'It's every actor's dream to play a villain.' Katie Leung on Bridgerton
The Scottish actor, who made her name in Harry Potter 20 years ago, talks about the joy of playing a villain and the confidence she now feels about her career and life.
Katie Leung has come into her power as the redoubtable Lady Araminta Gun in Season four of Bridgerton, elegantly stalking the marriage mart of ‘the Ton’ as she seeks to broker the best deal for her daughters. A steely and stylish matriarch she’ll stop at nothing to protect her children. For the Scottish actor who started her career as schoolgirl Cho Chang in the Harry Potter film franchise it’s the right role at the right time as she channels the confidence she’s found from finally feeling that she’s good enough.
After appearing as the boy wizard’s first crush at the age of 16, the Dundee-born actor went on to numerous roles in TV, film and theatre, including Jackie Chan’s action thriller The Foreigner, Scottish crime drama Annika, US sci-fi thriller The Peripheral and more recently more recently voicing Caitlyn Kiramman in the Netflix animated series Arcane. Now 38 she owns the matriarch role in Bridgerton with the second part of season four of the Netflix hit series starting this week.
As Bridgerton fans rejoin the fantasy Regency world of masked balls, debutantes and scandalous liaisons for the final four episodes, Leung tells us from her home in London what we can expect from this season’s Cinderella storyline as Lady Araminta Gun champions her own daughters at the expense of her ward turned maid Sophie Baek.
Araminta is a force to be reckoned with, a steel fist in a silk glove, and Leung has revelled in the role.
“It's every actor's dream to play a villain,” she says. We get to see so many different layers of Araminta. She's not just purely evil, as much as people might think. There's a backstory to her and it was great to be able to explore a side of her that's a bit more vulnerable.”
“Because Araminta has bad intentions there's not really a pressure to make her likable in any way and that was a weight off my shoulders when I was performing. So it's just been a great joy and quite liberating.”
“And as an actor, I think there’s a combination of age and experience and not really being too concerned about what other people think. Because that was something that in my 20s I was very aware of and was trying to maybe people please and that would really get a bit messy in how I was trying to portray somebody.
Taking on the role of Araminta, Leung found herself in the world of Bridgerton with its lavish sets, large cast and extravagant costumes. She’s no stranger to vividly realised worlds and large casts from her Harry Potter days and film and TV sets since, but this time round Leung felt at home.
“Obviously there was Harry Potter over 20 years ago and I've been on big sets in between but I was never playing a role as substantial as Araminta, so it was still quite overwhelming and surreal. But there's an open-mindedness, a kind of gratitude to be in these kinds of spaces which I didn't have before. I was just too nervous or anxious about whether I was going to be good enough. I think this was one of the first times I felt I belonged, on the set of Bridgerton.”
Would Leung put this down to the particular role of Araminta or a consequence of experience from her career to date, as well as becoming a mother three years ago?
“I think a combination,” she says. “Being a mum, I'm kind of sleep deprived, so it's really served me well coming into something like this at my age, at this time, this moment. I feel like it’s just perfect timing.
“She's just so complex and interesting and I was very relieved I didn't have to do any of the dancing or kissing and the more romantic scenes. The reality is that I am 38, and in the Regency era I’m the right age to play her.”
Araminta is a survivor, having buried two husbands, both lords, and has the wealth to operate on her own terms.
“She's honest and she's brutal,” says Leung. “So it's a challenge in that she's very different from me. I'm definitely not someone anyone would ever think could be a villain or make those kinds of kinds of choices. Thank God.
“When you get to a certain stage in your career you want to play characters that are a bit more complex. With Araminta we get to see who she was when she was younger and the betrayal that happened to her, and having that kind of journey as an actor is really quite rare.”
Bridgerton is a precarious world for women, whether you're rich or poor, matriarch or maid, debutant or dowager and their choices are very limited.
“As a woman in that period you do what you're told but she’s independent, out there, and she is very efficient.
“I can definitely find the empathy in why she makes the decisions she does, as wrong as they are. It comes from a place of love and I kind of drew from my own experience as a mother, this need to protect and nurture at the expense of other people and yourself. My little one's three and for the first few years of his life, nobody else existed. It was just me and him and I was in survival mode and I feel like there's an element of that in Araminta where she doesn't care what people think. She just wants her daughters to live a life that is fulfilling and to have financial stability and those things that come with marrying into money.”
“She is a force of nature. I don't think anybody wants to mess with Araminta and there's a certain kind of power in that, that I am not used to as Katie, that is quite - I'm not going to say addictive because it's not something that I want to have - but, you know, it feels lovely sometimes.”
While season four has moved into new territory by highlighting the lives of the ‘below stairs’ cast and continues to promote inclusivity in terms race and gender with colour blind casting and gender swaps, there’s also the frivolous fun of the costumes to enjoy in what is Leung’s first period drama.
“They’re incredible. The minute I've got the wig and costumes on I feel like I’m in Araminta’s shoes. I don't have to do much else in terms of physicality. She’s a classy lady and I certainly feel that when I’ve got the clothes on.
“Once upon a time it would have been a dream to have her wardrobe and shoes, but nowadays I don't go out much,” she laughs. “One of her outfits would take up half of my wardrobe and when would I ever wear that kind of dress? It is very glamorous, and I love fashion and style, but it has to go hand in hand with practicality.”
After the Harry Potter films, while still in her early twenties Leung studied photography at Edinburgh School of Art, prompted by her experience of being on sets.
“I studied film photography so I was in a dark room for three years of my life. It was really enjoyable and definitely stemmed from being on a film set and seeing compositions in movies and being able to travel. I just thought, wow, and started taking photos, but it's not something I've done recently. It’s definitely something I'd like to get back into when my son is older.”
After Edinburgh School of Art Leung was cast in the stage version of Wild Swans at The Young Vic then enrolled at The Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow to study drama.
“The main reason I went to drama school was because I didn't know what to do with my hands when I was on stage. My first play was Wild Swans and I was surrounded by actors who had trained and remember thinking the way they held themselves physically on a stage was just very apparent and different from the way I held myself on stage and that made me go, ‘oh God, I need to go train if I want to become an actor’.
“On stage I decided ‘this is what I want to do’, because it felt really good to be there. But actually, once I went to study drama - and I did learn what to do with my hands - but more importantly it made me realise it was confidence that I lacked. There's something about having trained at drama school that gives you, not ALL the confidence you need, but an amount that makes you feel ‘oh, OK, I'm glad I went now, I feel like I'm ready for more theatre or whatever’. I think confidence is the big thing that changes how you approach acting.”
As a shy child, one of four, growing up in Hamilton, acting was never something she considered. It was her father who saw that Harry Potter was auditioning and suggested she apply.
“I didn't want to be an actor when I grew up. I had in my head that an actor was the opposite of what I was, which was super shy. I could spend weeks without uttering a word. The last thing I'd want to do would be on a stage and belting out a tune. It didn't occur to me at all that I would.
“But it’s funny because you speak to a lot of actors and they're all introverted and shy and a bit kind of socially inept,” she laughs.
Maybe it is the ideal job for them, to pretend to be other people who are confident and outgoing.
“Yeah, I think there's a certain cathartic element to playing characters very different from yourself. But I don't know how healthy that is, because at the beginning of my career it was a sort of way to escape. I wasn’t content, because nobody wants to be shy if they can help it, it's not like a choice.
“I definitely feel I'm a better actor knowing who I am and having confidence. Because when you're confident about who you are, you're more likely to get out of your comfort zone and you're not afraid of what people think of how you play somebody. The less I judge myself and the performances I make, the better they are. And that's definitely a healthier place to be.
“I think it has drastically changed how I approach any project. That's not something you can really learn, I think it comes with experience, rejection and all those things that happen in your life and eventually you get to a point where you go, ‘Well, f*** it. You know?”
Based in London, Leung has just returned from Glasgow where she was filming the thriller Careless, which is due for transmission later in the year.
“I really enjoyed my time up there, bar the weather. It was a world away from Bridgerton, about the foster care system in Scotland and it's really bleak and gritty and probably a bit closer to what I know. I had a good time, working with familiar faces as well as an Aussie crew, and the director Stevie Cruz-Martin is incredible, one of the best I've worked with.”
“I like to kill two birds, so if someone can pay me to go up there and do a job and then I get to see my family at the same time, that's really the dream for me. I say that, but I was up in October to visit my brother for a long weekend and that was really lovely. I do try and go back as much as I can.”
While Leung doesn’t know if Araminta will make a return in future series of Bridgerton she’d “go back in a heartbeat”.
“The people that worked on it, the showrunners, actors, I loved working with all of them behind and in front of the camera. It felt like a family and I felt really safe. I had a great time.”
Right now, with a three-year-old to look after, Leung is happy being at home and open-minded about whatever comes next.
“I don’t know what’s ahead. I'm really happy about being a mum. I spent five days away from my little one when I was filming Careless and that was brutal. I cried for days in the lead up to leaving him. I mean, he didn't care, obviously, but after that I was like, no, I just want to spend some time with him now. I think the less you worry about it, ironically, the more opportunities open up. I think it's really important to just take your time with these things. So, yeah, let's see what happens…”
“I appreciate the time that I'm not working now, and I'm very aware that that's not the case for most actors, so I am in a really privileged position. And I might not ever work again, you really never know with this industry. In my worst moments, I do think that, and that feeling never goes away. But I have a distraction and that's my son so I'm very happy to do that. That's how I kind of see it now. So I really just make the most of my time unemployed. “
When the next role comes is there a particular character or genre she hasn’t played yet that she'd really like to?
“I'm up for playing more baddies, yes, but I would love to be in a kitchen sink drama.”
A change from the big and magical worlds of power struggles and territory and ambition?
“I would love to continue those themes but with a domestic setting perhaps, and play a mum or sister, something people can relate to on a universal level. Because if they see someone like me playing a daughter, sister, mum, that resonates. Just something quite simple. And complicated.”
Pushed to name a favourite role Leung concludes it’s more about how she feels as an actor than the specifics of a character.
“I want to say my latest projects because beyond the part itself, it's having the connections with the people you work with. And not forming this hierarchy in your head of who's more important and who has a bigger role or thinking ‘oh the director’s more important than me and so I should just do what I'm told’.
“You have to remember it's a collaboration, your voice matters, your input is just as important and what you bring to the table is crucial to the story as a whole. Having that perspective going into any project, any conversation, is a really beautiful thing.
“I wish I’d had it sooner, but you live and learn. I feel because I'm content now with where I am internally and mentally, that’s just gonna be how I approach things in the future.”
Katie Leung stars in Bridgerton Season Four part two on Netflix from Thursday, 26 February.
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