Jessica Brown Findlay says, “The problem with theater is that it can sometimes feel like an exclusive club where you need a Ph.D. to be a member.” By way of explanation, the actress, who rose to fame as forward-thinking socialite Lady Sybil Crawley in Downton Abbey, was rehearsing for director Thomas Ostermeyer’s fourth-wall-breaking film An Enemy of the People. He told me about his recent gaffe. She plays a doctor’s wife.
“There’s a little bit of audience participation on this show, and it’s a pretty radical reworking, but that’s where I started talking about the fifth wall,” she says unabashedly. “Everyone looked at me and someone said, ‘Well, what is it…the ceiling?!'”
But even if her lack of drama school education has made her theater terminology a little shaky, there’s no sign that it’s hindering her career. In October 2012, more than 11 million people watched as Lady Sybil died from complications related to her childbirth midway through the third series of Downton. Brown Findlay, now 34, has worked almost nonstop ever since, including three plays with visionary director Robert Icke; She also starred in 2017’s Hamlet, where she received rave reviews for her portrayal of the deranged Ophelia opposite Andrew Scott’s introspective Prince of Denmark. .
But the actress, who gained a whole new fan base with Paramount’s 2022 romantic comedy Flatshare, still considers herself an outsider. “For years as an actor, she felt like, ‘Oh, I’m not allowed to do theater,'” she says. “I was always told, ‘That’s not for you…you need more experience before that.’ If I’ve ever felt that way, I’m sure the average person watching theater Imagine how you would feel about going to.”
She says there is no reason for audiences to fear her new film, “Enemy of the People.” This is Ibsen’s whistleblower drama about a doctor who exposes a water pollution scandal at a local spa and is accused of ruining the town’s reputation. First off, the lead role will be played by Doctor Who and The Crown star Matt Smith. In the other, Ostermeyer’s production, devised for the Schaubühne Berlin and already a hit across Europe, with its glam-rock soundtrack and the important New Town Hall scene in which the doctors are persecuted, It brings the play firmly into the 21st century. Telling the truth unleashes a fierce attack on the evils of modern society, and the audience is asked to join in.