‘Howards End’ Star Hayley Atwell Opens Up About How Peggy Carter’s Fans Inspired Her

Hayley Atwell knows how to be a heroine. The British actress has made a name for herself in parts where she gets to fight evil, challenge authority, and defy expectations. Her turn in Starz’s new four-part adaptation Howards End is no different. As Margaret Schlegel, Atwell gets to be a woman ahead of her time — an brilliant, open-hearted woman who finds herself torn between her heart and her morals.

Howards End is set in the early 20th century and follows two families — the liberally-minded Schlegels and the much more conservative Wilcoxes — as they struggle to connect with one another. At first glance, the story might seem austere, but this new version, adapted by Oscar winning Manchester by the Sea screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan, emphasizes the modernity of Howards End.

When Decider caught up with Atwell during last summer’s TCA, she explained that Kenneth Lonergan’s interpretation was what pulled her in. “When it came to me and they said Howard End, I went ‘Oh, great,’ and then they went, ‘It’s adapted by Kenny Lonergan,’ and I said, ‘That’s interesting!’” she told us. Even though Lonergan, who is known for his darkly comic portraits of lower middle class America, might seem like an unlikely fit for an E.M. Forster adaptation, Atwell explained that’s why he was actually perfect for the task.

“He wasn’t reverential to the material. There were a couple things the book that just didn’t feel plausible to him. He didn’t quite believe that Helen would go for Bast, for example. And that’s fresh and that’s interesting and it means that he didn’t sentimentalize it, he didn’t romanticize it, he didn’t try and make it a stilted period drama. He threw all of that out and he took a lot of the dialogue directly from the book. He was able to write it in such a way that so much of it is overlap. So it feels very natural. Really hard to learn, to make it sound like you’re just overlapping and you’re finishing each others’ sentences — especially when there’s five of you in a hallway when you’ve got an eight page scene,” she joked. “But it’s really riveting because it’s kind of like birds tweeting. And it’s got a specific rhythm to it, and you can’t ponder it.”

She added, “There’s so much going on that as an actor, you can’t overthink it. You have to go to the material. The material is so much greater than your own talent.”

Atwell also explained that Lonergan’s take on the material freed her and her co-stars from the typical constraints of “British period drama.” “Just because we’re in a corset doesn’t mean that we have to be sitting doing ‘period drama’ acting. [Margaret] was slouched on the back of a chair with a shawl, a cardigan, with a handkerchief stuffed up her jumper. That she strided down the street. That she looks elegant, but she moves within it. There’s a lot of freedom in it,” Atwell said.

Kenneth Lonergan wasn’t the only draw. The miniseries is directed by Hettie MacDonald, a veteran of the London stage and a formidable TV director. Atwell kept stressing how “cool” MacDonald was on set and how her confidence inspired the cast and crew to approach the material in “interesting” ways.

“I feel like she’s the cool girl at school that everyone wants to be friends with. Not because it’s a popularity contest. She’s a very set, intelligent director and you don’t get any baggage with her. She just wants to find the best, most interesting way of telling a story.” Atwell continued, “Matthew [Macfadyen] and I were intimidated by how cool she was — because we respected her. And it also meant that we felt very, very safe.”

Starz’s adaptation of Howards End might be aiming for the fresh and new, but it’s got the specter of the past still hanging over it. Most Americans might best know E.M Forster’s novel through the famous Merchant Ivory adaptation of it. That 1992 version starred Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Anthony Hopkins — and Thompson won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her take on Margaret Schlegel. Inevitably, I had to ask if Atwell felt any trepidation taking the role on.

“I think if the part’s good then they offer each generation a chance to revisit them,” she said. “And Emma’s a friend of mine and I emailed her out and said, out of respect, ‘I’ll watch it again and you’re so extraordinary and I love you and you’re brilliant and I admire you,’ and she emailed me back exactly what I imagined she would respond: ‘God, don’t watch mine! No, no, no! You are she! She is you! If you’re going to do any research, read some psychics book because Margaret Schlegel is so smart that her mind is constantly going. So do lots of brain exercises and that’s going to be far better and useful to you than watching what I’ve done.'”

American fans probably know Atwell best for a certain role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Atwell was cast as Steve Rogers’s love interest, Peggy Carter, in Captain America: The First Avenger, and the character was so popular she got her own spin-off television series on ABC. When I asked Atwell what the fan response meant to her, she very seriously discussed how much a specific online Peggy Carter fan group meant to her.

“There were girls for whom Peggy had been like a symbol of strength in adversity, especially as a woman in a male-dominated environment, and had to overcome bullying and all that kind of stuff,” Atwell said. “Girls who were not really relating to people in their own schoolwere able to go online and through their shared love of Peggy, meet new friends and develop social groups.”

“And there was a girl that I’d met at a convention who was the center of this friendship group. She was English, but there were people from Canada and all over the States, and they got together and they had this amazing friendship group. I then woke up one morning to find out that she was the first named [victim of the] terrorist attack in Manchester, the Ariana Grande concert,” she said.

The fan Atwell is describing is Georgina Callendar. Someone sent Atwell a photo of the two of them together at a convention after the terrorist attack and the actress posted it online in tribute. Atwell explained to me that she was moved to discover how the friends Callendar made all the over the world via the Peggy Carter fan group gathered together at her funeral: “They all got together for her funeral and they sent me photographs of them all together.”

View this post on Instagram

This is Georgina Callander, the first named victim of the terrorist attack in Manchester. I met her in Blackpool. Thinking of her family and friends today and the precious life so tragically lost.

A post shared by Hayley Atwell (@wellhayley) on May 23, 2017 at 2:22am PDT

Atwell said, “I feel I am a custodian of Peggy Carter. You project onto these characters what you want. It’s nothing to do with me. But to just see a group of girls who were able to come together and develop a strong friendship network, and then experience such devastation and such horror, and yet because of their friendship group be able to comfort each other and comfort Georgina’s family, it’s really moving to me. That for me is better than the Peggy Carter social status… [It’s] that tagline of, ‘I know my value, anyone else’s opinion doesn’t matter.’ She can be a symbol of strength to women. Also she likes women, she’s a friend to women.”

When I asked Atwell if there were any other “canonical” parts she would like to tackle, she listed Thérèse Raquin, Hedda Gabler, and one surprising Shakespearean villain.

“I would love to play Iago. I think it makes sense that he could be a woman, for sure. He says at the beginning, ‘And by my troth, I’m just as good as any man,'” she said. “Well, every woman I know has said that: I’m just as good, as capable as any man for this.”

Howards End debuts on Starz this Sunday, April 8. 

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