Jemma Redgrave steps up to prevent an alien invasion in The War Between the Land and the Sea

“I’d struggle to run any organisation,” she says and laughs, when I ask if she’s anything like Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, head of scientific research at alien agency UNIT, the role she plays in the new five-part series and has been inhabiting in Doctor Who since 2012, propelling her into the mass recognition that comes with being part of the Whoniverse.

“There's always a connection with any part because you're taking it into yourself and thinking and feeling the way that hopefully they think and feel, so it feels very close to home to me. There are many crossovers for sure. She's very empathetic and hopefully I am quite. I think most actors are, that's one of the prerequisites for the job. She's quite sure of herself. She's quite bossy.”

Is Redgrave bossy?

“Probably. It depends who you ask,” she says and laughs.

Redgrave is starring alongside Russell Tovey (Feud, American Horror Story: NYC, Being Human) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki) in the series written by Doctor Who showrunner and executive producer Russell T Davies with executive producer Pete McTighe (A Discovery of Witches, The Pact, Doctor Who).

A member of the Redgrave acting dynasty that includes father Corin, aunts Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, cousins Natasha and Joely Richardson, the 60-year old has a long successful career on stage and screen, having appeared in Grantchester, Bramwell, Holby City and Silent Witness and more recently on the big screen in revenge thriller The Beekeeper with Jason Statham. She is currently filming the second instalment, The Beekeeper 2, in the role of US President Jessica Danforth, involved with a cell of covert operatives fighting conspiracy and corruption.

With a more adult mood than Doctor Who, The War Between the Land and the Sea sees an ancient species – inspired by The Sea Devils, first seen in Doctor Who in 1972 – surfacing from the oceans, threatening the future of humanity, and Lethbridge’s UNIT must rise to the challenge.

“I love Doctor Who but this is something different,” says Redgrave. “It has a darker tone and slightly more mature themes. It is a cracking, epic adventure and has an incredible arc. It's thrilling.
I loved making it and watching it - I’ve just been sent it - and it's a beautiful piece of work.”

Lethbridge is often the quiet voice of restraint but this time round, with The Doctor away, the immediacy of the crisis forces her into a more central role.

“She’s at the centre of this epic story trying to keep the balance between an ancient, hibernating species which has been awakened because of a terrible incident involving a trawler and is fighting for its own existence, and the human race. Her job is to keep the peace and prevent the drumbeat to war escalating and at the same time quell the darker forces in human nature and the competing, political and economic forces vying for ascendancy.”

It’s a character Redgrave has been honing since 2012 and over the years has added layers of nuance.

“From her first scene she had warmth, directness and a sense of humor and that told me everything I needed to know about her then and over time more clues have dropped. There was an episode where I had a line about being a keen bridge player, a gardener and a mother of two. So gradually one learns more about the character you're playing. Over time we've seen more of her and she's more layered, and in the last series she was pushed to a point where she was tested and showed a new side of herself. She was ferocious.”

“She's capable, brilliant, incredibly hardworking, quite self-effacing. Her father was also head of UNIT which is part military, part science, and she has come up through the science side whereas her father came up through the military. She dropped the first part of her name [Lethbridge-Stewart], so their connection wouldn't be obvious and worked hard to get where she is. I've always imagined that as a woman running an organisation that is 50% military, she's had to be better than a lot of men to get where she is and faced a lot of criticism, so she's tough. Resilient is a better word. She's marvellously resilient and has a sense of humor and I think she's a very good boss. She's a great combination.”

As a childhood fan of Doctor Who, Redgrave loved the series and admits to a fear of Daleks - “I was terrified of them. I think it's something to do with the pitch of the voice, that it creates an internal hysteria” - so was excited when she got the chance to join the Whoniverse.

“I'd been a huge Doctor Who fan from the age of five - which is way too young - so I’d been longing to join the whole Doctor Who world for a very long time,” she says. “When the series came back in 2005 [after a 16-year hiatus] I got really excited and watched it with my boys and we got completely invested.

“I watched all of these marvellous actors doing episodes, many were friends of mine, and I kept thinking, ‘what am I, chopped liver?’
And I waited and waited then in 2012 my agent called and said you'd been offered a part and I was completely thrilled. I got Kate and I've been going back ever since, and it's been an absolute joy of my life. It's fantastic.”

In the following years Redgrave has worked with multiple Doctors. “Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, David Tennant, and Ncuti Gatwa, and John Hurt was the War Doctor in the 50th anniversary one [2013], so you could say six.”

And does she have a favourite?

“I couldn't possibly say - I really loved working with all of them. The thing is, they always get the most extraordinary and brilliant actors to play the part.

“I'd been watching Peter Capaldi for such a long time and was such a huge admirer of his so I was so excited to work with him. I was a massive fan of The Thick Of It. I felt like I couldn't quite shake my awe of him, working with him. And the relationship with every Doctor is different. Some are younger than you and they're all different, but all brilliant. I loved working with Jodie.
I loved her energy. I loved all of them, really. “

“And the Baddies change and evolve too,” she says. “There was Michelle Gomez's Missy - which paid no lip service whatsoever to the fact that it was a children's program, essentially. I thought she was psychotic and terrifying as Missy, and Sacha Dhawan’s Master with the Rasputin iteration was quite extraordinary.”

In The War Between the Land and the Sea, Redgrave was delighted to work again with Russell Tovey, who plays UNIT worker Barclay.

“I loved working with Russell,” she says. “I worked with him years ago on a Miss Marple and we got on really well. He was very young then. I'd seen him in Little Dorrit, the series with Matthew Macfadyen, and thought he was tremendous. I think that was the best Dickens adaptation there is. It is absolutely beautiful. And Russell as John Chivery breaks your heart into a million pieces.

“When I read the script of The War Between, I didn't know who was playing Barclay and when it came back that it was Russell, I thought that's a stroke of genius. From that moment, I couldn't see anybody else doing it. He's so funny and deft and clever and such a brilliant Everyman. It's what he plays. And his character is thrust into this, into the spotlight and onto an international stage unprepared. He works in transport for UNIT and his security clearance is pretty low, but he has this connection that no-one understands and is the character who speaks to Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s character, Salt [one of the amphibian species]. And I can't tell you how marvellous he is, absolutely brilliant. His was a beautiful performance.”

Given she’s always been a fan and has worked on the show for 13 years now, has Redgrave ever been tempted to take anything home from a set?

“I know some Doctors pocket the sonic screwdriver gadget, because each one has a different version. I haven’t taken anything, but for the 60th anniversary episode in the sound studio there was a huge table for the actors and the crew and the executives to sit at and each of us had a TARDIS place name. I've got that. I love it.”

If heading up UNIT is a powerful role, Redgrave has topped it in The Beekeepers films, as President of the United States, Jessica Danforth..

“I am indeed the leader of the free world.
Yes. It's true. Kate is always superseded by The Doctor, but in this I don't have a Doctor. My status can't get higher. Unless I played the Pope, of course.”

So if she were US President, what would she do on day one?

“Oh, I'd start laying down the ground for getting back into COP and the Paris Agreement. I'd start thinking about how you could bring big business on side and really begin to tackle the global emergency that is global warming. That's the new game in town, really, isn't it? That’s number one.


“But the world is mad and there's all the other things too, all the wars that are going on all around the world.”

Making The Beekeepers has been a ‘bonkers’ and ‘fun’ experience for Redgrave, as she explored the role of Danforth.

“It changed and morphed so much on the set. Everything I'd read in the script changed. David Ayer is the most extraordinary director, and scenes and dialogue would change and you just sort of roll with it, and out of it was created something really quite complex and morally ambiguous.

“I think most politicians at the top have probably had to make so many compromises to get where they got to that they've adapted so much.
I wonder if it's hard to hold on to the principles that made you want to become a politician in the first place.

“I read a review about the film that talked about Jason Statham and the scamming theme, saying Jeremy [Irons] is marvellous and beautiful, and the glamorous, sensational Minnie Driver turns up as a CIA director, and then they said ‘oh, there's a great cameo from Jemma Redgrave playing an American politician as equal parts Mary Berry, and Donald Trump’. And I thought, how absolutely brilliant, because if somebody had given me that note I wouldn't have known where to start, but the fact that that's what a reviewer got from it, I thought that's quite interesting. That is morally complex, morally dubious, isn't it? But both parts are in there, and that makes it quite interesting. What a hybrid that is!”

What was the highlight for her, in filming The Beekeeper 2?

“It's a wonderful gift of the job that you film in some really interesting locations and we filmed in The Royal Courts of Justice and the Old Bailey in central London. I've never been to the Old Bailey although I've been to court before, not taking part, just to listen because the father of my boys, my ex, is a barrister and I would go and watch. We filmed on a Sunday and one of the security staff showed me around and into all of the courts and talked about the most famous court cases that had played out there and that was completely fascinating to me.”

With Redgrave’s family pedigree, was there ever any doubt she would follow them into acting, after school studying at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA), and have they given her advice or guidance?

“Nobody ever tried to put me off. I think my dad encouraged me. He bought me the Wars of the Roses plays when I'd been to see them at Stratford at 12 or 13, and I think that's when I sort of staked my claim to the profession I wanted to enter. Stratford blew me away and I said ‘that's what I have to do, I have to be in Shakespeare, I have to be an actress’ and my dad bought me the Arden editions to commemorate the decision, which was a really lovely thing of him to do. I’ve still got them.

“He was very encouraging and always came to the theatre to see whatever I was in. He was really helpful at the beginning and really constructive at the same time as being quite rigorous with me because you need that. It was a good mentorship, what he provided.”

With her sons Gabriel and Alfie now grown up, Redgrave can throw herself into her work, so what keeps her balanced outside of that?

“I have Martha. A very, very gorgeous - I would say that - black labrador, and I walk her every day. Whatever the weather, whatever the temperature, she has to be walked. And I think walking works for me. It's just that thing of getting out. I walk in various different places, but mostly on Hampstead Heath.

“Did you ever see the David Hockney exhibition of his huge tree paintings, in different weathers and different seasons? When you know a landscape really well, there's a sense that walking in the same place every day could be rather boring and dull but it's not because every day it changes. The light’s different and the trees, so every day there's an interest and there's a difference. It's in the detail, the small things that change, which take your imagination and thrill you.”

And what's next for Redgrave? After The Beekeeper, what will she be doing?

“After finishing The Beekeeper it’s Christmas, and that's family coming. Everyone's coming here this year and it shall be lovely - they all muck in - but it's all going to be a bit last minute because I've been working and am busy. So I'm going to have to sort of get my skates on, get organised!”

That shouldn’t be a problem for someone who plays head of UNIT and US president.

“They’ve got minions and I haven’t. The dog's not going to help!”

Cue Martha, who having heard her name again, signals that whatever else is happening in the universe - the destruction of the planet, alien invasions, global scamming and corruption, Christmas - it’s definitely time for her walk.

The first episode of The War Between the Land and the Sea airs on Sunday December 7 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer at 8.30pm, and will be released as a double bill with the second episode.