'I shouldn't think Cherie Blair will be offended at all'

Fresh from playing the ex-PM's wife in The Crown, Lydia Leonard talks to Nick Clark about taking on witches in a new horror play

- Nick Clark

FROM Anne Boleyn to Virginia Woolf, Lydia Leonard has an impressive roster of women from history on her acting CV. Sometimes she even surprises herself with the transformation — as with her most recent screen role as Cherie Blair in The Crown.

“Who knew? I’d never seen it [the resemblance] before,” she says. “It was like being on Stars in their Eyes. Go into the make-up trailer and come out…”

If she was taken aback by becoming Cherie, it didn’t last long. “Jonny Lee Miller would come out looking like John Major, so if he can do that and Gillian Anderson could do Thatcher, I thought, ‘It’s okay!’”

There were brief glimpses of her opposite Bertie Carvel’s Tony Blair at the end of The Crown’s recent fifth series and filming for the sixth and final series continues until April. She hasn’t met the real Cherie but would like to. “I don’t think she’d be offended by my portrayal… I hope. I have a huge amount of respect for her.”

She continues: “It’s fun playing someone really famous. It brings its own interest from the wider audience and responsibility. Objectively I should care about playing a real living person, but I don’t, it’s just another character.”