Emma Stansfield is a young British actress who has made a name for herself with roles in several television dramas and serials, including Casualty, Doctors, The Tudors, Midsomer Murders, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Fanny Hill. Having made the break to the big screen, she has recently taken on the role a prostitute called Lisa, in David Blair’s reworking of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, called Best Laid Plans.
Here she talks to View’s Matthew Turner about working with David Blair again, doing tricky sex scenes, and why she’d like to work with Emma Thompson.
What attracted you to the film, first of all?
]I read the script and fell in love with the character actually, with Lisa - it's a cracking part and I loved the journey, the trajectory that she goes through. As David [director David Blair] was saying, you see her at the beginning and she's this hard-nosed bitch, I suppose and then by the end - the journey. So that was it – it was a combination of things, but I'd just watched This Is England, actually and I'd always been a big fan of Maxine, plus David because I'd worked with him before – he's just a brilliant director. You get a lot out of working with him.
What had you worked with David on before?
I did Tess of the D'Urbevilles - I was one of the nasty girls that Gemma Arterton comes home to - and I did a Jimmy McGovern thing, Accused, with Christopher Eccleston last year.
You've just done a Q&A where Stephen was being very funny about the two of you doing the sex scenes. Having worked with David before, was that a big part of doing those scenes, that you trusted him to look after you?
When he approached me, he did say, “There are going to be some sex scenes, but they're going to be sensitively ...” And I knew the character was a prostitute so you can't go half-hearted, you have to go, “Okay, well, either I accept the part and go right, that's part of it and it is what it is.” And that's what he said, he said, “I'm not making a porno – they will be sensitively handled.”
So yeah, there was a little bit of a weird to-do, but it was such a small part of the piece – but also, it's who she is and the way she finds love through that process with Danny, it's all sort of tied up, so you just have to go, “Right, okay, let's do it.” And I trust David absolutely. So we have a laugh but I absolutely trust him and I knew that he wouldn't exploit me, as it were.
I think his instincts were right. I really think they're one of the things that stand out about the film, like there's a realism to them and a truthfulness to them that I think really comes across.
Absolutely, there's no air-brushing and I think that's plain to see. And I think it's quite refreshing to see a real woman on screen occasionally. You know, I am a real woman and a little bit more of that would be great.
I was actually more interested in the relationship between the two of you than I was in the main storyline. I would have watched a film that was just about the two of you, because I thought that was a really interesting relationship.
Well, Stephen is a fantastic actor and he's very generous. Without being wanky, you know, things like the song, The XX, he downloaded that and he said, “This is what I think, I don't know, would you like to listen to it?” And I listened to it and I got it. And there wasn't the time to do the preparation beforehand, we met up very briefly beforehand, Maxine, Stephen and I and then we just had to get on with it.
But the combination of David and Stephen – David trusting the actors to roll with it, cutting out a lot of the the excess from the script and cutting it back to its bare bones and then him just letting us roll with the core of what was at the heart of each scene and letting us improvise. It's so refreshing and that's why I like working with David, is that he lets you do that.