madandi

[madandi]

From The Times

article about the new song: "Thank you mother"

At 16 Amy Nuttall became the youngest understudy for the lead role of Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, then a year later she joined the ITV soap Emmerdale and stayed for five years. The Lancashire-born actress has since appeared in Hotel Babylon, Downton Abbey, Death in Paradise and, most recently, Mr Bates vs the Post Office. On stage she has been in My Fair Lady, Boeing-Boeing, Cabaret and Spamalot. Now 41, Nuttall is married to the actor Andrew Buchan. They live with their nine-year-old daughter and five-year-old son in Buckinghamshire.

How much is in your wallet?

No one carries cash now — everything is cashless. I did get caught short last year when my daughter lost a tooth unexpectedly. I had no money for the tooth fairy. Luckily my neighbour came to the rescue but now I always make sure I have pound coins in my wallet. Apart from that, all I have is my driver’s licence, Tesco Clubcard, Boots card, Caffè Nero stamp card and my debit card.

What credit cards do you use?

I don’t own any. When I joined Emmerdale I came home to visit my parents and for some reason I’d got myself a credit card and I was telling my dad about it and he made me get it out, got a pair of scissors and said, “Right, I want you to cut it up in front of me. Take my advice. Do not go down that road.” And it’s just stuck with me. I’ve never had one since. I think my dad knew that it would basically give me the opportunity to spend money I didn’t have, so I think it was very wise advice.

Are you a saver or a spender?

I’d love to say I’m a saver. I think I started out really well but I have become a bit of a spender. It’s mainly on my children. When I started out, aged 16, touring in The Phantom of the Opera, my first pay cheque was £500 a week, which was an absolute fortune for someone that age. I remember we were rehearsing in London before we went on tour, and I needed some new trainers, so I went to Schuh in Covent Garden. And I’ve never forgotten that feeling of buying my own trainers with my own money — and still having money in my account. After that I barely spent a penny, other than on accommodation and food. I don’t know where that girl went, as I really enjoy spending now. Back then I was very cautious. I just wish I’d had the foresight to put that money into property.

How much did you earn last year?

I’m an actress, self-employed, so it varies substantially from year to year. Sometimes I get surprise emails from my agent about royalties, saying, “Downton Abbey has been sold to this country,” or whatever, and they’re always nice little happy surprises. But generally speaking, in the last financial year — what can I tell you? — below a hundred grand, but I’m married so it all goes into one pot. So it’s not as scary because I can lean on that. People may have thought that being in Downtown Abbey meant I could put my rates up, but it’s really not the case. I always seem to land jobs where they tell you there isn’t any money in the pot. And then you find out who the lead is and you think, ah, all the money is going to that person. So it’s really not as lucrative as people perceive.

I sing too. I recently released a song called Thank You Mother, to raise money for the Brain Tumour Charity. That won’t see any personal return, but that’s fine as I want all the money to go to the charity. Overall I’m used to not knowing how things will be financially. It’s that excitement of not knowing what’s around the corner — maybe that big job with lots of money is going to turn up. That hasn’t happened yet, but you never know.

Have you ever been really hard up?

I started off well with Phantom and then Emmerdale, but when I was 22 I left and moved to London. Soon after I bought my first property in Ladbroke Grove [west London] but stupidly bought one that I was unable to sublet. I’d really stretched myself to the limit to buy it and I was relying on being in work to pay my mortgage and bills. I was the lead in Cabaret in the West End at the time, but it was a massive drop in earnings after Emmerdale and I just couldn’t cover everything, so I had to put the flat on the market. I had to move out a week after I finished Cabaret and rent a room in a flat and put all my furniture into storage. It was devastating.

Do you own a property?

I’m the joint owner of our comfortable family home in Buckinghamshire. We owned a smaller house before.

Are you better off than your parents?

I’d say my dad is probably better off than me. He recently retired but he was a criminal barrister and a judge. I have no idea how much money he earned but he was always extremely cautious and never spent money on five-star hotels. My mum was a hairdresser when they met and then did interior design for a while. Things were comfortable and my dad paid for all three of us to have a private secondary education.

Do you invest in shares?

I don’t and it’s not something I’ve ever thought about. I don’t know enough about it.

What is better for retirement, property or pension?

A bit of both. It probably changes from year to year but I think it would be safer to have a bit of property, a bit of pension.

What has been your best investment?

My house, my health and my children — not in that order.

And the worst?

I’ve not really made any great investments but I can’t think of anything that has been significantly bad either.

The most extravagant thing you’ve bought?

I bought my mum a Louis Vuitton bag because she did everything for my wedding. I just turned up on the day, which was great. I wasn’t particularly interested in doing it — she did it all. So I bought her a beautiful cream Louis Vuitton handbag, which cost about £2,000, which is an insane amount of money.

What is your money weakness?

Food, probably. I’m quite lazy, especially with the grim weather we’ve had lately. I just want to get out of the house and go to a cosy café to eat stuff I could easily make at home. My other weakness is [the homeware store] Homesense — I’m an absolute sucker for kitchen paraphernalia. Whether it’s another teapot or candle I don’t need, I’m there.

What is your financial priority?

My children. We’re a way off secondary school yet, though, so we’ll see what happens.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

First, I wouldn’t broadcast it. I’d share it among family, and I’d love to have the luxury of giving away a chunk of money to the Brain Tumour Charity. If there was any left to spoil myself, I’d love to be mortgage-free. I’d love a big house in the country with an Aga and a dog, and a holiday home in Tuscany. That would be lovely.

Do you support any charities?

I’m a patron of the Brain Tumour Charity — my mother passed away from a glioblastoma brain tumour in October, and I’ll be donating all the proceeds from Thank You Mother to them. It’s a song we played a lot at home in my mother’s final weeks. It was a very emotional time and the words in the song are very poignant to my relationship with my mum. I knew straight away that I had to do something to raise awareness of this terrible disease.

What is the most important lesson you’ve learnt about money?

That you never have enough, that it goes pretty quickly and that it doesn’t bring you true happiness. And like my parents said to me, “If you look after the pennies, the pounds will follow.” All proceeds from Thank You Mother by Amy Nuttall go to the Brain Tumour Charity

#braintumorcharity

[madandi]

[ Image description: Pencil-brush Procreate study of the face of Andrew Buchan as Major Mikulas Vir in Prime’s “Carnival Row”. He is looking towards the viewer, on his right, with his head cocked towards his left. End ID. ]

Major Vir has noticed you noticing him crack his neck.

(I got to do a study today.)

[madandi]

Of course you can never know a person from the few private snippets you know. He always wanted to be judged by his work and only let out very few things about his private life.

But you always knew where he was when he got interviewed, be it in a carpark of a public pool or a churchyard in Marylebone (good tactic to keep the interviewers at bay).

He still is a very good ( and ambitious) actor who now has the chance to be also a screenwriter. And he can convincingly play very different characters from humble joiner to sinister drug lord, and even impersonate not very sympathetic people...

By all accounts he is a good colleague and easy to work with.

We can not know the dynamics of a relationship, especially as he and Amy rightly don’t want to get the press involved.

I don’t judge (and I say this as a family lawyer about to retire, who has seen too much too close, things are often different than they seem on the surface ). I hope they can sort out things for the children who need both parents.

We don’t even know if he is in a relationship , as he is probably somewhere north of Manchester working on Passenger, and LF did two different series  abroad since filming of Better finished.

How are all of us feeling now?

Shocked? Disappointed? Betrayed? Mystified? Or all of these?

Fifteen years of evidence from MSM & tv interviews, fan encounters and social media never suggested this.

I’m not sure I know him any more.

Perhaps, we never did.

[madandi]

At last, Andrew arrives in Carnival Row

- we’ve been waiting since the end of 2019!

Another Scottish accent!

[madandi]

Another interview for Better

A witty, no-nonsense policewoman faces off against a charismatic but chilling villain in crime-filled Yorkshire. You can see why Better might fill a Happy Valley-sized hole when it starts tonight on BBC1.

That, probably, is where the similarities end because Lou and Col, the central pair in the new series, have a very different relationship from Catherine Cawood and Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley. For a start they actually like each other. Lou (Leila Farzad, aka Suzie’s manager in I Hate Suzie) is a high-ranking cop in Leeds, while Col, played by Andrew Buchan — who was the grieving father Mark Latimer in Broadchurch and Matt Hancock in This England — is the dapper Northern Irish head of a drug-dealing network.

Not a typical friendship, then, but they’ve been scratching each other’s backs for 19 years, rising to the top in their respective fields. The five-parter by Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent (Humans, Spooks) is moody and stylish with flashes of gallows humour. In the first episode Col invites Lou to his birthday dinner, telling the guests: “I’ve made it to another birthday in a challenging line of work.” Col and Lou sneak off for a fag. “I would not be here today without you,” he tells her. “Same here,” she replies. Their loyalty to each other is about to be challenged.Better is “a character-driven morality piece about redemption”, Buchan says over Zoom from a café near his home in Buckinghamshire. “And two characters who’ve made some very particular choices that slowly start unravelling. They’re both landlocked in a sense but just can’t get out.”It is, he adds, “nothing like Happy Valley”, although he understands why people might wonder.

The night before we speak he was at a screening in Leeds, where the show is set and shot. “One of the questions from the audience was about how people are going to naturally draw comparisons with Happy Valley. But in the future, hopefully, when a million more shows are being made up there, you wouldn’t need to draw comparisons.”Shows such as the one Buchan, 43, has just written, Passenger, which we’ll get to later. He is a proud northerner, having grown up in Bolton and married a fellow Lancastrian, Amy Nuttall, who played Chloe Atkinson in Coronation Street and Ethel the maid in Downton Abbey, with whom he has a child.

He used to excel at what he calls “everymen going through a crisis”, from Mark in Broadchurch, whose son is killed, to a former soldier accused of murder in The Fixer. These days he brings similar nuance to less ordinary — and richer — types: the millionaire scion John Paul Getty Jr in All the Money in the World; Andrew Parker Bowles, husband of Camilla, in The Crown; Felim Bichan, a financial player in Industry. SKY UKHis character in Better is loaded and powerful with an Ulster accent to boot, while the London-born Farzad, whom he describes as “a force”, does a Yorkshire one. Both sound pretty impressive to these poncey southern ears. Col’s accent was inspired by the Belfast-raised actor Jamie Dornan. “I bumped into him in a lift in London and we had this little brief chat,” Buchan says. “It’s such an amazing accent. I was walking along, quietly doing impersonations of Jamie Dornan to myself.

”When Buchan was first offered the role, “I was, like, ‘God no. He’s got to be 68 with a loose tooth and a gold chain. I’m not that guy.’ ” The director told him that they wanted someone a bit more charming. “He’s quite calm and careful and considered. He’s not a psychopath. But when people press his buttons he can go places.” Col’s lavish modernist house, filmed in Harrogate, “was a wee bit ridiculous”, Buchan says. Harrogate’s posh, isn’t it? “To us Boltonians it definitely is.”

He got closer to privilege when reading modern languages at Durham University and studying at Rada, where he was in the same year as Tom Hiddleston and Andrea Riseborough.Buchan also starred in the political drama Party Animals with Riseborough, whose recent Oscar nomination has been criticised after she benefited from celebrity cheerleaders including Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet. “All I know is that she’s a phenomenal actress,” Buchan says. “My initial reaction to her being nominated was ‘about time’.

”Playing Hancock was “interesting”, he says, but he won’t be drawn on a political judgment. This England went quite easy on the former health secretary but Buchan “could only play what was on the page”, although he admits he must have “subliminally” incorporated his impressions of a man he had seen on TV daily during the pandemic.Well, it worked — his performance was eerily persuasive. He won’t say what he thinks of Hancock doing I’m a Celebrity but he raves about Kenneth Branagh’s take on Boris Johnson. “I’ve worked with some witty folk in my time, but Ken’s ad libs are off the scale.”

We talk about The Crown, in which he starred with Josh O’Connor and Emerald Fennell (“whose careers have nosedived obviously since then”, he says wryly), and All the Money in the World, where Christopher Plummer famously replaced Kevin Spacey as John Paul Getty Sr after Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct.Filmed in Rome, it was a taste of movie opulence that Buchan hadn’t had before. He compares it with The Fixer in 2008: “We filmed it in Lewisham, in minus 2C, covered in fake blood, in a vest and it was all quite unpleasant. So, to shoot in Rome!” For the reshoots he was flown back out on a private jet with Plummer, Michelle Williams and Ridley Scott, the director. “I think I was the only one who’d never been on a private jet before.”

Plummer handled the cast and crew with panache, he says, which was hard “when you’ve got 20,000 people in between takes saying, ‘Can you do Edelweiss?’ ” Plummer and Spacey had “very different takes” on the role, the father of Buchan’s character. “Christopher grabbed my hand really tightly and smiled at me with this twinkle in his eye, which was really unnerving. Whereas Kevin was the complete opposite.” More in character? “Yeah, whereas Christopher kind of played against it.”

His big ambition is to do more comedy. When he was playing the 18th-century lawyer William Garrow in Garrow’s Law he had long chats about it with his co-star, Alun Armstrong. “Al said, ‘The problem is that good comedies are as rare as rocking horse shit.’

”Buchan has found a neat way around that problem — writing his own show for ITV. Passenger is a horror comedy set in a small village called Chadder Vale in Lancashire. “We start filming in five days’ time, which is quite frightening,” he says. He won’t be acting in it but he has written all six episodes.“I’m on a bit of a hamster wheel at the minute, churning them out. When you can hear the execs barking at you, ‘We need, we need, we need . . . ’ you think, ‘I’m just going to treat that as white noise.’ ” The series will feature a former Met policewoman called Riya Ajunwa investigating a series of unnatural crimes including the abduction of a local girl. Dark, funny, female cop, set in the north — it’s all the rage, you know.

#andrewbuchan #interview #times #lo #londontimes #better

[madandi]

Times Pick of the week

Better (Monday, BBC1, 9pm) BBC1’s obsession with corrupt cops is clearly not confined to Line of Duty. Almost exactly a year ago it gave us Martin Freeman’s Liverpudlian lawman in The Responder, compromised by his friendship with a gangster; and now Leila Farzad plays Lou Slack, a Leeds detective who covertly looks after the interests of Col McHugh (Andrew Buchan), an Ulster-accented Mr Big who once rescued her and her husband from bankruptcy — and who may be, their body language hints, a former lover. The opening episode gains clarity and power as a series of incidents — including a health crisis for her son, a dangerous errand she has to carry out for Col and a violent robbery by one of his goons — push Lou towards putting a stop to her secret criminal life. As she showed in I Hate Suzie, Farzad has real star quality, whether her dodgy DI is on duty tackling a hostage siege or off duty attending Col’s birthday party as the guest of honour. John Dugdale

#betterbbc #andrewbuchan #leilafarzad #preview

[madandi]

Buchan spent the early part of his career hiding in plain sight, somehow flying below the radar despite prominent television roles in dramas both period (Cranford, Garrow’s Law) and contemporary (Party Animals, The Fixer). It took Broadchurch to make him a star.

At last! Radio Times has finally caught up….

[madandi]

In the crowded world of police dramas it takes a lot to stand out right from the start. This new series, starring Leila Farzad as a corrupt Leeds detective inspector who’s on the payroll of a major-league gangster, gets you on the edge of your seat in the opening moments and keeps you there for the duration. At its heart is the electric chemistry between Farzad, as the pragmatically unscrupulous DI Lou Slack, and Andrew Buchan, playing brilliantly against type as the menacingly charming crime boss Col McHugh.

In tonight’s opening episode we’re drawn into this moneyed but seedy world, intrigued by how Slack walks the tricky line between being a tough but respected investigator at work yet also someone who’s willing to do pretty much anything at the behest of old pal Col. Until, that is, her beloved teenage son is struck down by bacterial meningitis and her priorities begin to slowly shift. It’s well written and acted, even in the smaller roles, but it’s the crackling tension between Farzad and Buchan that carries us along – strongly suggesting that, wherever this drama is bound for, it could get very nasty indeed. The box set is on iPlayer from Monday.

#andrewbuchan bbcbetter leilafarzad telegraphpreview

[madandi]

Latest trailer for Carnival Row s2 arriving next month on Prime.

Andrew appears in 6 episodes.

Let me know if you spot him!

[madandi]

Latest trailer for Carnival Row s2 arriving next month on Prime.

Andrew appears in 6 episodes.

Let me know if you spot him!

[madandi]

Wait, the quote "don't let the bastards grind you down" was something Pete Postlethwaite said to Tom???? Or something Tom heard and made his own??? Can you please elaborate?

He says that it was advice Pete Postlethwaite gave him (and Andrew Buchan) in this interview, starting at 1:06:40 - and it's the advice he now gives others.

[madandi]

[madandi]

This pic has me searching immediately and I wanna say this is Andrew and Camilla’s wedding? The outfit looks like it’s almost a match and the everyone looks like they’re dressed for a wedding with the big hats.

[madandi]

The Crown | Season 3 |New Characters

Camilla Parker Bowles (Emerald Fennell)

Andrew Parker Bowles (Andrew Buchan)

Roddy Llewellyn (Harry Treadaway)

Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins)

Edward Heath (Michael Maloney)

Anthony Blunt (Samuel West)

Barbara Castle (Lorraine Ashbourne)

Marcia Falkender (Sinead Matthews)

[madandi]

This was exciting news to emerge from an exam to! It’s a long time since I read an Alex Rider novel, but I really liked the character who was Head of MI6. Guess who SD is playing?! 😍

[madandi]

Mat’s doing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead this weekend (30th and 31st March, 2019; 2:30pm; Radio 4) 

[madandi]

Update from the mod: Annual Report of ABF (Oct 2018)

In October every year on this blog I try to summarise what we have seen and heard about Andrew over the preceding twelve months. With the finish of Broadchurch and its accompanying media frenzy in 2017, all is now back to normal – a year of Andrew being mostly invisible, despite actually being more busy than usual!

Since update 2017 Andrew has worked with Christopher Plummer, Zahraa Gandour, Antonio Banderas, Clemence Poesy, John Malkovich, Rupert Grint and acclaimed director Samir, as well as narrating the latest BBCOne reality cookery show. However, as he continues to have no social media presence, is rarely spotted on Twitter or Instagram, and made nil appearances at premieres and award shows, he has remained largely incognito!

At this time last year we were looking forward to the release of three films plus Andrew’s own Gaumont-produced comedy series.

- All The Money In The World acquired unexpected and unwanted notoriety as a result of historical allegations against Kevin Spacey, leading to substitution by Christopher Plummer and re-filming in late November – just one month before release!  Some of Andrew’s scenes were amongst those re-shot.

Nevertheless his reviews were overwhelmingly positive, despite having only a secondary role: loser J Paul II (Andrew Buchan, brilliant job)

- The Mercy was eventually released in February. As expected, Andrew’s role was very much a cameo, almost all of which featured in the film trailer!

- The release of Intrigo-Samaria is now set for February 2019 with the first pictures of Andrew as lead character Henry only emerging in the last few weeks.

- To date there has been no further news about Baba.

There was an early Xmas present in December, when Andrew’s involvement in the film Baghdad In My Shadow was intimated via social media. Eventually photos from London film locations were released showing him with his Iraqi co-star, Zahraa Gandour and writer/director Samir. The film is currently in post-production and is due for release in the next few months.

Just one month later we were alerted to another new project, when Andrew’s agents tweeted about Genius: Picasso – although it was a further month before another cast member inadvertently revealed Andrew’s role as Henri Matisse.

The National Geographic series aired in April featuring amazing makeup and prosthetics – rendering Andrew, yet again, virtually unrecognisable. So much so, in fact, that reviewers neither mentioned his exquisite, subtle performance nor initially included him in the cast list in Wikipedia!

In early May BBCOne’s new cookery talent show Britain’s Best Home Cook was launched with Andrew as its narrator – a primetime coup for our voiceover supremo!

Then, just weeks later, the latest BBCOne Agatha Christie adaptation from screenwriter Sarah Phelps was announced: The ABC Murders. Filming began in June with Andrew in the central role of Franklin Clarke, alongside John Malkovich as Poirot. Sadly no photos emerged of Andrew during production, despite the many location scenes around Yorkshire and further afield. There were just two public spots of Andrew reported on Twitter during the two months of filming – actually the only ones of the whole twelve months!

The ABC Murders is expected to air this Christmas.

Photos of the year

- an untagged photo from June 2017 showing Andrew with Michelle Williams in Rome during filming of All The Money In The World

- another iconic, yet strangely familiar, image from Baghdad In My Shadow filming

- this lovely promo session from May 2018 for Intrigo-Samaria with producer Rick Dugdale in Stockholm 

This remains the ONLY photo of Andrew to date in 2018!

The ones that got away

The scene at Villa Adriana, Rome that Andrew did not reshoot with Christopher Plummer for All The Money In The World…..

 ….and the cast of Intrigo-Samaria sum up our feelings!

“missing the irreplaceable Andrew Buchan”

Meanwhile….. 

….. ABF now has an archive of nearly 3,300 different posts, 25 themed pages and over 400 followers, as well as many other non-tumblr fans and friends.

Thank you to all Andrew fans – especially to @madandi for keeping me up to date and to @geminigmo, @llywela13, @liathgorn, @john5747 and Pamela for their contributions. We are all still here.

As ever, my best wishes to Andrew, Amy and family for the next twelve months. I know you value your privacy. It’s fair to say that this year has been a resounding success!

Cheers – demurely1