An exclusive interview with the Northern Irish actress on her upcoming roles on stage and screen …
Main featured image: Valene Kane photographed by Naomi Gaffey, styled by Corina Gaffey.
You’ve seen her in The Fall, Blue Lights and Gangs of London among other roles, and she has just completed filming on the first series of The Winter King, a soon-to-be-released ITV series based on the Bernard Cornwell novels of the same name. This week, however, the luminous Irish actress Valene Kane returns to the stage making her Royal Shakespeare Company debut as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s brutal tragedy Macbeth, directed by Wils Wilson. In a candid interview, she discusses her roles, her daily anxiety and favourite treats among other issues:
On playing Lady Macbeth: “I’ve always wanted to play this part. I remember at drama school being told by some of my teachers that I wasn’t a classical actress. That with my accent, it wasn’t what would come to me… And thinking I would prove them wrong and that one day I would play Lady Macbeth.Being the only Irish person in an otherwise all-Scottish company makes Lady Macbeth a true outsider, a feeling I got to know early when I left Ireland at 17 to go to Drama School. Having Lady Macbeth as the only non-Scottish voice adds to this horrendous sense of aloneness when her husband goes from her partner-in-crime, literally, who shares everything with her, to a man in crisis who pushes her away.”
On preparing for this role: “For every role, I do an inordinate amount of research. I was raised by a very strict father: education and being prepared is drummed into me, so I tend to approach all my characters like they are science projects that need to be interrogated. I like to use loads of different mediums to get to the core of who this woman is. I always make a playlist, so I can start walking around and feeling her and I started making that quite early.
I also reread John Barton’s Playing Shakespeare because it had been such a long time since I had spoken verse and I was quite terrified. I am quite terrified.
I became obsessed by the artist Louise Bourgeois, and all of her sculptures reminded me of Lady Macbeth and what she was going through. On a more practical level, I started doing more work with my voice coach and my acting coach. A month after I booked my Lady Macbeth, my best friend from drama school, Cush Jumbo, was also booked to play Lady Macbeth. I used her vocal coach, Barbara Houseman, who is incredible. And in fact, Cush and I are working on a documentary about two best friends who play the same classical role in the same year.”
On stage fright: “I’m excited to be going back to stage work, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified, especially with a role like this. There’s something dangerous and exposing about playing a woman who goes through so much live on stage.
Day to day, I have severe anxiety and have developed lots of different practises to cope. So, I’ll be meditating in the morning, doing kundalini and breathwork. I’ll go for long walks in the day to exhaust the demons in my head and then I’ll be doing a full warm up body, mind and soul so that I can show up vulnerable and present on stage every night.”
On her favourite role: “Morgan in The Winter King. I just finished the first series and there’s a potential for more five series. She is such a special, unusual character. I loved exploring her and why she behaves the way she does. She is asexual in a way, and really her guiding force is for justice and the gods. She’s powerful, strong, an outsider, a bit like Lady Macbeth. I think maybe I’m drawn to outsiders because I’ve always felt like an outsider myself, but playing Morgan I got to learn how to ride horses and fight and that was an incredible journey with some incredible actors. And I got to work with Otto Bathurst, who had always been on my bucket list of directors. Plus the idea that I get to return for another four years is really exciting.”
On her role models: “I really admire Michaela Cole, the Ghanian-British actress, filmmaker, singer and composer. I started writing scripts a few years back and recently had my first TV series optioned [Mother Country in development with Story Films], so I became so interested in how other writers work. The way Michaela handles herself in the industry, the work that she makes, the kind of woman she is just incredibly inspiring. I love, firstly, how astonishing her work is. How honest and brutal and brave it is. And also how she speaks up, speaks out… how important representation and fairness and equality is to her. I would love to be that kind of role model in the world, to myself and to the younger women coming up below me. In terms of actors whose career I admire, that would be Ruth Wilson and Jessica Chastain.”
On home: “Home is London with my husband [writer and actor] Ed Cooper Clarke. We are currently working on a building project, which has been highly stressful to do at the same time as rehearsing this play. The idea is to finish it and then find some land in the woods somewhere not too far from London, so that we can build a passive home which has been our dream for years.”
On her interior design style: “It has changed so much in recent years. Me and my husband are incredibly mercurial in lots of different ways. We’re both commitment-phobes. We’ve done three different renovation projects in the 14 years we’ve been together. The first was a loft in Shoreditch. It was maximalist with lots of vintage furniture and steel and exposed brick. Then we moved to a home in Hackney which we made into something quite Scandi with a modern open-plan living area but still with salvaged, dark-stained floorboards and lots of different textures. Now we are South of the river, doing a project which is incredibly minimalist. There’s some touches of marble because I love marble, but mostly it’s softer colours and lots of micro-concrete. The aim is to make it just a real oasis of calm and simplicity because we both have quite frenetic jobs. I really want something that feels like a spa, a haven. And something that is easily cleaned!”
What she would grab in a fire: “My cat, Percy, and then Ed and then all my designer bags. I have an issue.”
On her favourite books: “I’m really lucky that my brother-in-law works for Phaidon, so he has bought me some incredible coffee table books over the years. I think my favourite ones are the two Grace Coddington books that I just love so much. I love photography. So I’d have some Nan Goldin photography books, Cindy Sherman, Cecil Beaton and Gregory Crewdson. And then painting books. I have SO many. Lucien Freud, Munch, and Francis Bacon books as he is my absolute favourite artist. And then some books of inspiration that I can just pick up and read so: The Lalah Delia book [Vibrate Higher Daily: Live your Power], and the John O’Donoghue book Anam Cara. I love to have it near me to read at random times … he was such an incredible human.”
Her go-to dish: “Something really boring, like air-fried salmon and aubergine and courgettes because I love it so much and it’s really easy on my digestive system, which doesn’t work very well. I have celiac disease which is a little limiting. Or breakfast, my favourite meal of the day, which is tonnes of fresh fruit from Riverford organic deliveries, with kefir, cacao nibs, bee pollen, nuts and seeds. I feel like I’m getting all my nutrients in for the day. And my cacao. I have a mug of ceremonial cacao every morning. It’s my constant.”
On her bathroom cabinet booty: “I have a lot of treats in my bathroom cabinet. It’s where all of my wages go. I’m obsessed with skincare and facials, but probably my biggest treat to myself are the really large Cire Trudon candles, the Abd el Kader is my favourite. They just smell so good and they make me feel so calm, but they’re insanely expensive. So it’s definitely a treat to light them.”
Need to Know: Valene Kate stars in Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford from Saturday, August 19 – October 14; www.rsc.org.uk. The Winter King, based on Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles of the same name will be released on the US streaming site MGM+ from August 20 and later on ITVX. Follow Valene on @valenekane
