For her first scene of the day in the upcoming The Essex Serpent, Greta Bellamacina found herself having to cut open somebody’s body. “I played a sort of medical student,” recounts the actress, poet and model, of the Victorian-era drama with Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston. “[It was] a real naked man, as well,” she says, laughing. “Which was quite bizarre.”
The Essex Serpent, from director Clio Barnard, to be aired on Apple TV+, is one of several projects that Bellamacina has coming up. There’s also Commedia, from filmmaker Riccardo Vannuccini, which was shot in Rome; Ultra Pure, opposite Camilla Rutherford; and This Sceptred Isle, directed by Michael Winterbottom, which looks at the way the government reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic. Kenneth Branagh plays Boris Johnson; Bellamacina plays Cleo Watson, a former aide to to Dominic Cummings.
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“Because of being so ‘of the moment’, we weren’t really told that much,” she says of working on the series for Sky Drama. When we speak, Covid restrictions are rapidly winding down and/or ending, but as a subject matter it’s still fairly fresh. “I think it’s all going to be in the edit,” she says, and adds that she’s still doesn’t know how it’s going to come out. “Everything was very, very hush hush.”
Working with Winterbottom – who also directed 24 Hour Party People, among others – she found to be incredible as an experience. He is, she says, very big on method acting, and doesn’t say “Action!” or “Cut!”.
“He wanted us to drive to work as the characters,” she says. “We all shared – rather than having trailers – we all had one room as if we were going to work every day and having that office banter, and we did our own make-up in character,” she says. “So it was really unique and really forced you to be in the moment the whole time.”
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She had a similar experience with The Essex Serpent. “Both [directors] are very into improv and even though they were quite big productions, they stuck to their more naturalistic ways of filming, which I’ve always been very interested in. I don’t like my characters to feel fully formed, especially when I’m writing as well. I don’t like there to be all the answers in something.”
Both projects were shot last year, scheduled between various lockdowns. “It went from basically wearing office attire – pencil skirts and shirts, you know – to wearing corsets!” laughs Bellamacina, whose own personal style centres more on Simone Rocha and The Vampire’s Wife.
She recently attended Rocha’s show during London Fashion Week. “The whole thing seemed like a complete fantasy; just leaving the house in this fantastical outfit into a storm in the night,” she says. At the time, the UK’s extreme weather encounters (Storm Eunice, et al) chimed exactly with the capital’s first ‘back-to-normal’ show schedule.
“Simone always has just a perfect balance of light-dark there’s always an element of surprise. It feels like theatre. It always feels important to go and support her and see what she’s doing, because it’s always just so unique,” says Bellamacina.
She found lockdown to be a reflective period, she says, explaining that she “ended up writing lots of poetry which explores mental health”.
Does she find her acting and poetry feed into one another at all?
“What I’ve learned from film is that the quiet moments within the film are almost like poetry – and that’s the bit where you feel connected to the character and you feel more understood. I think it’s the same within poetry. It’s those broken moments within the writing that really are probably the most profound moments.”
Royal Ascot
Her latest role is as the face of Royal Ascot’s 2022 Style Guide, along with her husband, the artist Robert Montgomery. Working with stylish Rachel Bakewell and photographer Tung Walsh, the pair show off the smartest looks of the season – Greta works a pillbox hat and straw boater particularly well, the latter with a splendour of The Gilded Age. She said she found the experience being a part of the campaign to be a total joy, and a great opportunity to be creative and daring with the looks – something, arguably, we all need.
“It’s about being as fantastical in your hat choice as you can possibly be, really,” she says of how to dress for the races, which for her “symbolises the beginning of English summer”. Of her looks, she explains: “I’d wanted to emphasise the wonderful theatricality of Royal Ascot, because I think it’s that one moment in the year when you can dress in a ceremonial way…. There’s just something so joyful about dressing up and wearing a hat.”
Royal Ascot
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