Casting director urged Shirley Henderson to ignore age

Helen Coffey, The Independent

What was the question again? Sorry, I’m dreadful...” It’s the third time — or is it the fourth? — that Shirley Henderson has said this during our interview. Not that she has anything to apologise for; I honestly can’t remember what the question was either by this point. Nor do I much care. It’s hard not to feel hypnotised, in fact, as the actor drifts away on a meandering, mesmeric tide of anecdotes, reflections and tangents in her soporific, Scottish lilt.

Appearing far younger than her soon-to-be 60 years, Henderson is instantly recognisable, having barely changed since her star-making turns in Bridget Jones’s Diary, starring by Renée Zellweger (as high-flying “am I codependent?” financier Jude) and Harry Potter (as the brilliantly comic ghost Moaning Myrtle) at the turn of the millennium. Bizarrely, both roles required her to hide in the loo and sob. There’s still an innocence and guilelessness to her wide, hazel eyes and thick, untamed brows set in that familiar, childlike face — as if she’s somehow managed to live outside of time itself, immune to its ruthlessness and ravages. Her famously small 5ft 1in frame is today wrapped in a big black coat, her soft brown hair casually pinned back, as she chats to me over Zoom from her home in Fife.

Indeed, there’s a gentle, otherworldly quality to Henderson that belies her incredibly wide-ranging performances over the past four decades. She’s played everything from a Canadian grappling with advanced Parkinson’s disease in poignant drama Never Steady, Never Still to the scene-stealing, rip-roaring Matron in tween romcom Wild Child, taking on characters that run the gamut from hilarious to heartbreaking. Despite a distinctive look and that voice — which can be cranked up to her signature helium-pitched squeak on demand — Henderson has somehow managed to sidestep being typecast or pigeonholed. The only thing her parts seem to have in common, in fact, is that they are all undeniably... interesting. That’s certainly true of her latest project, the dark and gripping six-part Channel 4 drama Summerwater. The series, adapted from the Sarah Moss-authored novel of the same name, explores one day on a small holiday site in the Scottish Highlands from multiple characters’ perspectives. The 24-hour period ends in tragedy, but events are shrouded in brooding mystery; the truth is oh-so-gradually spooled out via intersecting timelines across episodes.

Henderson plays Annie, a woman whose declining health and cognitive functioning, due to dementia, mean she’s often at one remove from reality, increasingly residing in the realm of the past. For the first four episodes, Henderson barely has any dialogue, and yet there’s heft to her presence — with just a flash of the eyes or a twitch of a smile, she conveys an entire internal world that the viewer isn’t yet privy to. “I liked the idea of a woman for whom things are changing,” says Henderson thoughtfully. “Part of her is leaving, and other parts of her are coming in through memories and the past. She’s questioning things and haunted by things.”

Another draw was the idea of working with fellow Scot Dougray Scott (Mission: Impossible 2, Desperate Housewives), who plays her husband David, oscillating between barely contained fury and seismic grief and regret. In one of those quirks of serendipity, Henderson met Scott for the very first time the night before she was offered the part of Annie. “That was another huge appeal and a surprise — I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “The timing was very strange, as if it was meant to be.” The scenes between them are taut and powerful, showing the wafer-thin line between love and hate that spouses dance along in a long-term marriage. “I think that’s life, isn’t it?” Henderson muses. “Who said life was going to be easy? We could all just walk away, we could just say, ‘OK, I’m fed up.’ But people don’t – we cling on. You need the battles in life.”

Amid emotionally charged scenes, Henderson and Scott would defuse the tension by sitting around drinking endless cups of tea, eating cheese toasties and having gentle conversations about books and soup. Henderson describes the process as “lovely”: “We just hung about together, and tried to make it nice for each other, because it’s a journey. When it’s big, emotional stuff — for me, anyway — it’s nice to not be that off set. It’s nice to just have a laugh or a giggle or just be quiet. Bring it down to ordinary, and then you can kind of cope.”