Max­ine Peake: ​‘I sent Mike a post­card when I found out he was mak­ing Peterloo’

The great Man­cun­ian actor Max­ine Peake is hav­ing a moment – tread­ing the boards, dom­i­nat­ing the small screen (in new Chan­nel 4 com­e­dy The Bisex­u­al), con­stant­ly engaged in polit­i­cal activism and now as the mater­nal beat­ing heart of Mike Leigh’s his­tor­i­cal epic, Peter­loo. We caught up with her ahead of the film’s release.

LWLies: There’s a sto­ry that you sent Mike Leigh a post­card when you found out he was mak­ing Peterloo.

Peake: There had been a press release about the fact that this was his next project. From what I can gath­er, he want­ed to get it out there as the anniver­sary was com­ing up. Lots of peo­ple got in touch with me: ​‘Have you seen? Have you seen?’ Yes, I have seen it. I’m involved in the Peter­loo memo­r­i­al cam­paign, and have been for about six or sev­en years now. It’s just some­thing I’ve been very inter­est­ed in. Not only Man­cun­ian social his­to­ry, but British social his­to­ry. I’d done tiny pieces with Mike in the past. I felt like I had a lit­tle bit of a rela­tion­ship with him, so I thought I would write to him. What harm can it do?

I sent a lit­tle card say­ing, ​‘It’s fan­tas­tic you’re going to make your next film based around the events of Peter­loo. Every­one in Man­ches­ter involved in the memo­r­i­al cam­paign is excit­ed about it. I’d love to be in it, but I under­stand if there’s noth­ing for me. Thanks for hav­ing the brav­ery and the fore­sight to make some­thing like this.’ And then he wrote back and said, ​‘Course you can be in it. Give you a ring when I know more about what I’m doing.’ I wait­ed about three or four months, and then I got the offi­cial call.

Did he explain his vision of the film when you first met?

He didn’t real­ly. He talked to some of the actors and they would then say, ​‘Ah, I think the film is about my char­ac­ter!’ Some peo­ple can get a lit­tle car­ried away, but that’s because you do spend time focused sole­ly on your char­ac­ter and your character’s fam­i­ly. He said that I would be look­ing through the eyes of a mid­dle-aged woman and her fam­i­ly, and that the film would explore the build-up to Peterloo.

I knew it was going to be a huge project, and it was going to be a mas­sive cast. There’s always a gam­ble you take with a Mike Leigh movie in that you can end up doing a lot of work and then not mak­ing it into the final cut. He gets so much mate­r­i­al, and as he works he realis­es that he needs to mould the sto­ry and that means cer­tain char­ac­ters can get lost along the way. What with it being Mike Leigh and Peter­loo, that was a gam­ble I was very hap­py to take, even if I am in it for a cou­ple of minutes.

While you were mak­ing the film, did you talk about the ways Peter­loo speaks to a mod­ern audience?

Yeah, def­i­nite­ly. Lot’s of spon­ta­neous polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion that came out of it. You can’t help but draw par­al­lels. And then you see the fin­ished film and you’re just shocked – it’s the same old jour­ney of fight­ing the estab­lish­ment. It’s a con­tin­u­a­tion of cap­i­tal­ism. I hate to say it, but it’s same shit, dif­fer­ent day.

Was there any­one, polit­i­cal­ly, who was on the oth­er side of the fence when you were mak­ing the film?

Not real­ly. It was one of those films where peo­ple were bang­ing on the door to get in. Mike Leigh was mak­ing a film up north, he doesn’t make many up here, so the entire north­ern act­ing fra­ter­ni­ty were think­ing they could get into a Mike Leigh film. Because it was Peter­loo, and even if peo­ple didn’t know about it, they want­ed to know about. What I saw were actors get­ting real­ly involved in it. I’ve since seen a cou­ple at polit­i­cal rallies.

I’d love to ask you about Fan­ny Lye Deliver’d – a new film that you’re in by the British direc­tor Thomas Clay.

I fin­ished work on that three years ago. I don’t know what’s hap­pened to it. I hope it’s still going to be released. I would pre­sume so. There was one point they were talk­ing about doing reshoots on it. And then I’ve heard noth­ing from either pro­duc­er or direc­tor. It would be very sad, as it was a beau­ti­ful script. I think Thomas is a per­fec­tion­ist. Maybe it’s just tak­ing a long time. He’s very spe­cif­ic about what he wants. That’s why it will get released at some point. I end­ed up doing an 11-week-shoot, and it went over by three weeks, so it’s had a lot of time and invest­ment. This script came along, and it’s on the Eng­lish Civ­il War and it feels very dif­fer­ent to his oth­er ven­tures. We shall see…

Peter­loo is released 2 Novem­ber. Read the LWLies review.