Emma Thompson has what she E calls the habit of continuity,” an impulse hardwired into her by her parents, Phyllida Law and Eric Thompson, who were both actors and children from broken families. Thompson, who has been dubbed a Presbyterian in the high church of celebrity, still lives on the West Hampstead street where she grew up. She shuttles between London and a lush remote glen above Loch Long, in Scotland—where, in 1959, her parents paid three hundred pounds for a cottage—which was the rural idyll of her childhood. Those two places provide her with an unassailable context” that protects her, she said, from her capacity for self-deception.” She added, I’m surrounded by people I’ve known since I was a child. They’re not going to put up with me being grand.”
Her road in London is a sloping quarter mile of comfortable semidetached houses, a football field away from the swankier dwellings across noisy Finchley Road. Among those currently residing there are Thompson’s extended family: her now ninetyyear-old mother; her informally adopted son, Tindyebwa Agaba, and his wife, He Zhang; and a collection of A-team actors, most of whom she’s worked with through the years—Imelda Staunton, Jim Carter, Derek Jacobi, Jim Broadbent. We're terrible gossips, but gossip in the sense that Phyllis Rose described it, the first step on the ladder to self-knowledge,” Thompson said, adding, Gossip is discussion about life’s detail. And in life’s details are all the little bits of stitching that you need to hold it to-fucking-gether.”
This story is from the November 14, 2022 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November 14, 2022 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.