‘I miss Maggie Smith a lot. She was hilarious’

Actress Fiona Shaw, 66, grew up in Co Cork, Ireland. She started her career in theatre, winning the Olivier Award for best actress in 1990 and 1994. She won a Bafta in 2019 for playing Carolyn Martens in Killing Eve and was nominated for an Emmy for her role in Fleabag the same year. Her film credits include Harry Potter and she now stars in Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters with Sharon Horgan, Eve Hewson and Anne-Marie Duff. She is married to the author Sonali Deraniyagala and lives in London.

I miss Maggie Smith a lot. She was hilarious. She came down one morning [on set] and said, “I have to go back to bed. I can’t stand the colour of that carpet.” The weird thing was, she meant it. When some people leave the planet [the actress died in September]you feel it is emptier for a moment. Maggie is one of those. I was very sad when I heard.

We had always been very cynical about the church in our family. Which is good fun. But we were cynical while also adhering to it. I was brought up in a religious society. I really felt that hellfire did exist. That was before the Bishop of Galway had his scandal [multiple allegations of child sexual abuse] and the whole religion fell in Ireland.

A family is riven when a child is killed. [Her brother died aged 18 in a car accident.] He should be here now and he isn’t. It was a terrible thing to happen. I wasn’t living at home; that was hard. I went back for the funeral and then had to return to England to rehearse. It was very disassociating. One morning I went for a walk in Stratford at 6am and I thought I saw him. I saw this blond head walking along by the river and I was sure it was him. I read sometime later that this does happen. That’s the magical thinking of loss. I’m visiting Ireland a lot because my mother’s very old and my brothers are often there. We have been talking about him a lot.

London was quite hostile and not particularly well run in 1980. It was rather dusty and dirty. I was shocked. I thought London was going to be paved with gold. So I had quite a bout of homesickness.

I had to hang mice on my apron in Harry Potter. To make the owls look forward, at the camera behind me

People are very nice to you if you’re in your sixties. I love being in my sixties. It’s very comfortable, because I haven’t written a symphony, I didn’t have that exhibition at the Royal Academy, and I feel entirely at ease about that. When you’re 30 you think, I’ve got to write that symphony. I spent my 30th birthday with my brothers in France. I remember being desolate.

The other Bad Sisters actresses are a different generation from me. They are are endlessly on aeroplanes going to America or having a ball. They all drive sports cars. So they have a completely different life. I didn’t really believe they were Irish. They are hilarious.

Killing Eve shouldn’t have been so popular, should it? Those murders were so horrible. You never saw a knife penetrate the skin, but you were able to feel it. People have an appetite for that darker side. This was darkness with chocolate sauce on it. It wasn’t Tarantino or Francis Bacon’s paintings. It didn’t frighten you to the core.

I’ve got nothing against Instagram; it just isn’t my modus vivendi. My life is my life. What is this obsession with sharing it with the world? What are we doing to ourselves? What makes you think you’d know more about me if I said, “I ate three doughnuts today, and here they are”?

I would have had a very short career if I had wanted just to be in films or on television. When I was younger, people on television were either the detective, the detective’s assistant or the wife. There was nothing to play.

I probably was a workaholic. I couldn’t perform enough. You’ve got piles of energy in your thirties. I’m not a workaholic now.

I was very backward at Rada. I was quite innocent. They had all been to see plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company. I’d never seen a play.

I never saw myself getting married. So I’m very delighted to be married. It’s very good to live for somebody else and to have their long-term care as your responsibility. It’s a privilege.

Bad Sisters season two is available on Apple TV+