Since she burst onto our screens ten years ago as Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary, all cut-glass vowels and nerves of steel, Michelle Dockery’s kept us in a permanent state of emotional whiplash with the sheer variety of roles she’s taken on.
She was a drug-addicted con artist in the 2016 TV series Good Behavior, a gun-totin’ cowgirl in the acclaimed 2017 sinopsis drama Korea Godless, and a Cockney gangster’s moll in Guy Ritchie’s crime caper The Gentlemen.
One thing you will not see, she insists, is Michelle Dockery playing a piece of arm candy.
‘I like to play strong women,’ she says when we meet for coffee pre-lockdown in New England, where she’s been shooting her new TV mini-series Defending Jacob.
Michelle Dockery, 38, from Essex, is best know as Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary and said at 38, she’s finding herself feeling sexier than ever
‘And even if they’re not strong, they have to be interesting. Multi-faceted, complex, complicated, three-dimensional… and flawed too, because people are. Anything but boring!’
That doesn’t mean they can’t be sexy though, and she says the added bonus to playing these characters is that, at 38, she’s finding herself feeling sexier than ever.
‘Sexy is not about having anyone else make you feel sexy, it’s about how you feel inside, and I have certainly felt sexier as I’ve got older.
But I think that’s a confidence thing too. I’ve been lucky enough to play such strong, confident women, and when you do that you definitely take something from them with you into your real life – you sort of get inspiration from them.’
Her latest character in the thriller Defending Jacob is a straightforwardly good woman - although one thrust into bewildering circumstances.
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Laurie Barber is happily married to handsome local Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber (Captain America film star Chris Evans), and mother to her wise-cracking 14-year-old son Jacob (Jaeden Martell).
She’s the sort of woman who goes for a run before breakfast, then quizzes her son on vocabulary over coffee before heading to her high-profile job managing a home for abused children.
She’s just so together… until her son is accused of one of the most hideous crimes imaginable – the cold-blooded murder of a classmate – and her entire life and social circle begin to unravel as the police investigate.
‘It’s a really gripping story, because it’s so difficult for this couple to comprehend that their child might commit any sort of crime, let alone a murder,’ says Michelle of the story, based on the 2012 novel by William Landay.
Michelle in Defending Jacob, with co-stars Jaeden Martell and Chris Evans. Her latest character in the thriller Defending Jacob is a straightforwardly good woman – although one thrust into bewildering circumstances
‘They’re both defending their son, and like any parent would, Laurie’s asking at the same time, “Where did I go wrong?”
‘There’s conflict between Laurie and Andy because at the start of the story she’s the emotional one and he’s the calm one, but then as the story goes on there’s a need for Andy to be emotional too.
‘So they’re always seeing things from a slightly different perspective.
‘It’s a very human, raw story about what something like this can do to a family, and what’s so interesting about Laurie is that as her life is turned completely upside down, she also begins to question things about her family – “How well do you really know your partner? How well do you really know your child?”‘
Michelle’s own family background is modest but as stable as anyone could wish for. The youngest of three girls born to Irish-born lorry driver turned surveyor Michael Dockery and his redoubtable wife Lorraine, a former shorthand typist turned social worker, she was brought up in Romford, Essex, working class and proud of it.
