertently. I would like to do something that was lighter and more fun and it would be a challenge for me. My boyfriend said that my speciality is trauma. (laughs). My mother would love it if I could go on and be light. The truth is I really like playing women who are on the edge or unhinged. I find it a really interesting place to act from and very satisfying.