Fay Weldon and Jean Marsh discuss Upstairs, Downstairs

What started as a very personal project for co-creators Fay Weldon and Eileen Atkins went on to become one of ITV's most popular drama series. From the experiences of their mothers, who worked in domestic service, came the idea of a drama which contrasted the lives on masters and servants in an upper-crust Edwardian household. A superb cast (including Marsh) - and well-chosen writers - helped make the series and internationally successful phenomenon.

Fay Weldon and Jean Marsh were interviewed at the NFT on Tuesday 13 December 2005 by Matthew Sweet.

Veronica Taylor: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this special event tonight in our ongoing ITV50 season. Ongoing dramas have been one of the great strengths of ITV and we were delighted, when we wrote to Jean Marsh, that she agreed to come here and talk about one of their greatest successes, Upstairs, Downstairs. I'm just here to explain how the evening will run. We're first, as you know, going to show a complete episode of Upstairs, Downstairs, there'll then be a slight pause while our Front of House staff put the furniture onto the stage, ready for the interview and then I'll ask you to welcome our guests tonight, Jean Marsh and Fay Weldon, and they'll be interviewed on stage by Matthew Sweet. And there'll be time at the end for you to ask your questions, so I hope you've got plenty for them. I just want to mention one other thing. You may have noticed when you came in that there was a stall with DVDs of Upstairs, Downstairs. Fay and Jean both signed copies of those before this started. They'll be on sale again afterwards, so I just wanted to draw that to your attention. But for now, please enjoy a splendid drama. And, as I said, I'll ask you to welcome our guests afterwards. Thank you.

[screening]

VT: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I'll ask you to welcome our guests to the stage: Jean Marsh, Fay Weldon and they'll be in conversation with Matthew Sweet. [applause]

Matthew Sweet: Good evening. It's my very great pleasure to introduce Fay Weldon and Jean Marsh to you. It's rather difficult, in a way, introducing two people about whom you know so much already. But I tried to dig around for a few things that you didn't know about them, that maybe I could just throw in at the beginning. One is that Jean played Mimi for Leonard Bernstein some time ago and she also starred opposite the Muppets in Sesame Street. So that's two things that you may not know - but maybe you did. Fay, a lot of your correspondence is sitting in a vault at the University of Indiana. That's true, isn't it?

Fay Weldon: I believe so.

MS: Yes. And she also once had the role of script doctor on a British exploitation film, the most celebrated performance in which was given by a three-legged dog. But of course you know them all very well for their involvement in Upstairs, Downstairs. Jean as co-creator and Fay as the writer of several episodes including the one you've just seen. So maybe we should just start by asking about what memories that particular episode brought back, as you were sitting there watching it in the dark.

FW: Well what struck me first of all was how long the scenes were. That you were allowed to write really long scenes in which you could develop something, and actually people had a chance to act. Now, the scenes are so short, really, that what people give as performances... acting is something that doesn't necessarily happen in television anymore.

Jean Marsh: No, it's very obvious from your first episode. I thought that too. And it's not only acting but they don't... we react and the camera was allowed to switch to somebody who wasn't speaking and listening and that doesn't really happen anymore. I've been told five lines is long enough for one scene.

FW: That's it. And one thing happens and then you're on to the next scene. And it's a process that has happened so gradually over the years that you quite automatically do it now... looking at that, you just think, well, that's long.

MS: Well, it's quite a surprise in a way, just to hear people talking to each other for such a lengthy time. And there being enough room for the characters to breathe before we run onto the next scene.

FW: And actually if you think about that... the dinner, the meal, they serve the meal... there's a lot of people in that that you have to introduce very quickly. And actually develop them all and have something happening while you demonstrate what... your life in order to establish this great cast of characters. I think it's a great achievement actually. Looking back at it I think, my goodness, that was difficult and I did it.

JM: Yes, you did. You did. But you also created characters in one episode that you could see many sides of. Nobody was a bland smiling good person. Everybody had different sides, black and white... and we didn't just do it acting... you created that. There is a very good reason why Michael Grade said that the first episode of Upstairs, Downstairs is the best first episode of any series ever. And that's because of your work.

FW: Well, that's very... yes, yes, I heard that once... he told... it was... they used it as a training film for writers, which I thought... well, why don't they pay me? [laughter]

MS: Jean, can I ask you about the development of the series, because the original idea that you had for it was rather different, wasn't it? It was set in a different time period and in a slightly different kind of house, wasn't it?

JM: It wasn't very different. The idea was that it would be turn of the century, I think, originally. And it was going to strongly feature downstairs. It was going to strongly feature the servants. In fact we called it originally Below Stairs. And Eileen and I had a passion to show the truth about where we both came from. Because we'd come from downstairs people. But it... this was what we had in mind, especially the first episode. Some of the things were a little more sentimental and we always wanted it to be rather political. And to try and show not just the good life that the servants had but to show how hot it was in the kitchen, how freezing it was in the attics and how you had no choice. Those two characters, the ladies maid and the footman, staying up all night just to welcome them back from a dinner party and take their coats away. That's such a despicable way to treat people. And they would be up at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning.

FW: But there was... there was also a kind of duty people felt they did have to the servants so that actually they would say 'no don't ring the bell, don't get them up.' I think because... there were lights on so they were conscious I think, to a small degree...

JM: Yes, to a small degree.

FW: ...but actually they...

MS: There is a sense that loyalty goes both ways, isn't there. I think particularly as the series develops, that's something that becomes more prominent. That there is a kind of... that the masters do have a sentimental attachment to their servants as well as treating them more coldly.

FW: As... they're probably to do with the necessities of plot and the way characters develop rather than that anybody was... saw it like that at the time. I think when we did the first one we were very conscious of the social situations or the reality of life.

JM: Yes... of establishing the fact that it wasn't really cosy. I think upstairs were attached to downstairs, only if they were good and only if they were loyal. And anyway, they were needed. And nobody upstairs knew how to cook or wash clothes or iron them. Nobody could have got up at 6 o'clock in the morning to black all the grates, which was what the tweeny did. So I don't think it was sweetness and light. And they had no security.

MS: Do you remember what kind of research you did?

JM: Just reading. Reading and then I... my mother had been in service for a while and... there were people living who knew about service. My mother was brought up by her great-grandmother for some weird reason. And her great-grandmother was born in 1812, I think. So she had very good stories to tell my mother. My mother's still alive at 98 and has all her marbles and so she was able to talk to me but mainly research was reading old newspapers, reading diaries and, much more useful than history, I found, was to read novels written at the time. Always, whenever I'm writing I like to... even if they're bad novels, read something that was written at the time. You get accurate information.

FW: I read Mrs Beeton, 1904, I remember, which I was actually brought up on for some reason because it was in the bookshelf and I just used to be... completely fascinated by what the under house maid did in the house... that you just... it was just the lists there of all the things you had to do and how they dovetailed and what the housekeeper did, and all this.

JM: It was the bible. We had it on the set. I learned to make table napkins into lilies.

FW: That's right.

JM: Incredibly useful thing to learn.

FW: Those wonderful illustrations in black and white of the folded... how you folded the starched napkins into the shapes. Terrific sort of formality really... but also a kind of pride. If it worked well there was a kind of pride...

JM: I was proud of my lilies.

FW: Yes.

MS: Do you still do them?

JM: No. [laughter] No, nothing like that.

MS: I think Fay probably knows this already but she wasn't your first choice of a writer for this series, was she? You had other ideas at first.

JM: Well, I... when we were...

FW: I didn't know that. [laughter]

JW: ...talking... Eileen and I were discussing - that's Eileen Atkins - were discussing... the very sort of beginning of it all with the production company that were going to do it. And they said 'have you any ideas for writers?' Neither of us really watch television very much and we just suggested writers. We suggested Harold Pinter, oh I can't remember... the man who...

MS: Ionesco.

JW: Ionesco. And I think it was because Eileen had done a play of his with Alec Guinness. So it was... we had no idea of how to get a really good writer to work for television.

MS: Also I think I read once that you suggested that Samuel Beckett might have been a good choice.

JM: Yes. We were very ambitious.

FW: Yes, but television writers had a very low profile at the time and it was a very low form of writing actually, to do really. Arnold Wesker did it and all those people.

JM: Yes, one-offs.

FW: The one-offs did it.

JM: But really you were one of the very first proper writers to write for a television series. And you did of course, in a way, have as much to do with the whole creation because the first episode... we retained our characters forever.

FW: Yes.

JM: So maybe we should give you some more money.

FW: Yes, I think so. No, the characters were so definite actually. You didn't have much choice. Though actually it was... which one of... who was going to write first? I think it was Rosemary Anne Sisson or me and I just happened to deliver...

JM: Oh really?

FW: Yes, I think so. And I just happened to do the first one. But by the time that... I mean television series were not so common. Nowadays it's... you know how it's done. You have a team of script editors who... it will be a very tight brief. But this was not a tight brief at all... my part was to introduce all these people somehow. And we don't have this cast of characters, we need the first episode in which we introduce them, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do... which you do by bringing in... as one worked out... you do by bringing somebody in from outside... to look at them all through those eyes and then give them all characters, so by the time the end of the first episode... everybody was fairly ironed in... because those particular characters and people...

JM: Except that we weren't ironed in because you gave us all, as I said, such rich characters that after you... I think altogether there were... fourteen writers worked on the 68 episodes. And after you, people would choose a different side of my character to exploit. And then I would go back to being unpleasant or charming, or whatever. But you also, the fact that you did that meant that we got very good writers.

FW: Yes.

JM: So it rather changed everything to do with television. People were quite keen to write for it. And Elizabeth Jane Howard wrote one or two.

MS: Fay, was it important that this was a series in which the women characters had perhaps rather more to do than in most TV series at the time?

FW: Well, yes. I could only really write for women. I sort of didn't understand men. I still don't really. And so the men... and actually I was terribly bored by upstairs really... I only really like downstairs... and the women are actually much realer, I thought, looking at this one... the men tend to be a bit stereotyped, whereas the women aren't. The women are more... the women are rounder. But this was just...

JM: I think in real life women are automatic actresses. We're a bit more flamboyant, we use our hands more. We're a bit more dramatic than men are.

FW: There weren't many women writers. I mean you would automatically think of men writers at the time because there were almost no... there was Rosemary Anne Sisson and me and...

JM: Charlotte Bingham.

FW: And Charlotte Bingham. But it was a very new thing for women to do, because mostly drama was written by men anyway and women weren't... it was Henry James, I think, who said that women were incapable of writing drama because they were too emotional and they couldn't oppose ideas... you know, they'd be too carried away by one idea and so they couldn't write drama. And this had somehow sunk into the national consciousness, that women didn't write drama. Add to that television which was seen as extremely technological and there was a vague kind of feeling that you had to understand how the television worked before you could write for it, which none of us still do. But you would say to women writers 'well, why don't you write for television?' They would look absolutely horrified and say 'but that's...' It was a male... it was a whole... it was a male preserve in a male world. It would somehow sometimes have women characters but they were always stereotypical... you were the mother, you were the whore, you were the wife, you were the lover, those were the four parts you had. And the men had the main action and the women reflected... I remember being told and I think it's probably still true on the stage, that if you have a man and a woman on the stage, the audience is always interested. If you have two men, they're interested. But if you have two women, they switch off. Do you think that's true? It used to be true and I used to watch it happening. The sort of general interest was somehow... or it certainly used to be that women were seen to be boring and men were interesting.

JM: I hadn't thought of that because I've never thought I was boring. I'm trying to think. I know that in the theatre, women are often just an echo. And to create a character... I'm about to do a play written by Alan Bennett, with Tim West. And Tim West has seventeen hundred very long speeches and I say the occasional thing. And I keep thinking 'I wouldn't listen to a man talking all this, I would jump in.' Or I would go, 'uh-hum' or 'shut up.'

FW: Or roll your eyes.

JM: Yes. So I think we have been listeners and reactors. But I don't think that's so true today.

FW: Much less so.

JM: What was interesting about the... Stella Richman was the big producer at London Weekend Television and she was in a position of great power and it had never occurred to Eileen and I - and I knew Stella quite well, I'd known her since I was quite young, because I'd been in the business for a long time - and she said to me 'why didn't you bring the idea to me directly? Why did you take it to a production company?' And I almost said 'I didn't know we were allowed.' It was years before we were accepted, Eileen and I, that actually we could write ourselves, anyway, I didn't know if we could get permission to write an episode, so I didn't even ask... and nobody suggested it. In those days - it's not that long ago - but in those days we were quite minor characters, all of us, actors as well.

MS: So why did you feel you had to go to a production company?

JM: Because I thought it... that's the only way it would get done. I saw a producer, I spoke to a producer that I had worked with before Upstairs, Downstairs, in a series called The Informer. And I'd liked him and I thought that was the way it would get done. I didn't think they would listen to two women, two silly actresses. So I did it through a producer that I'd worked with. I didn't have the confidence of being listened to.

MS: It's a series that latched onto, I guess, a number of issues from the period, I suppose. We get a certain number of these explored quite explicitly, don't we? The unwanted pregnancy, there's an episode that's sort of about homosexuality, isn't there? Was that a very conscious decision?

JM: I don't think it was initially. I think we certainly wanted to bring in incidents that happened and I was always a very political person and I wanted to see the other side of the coin. I really did want to see what happened... the difference between an upstairs girl having a baby and how it would be hushed up and she'd get married off if she was pregnant, and the downstairs. I think that my aim was towards my class, my working class-ness. And the producers' aim was more towards the upstairs. And then all of the writers liked working for different characters and different stairs. And I think they were... the producers were very good at asking writers... giving them freedom to work.

FW: They did. There was far more freedom with that arguably than anything else. You would take a whole big framework or... you know, upstairs is embarrassed because of a homosexual relationship or relative and then that would almost be all you would have. And you would just do it. There wasn't a sort of veto. I mean I did this thing... I was just used to writing things, I wasn't used to anybody asking me to change anything... I thought that was very odd. And I did the first... and I gave them the first script and they wanted various things changed so I rather unwillingly changed them and I gave them back - this is all par for the course these days, and then you give it back to them and then they ask for some more changes - and then they asked me for some more changes so I just gave them the first script back. [laughter] And they just found this wonderful. And I've never believed anybody since when they ask me to change anything.

JM: Oh, how very funny.

FW: Because usually your first idea was the best. But it's strange to them at first and so they thing there's something wrong with it. If you give them something familiar they instantly think it's all right.

JM: Well, I have a ruse that I never present anything to a producer or anybody saying 'first draft'. I always put fourth draft or seventh draft.

FW: Yes, that's very sensible.

JM: And then they're through. They think you've worked terribly hard.

FW: Very hard. And then they're at great pains... what they can't stand is the idea that you might think it was easy.

MS: Fay, you said that you were much more interested in what was going on downstairs than upstairs. But if the producer's more interested in what was going on upstairs than downstairs, probably, was there a sort of tension there? Did you feel dragged one way?

FW: Well, yes there was a tension but it was a very good tension. I mean because both Freddie and John Hawkesworth were sort of from the upper regions, really, of the world and if you... I remember I once had Hudson knocking on a door. And I got into terrible trouble for being so ignorant because butlers only knock on bedroom doors they never knock on living room doors. But, you have really to be brought up with butlers to be aware of this, I think.

JM: Or be a butler.

FW: Or indeed be a butler. But I had my downstairs credentials because my mother was a housekeeper and we were the housekeeper's daughters and we lived in the basement. So the whole thing... you know, we were very conscious of this... the injustice of these decisions because downstairs was so much more competent than the people upstairs usually. And so there were, of course there were, tensions but I think they worked to the benefit of what we were doing. I mean, sometimes we were just really lucky, I think we were just sometimes really lucky with Upstairs, Downstairs. Nobody expected it to be in the least successful. It was put on very late at night.

JM: It was put on the shelf for a long time. They didn't like it.

FW: It was put on the shelf and then it was shown. But you just sort of... and I remember going round to... we'd been asked out to dinner and they put this on after dinner and I watched it and I just thought 'that's terrific.' And you sort of knew because there was a sort of buzz in the air, somehow. That there was something that actually happened and it's very rare this feeling that there is something that is just absolutely on the button and timely.

JM: Having resisted showing it for a long time and having shot some of them in black and white because there was a colour strike and then not letting us do any more re-shooting... everything else at the studio was re-shot when the strike was over in colour except for Upstairs, Downstairs and only the first episode was re-shot. So there was that kind of doom and then the heads of the studio changed about halfway through and the new people wanted to create their own stuff and all they did was let us finish the series. And there was no thought of when or if it was shown. And they had a slot at, I think, 10.15 on a Sunday night, and they were only going to show six. And with no help whatsoever, the critics and the public all liked it. And that was very, very unusual in those days, for the critics to like it and the public to like it.

MS: Why do you think LWT were so indifferent to it? Because I mean 10.15 on a Sunday night, that's traditionally the slot you put something in to kill it, isn't it?

JM: Bad taste, I suppose.

FW: But they just didn't... television management are like that on the whole...

JM: And also they hadn't made it, they had taken over from the previous people and new producers always want their own new product.

FW: New management doesn't want to do anything really that's been left over from the last one...

JM: Yes and that does still happen.

MS: Now the strike meant that the first few episodes were only made in black and white but you were allowed to go back and shoot episode one again in colour, weren't you? And that created a problem as far as... you had to do some acrobatics, didn't you, as far as the writing was concerned because the whole thing had to...

JM: Well, the end had to be changed.

FW: Yes, I seem to remember that.

JM: Two different endings.

FW: Yes of course.

JM: One ending... the coloured ending had to be different to the black and white one because the black and white one had the other four or five episodes developing whereas the colour one went forward to episode six or seven. So that was played around with. And I think a year was dropped somewhere. Somewhere in the series, I think it was when Master James came back or... I know that we went back a year and nobody questioned it... but that was too much... something.

FW: Yes, I think the first ending... I think that ending, I think that scene at the end was a bit flat really...

JM: In the colour? The black and white one... did she... did Sarah leave?

MS: No, she stays. She goes in the colour one, doesn't she? Because then she has to... because it has to be...

JM: Oh, because that matches, I'm sorry...

MS: ...stitched together with the later episodes, doesn't it?

JM: Yes.

FW: That's it.

MS: Presumably because they sold the colour ones abroad but the black and white ones never went anywhere, did they?

JM: The black and white ones were shown here, but they weren't shown in America until years later. And then they were presented with... advertised as if they were the hidden Upstairs, Downstairs, the ones you've never seen. You think, goodness, they'll think I'm naked in bed with Sarah or something. It was a very clever thing to do and it was just, you know, a television series.

MS: Perhaps we should talk about the relations between Rose and Sarah. Because it is a rather intense one, isn't it? I mean that moment that we see, right at the end of the episode, with the hairbrush.

JM: Well, yes, but it wasn't sexual. It was absolutely normal in a household. My sister and I shared a double bed, servants did. You wouldn't have twin beds. And also it was freezing so of course you would cuddle. And you were starved of real relationships. It's all very well saying the upstairs people were 'quite nice' to us but you didn't have a... you hardly ever went out. And you didn't have warm friendships. So for me, for Rose, to brush Sarah's hair was using some of the warmth and love that was in her, which was stifled. But it wasn't a sort of... some newspapers have written about it as if there was hidden gayness in it and...

FW: No, there wasn't. No there was human... just emotion really.

JM: No, it was quite normal.

FW: It was. If you think... I mean the Great Bed of Ware in the Victoria and Albert... this enormous bed, which was just the servant's bed. Everybody slept in the bed. And sex was for out of doors in the spring. Everyone was too tired... and cold.

JM: Yes.

MS: Fay, what did you make of the political reception of this? Were you pleased by its progress?

FW: I can't remember really. I think... one's always pleased. I was fired, you know, quite early on actually... because of one's behaviour.

MS: I think we ought to talk about that. Because you did take your name off the credits of one episode didn't you?

FW: Well you see... yes, I did because they changed things and I thought they changed it too much. There was too much of Freddie and not enough of me in it, you see.

JM: Freddie Shaughnessy was the script editor.

FW: He did love to write everything you see, if he possibly could. And so yes, you'd take your... if you took your name off in those days, you only got a third of your fee.

JM: And you regret it now?

FW: Yes, I regretted it almost at once. But you know, one was like that in those days... one was sort of stroppy really.

JM: Yes, but why would you want your...

FW: You have to be grateful.

JM: ...alright to have some suggestions that you should stick to some kind of outline, but why would you want it rewritten? Why would you want sentences and action that you would not have written yourself?

FW: No, well exactly, that's what you thought. So it wasn't that it was any better or any worse, it was just different...

JM: It was not yours.

FW: It was not your work and so you did not want your name on it if it wasn't your work. It used to happen quite a lot in those days and we had somebody... called Jane Franklin, whom we enrolled in the Writers Guild, who we could put the name on... if it was work which when it came out, it was...

JM: Oh, like A.N. Other.

FW: Exactly... was work that we didn't... that had been... that during the production process had come out... so that it was barely recognisable as yours, which would happen... you would then just give them this other name Jane Franklin...

JM: But you would get the money.

FW: Well, you would get some of the money... you wouldn't get all of it actually because there was a fine for doing that kind of thing.

JM: A fine?

FW: There was a fine so you know... yes it was... but then the other thing was that actually... because I had this incident of me giving them back the original script and then doing it... I didn't tell anybody but I'd put all the workings in a cardboard box, and a journalist was writing a thing about the making of a television series and so I just handed this box over and he was able... and he worked out what it was that I'd done you see.

JM: Because you'd gone back to number 1...

FW: Because he was a... and I'd just gone back to number 1 script. And he wrote about this. And this really did upset them and I was seen as ungrateful and frivolous, you know.

JM: Oh, you weren't ungrateful but I hope...

FW: Oh, no, I was ungrateful because I...

JM: But frivolous is a wonderful thing to be.

FW: Yes, it is. But I was seen as ungrateful because I had done this and I wasn't probably...

JM: Actually, they should be grateful to have you...

FW: Yes, but they didn't feel like that, they just thought that I was just another writer, really, just another writer.

MS: Jean, how much input did you have into the programme, once it had been established and you're there, you're obviously a leading figure in the cast, you've got your name on the credits, but what kind of influence over the stories did you have?

JM: Very little. I spent most of my time complaining really. I was always asking them to be more realistic downstairs. And I was asking to have political things from the point of view of the servants. And most of the political things... the big incidents that happened, like the Titanic and the king coming to dinner, and there was very little to show what working-class people went through. And I was quite keen on... if you showed the relations of upstairs then I thought you should show the relations of downstairs. So I spent quite a lot of time badgering and whining. And I would say, of any of my suggestions, maybe one percent might have been used. Because they had a very funny idea, I still don't understand... and people say that John Hawkesworth and Freddie Shaughnessy were both, you know, upper middle-class and posh and therefore they were absolutely the right people to run it, because they knew all about it. And I thought 'excuse me, but what about me? Why wouldn't I know?' I would have been experienced from the downstairs point of view, why wouldn't you have a servant involved? They knew more about upstairs than they knew about themselves.

MS: So was the relationship between the producers and the writers and the actors mirroring the structure of the household then?

FW: Yes, it was.

JM: It changed.

FW: We were kept apart, actually.

JM: They didn't like writers and actors being friends.

FW: Getting together, no they didn't.

JM: Because they thought we would cosy up and get the writers to write for us. So that was quite frowned on.

MS: What kind of things did actors like you to do then? Was there a particular direction they tried to push you in?

FW: Well, yes: Mrs Bridges. I mean Mrs Bridges just wanted to be loveable. And if I didn't give her loveable lines, she got very stroppy.

MS: Was that Angela Baddeley?

JM: Yes.

FW: No, she did. And she wanted to be... and in fact, indeed, you know, she did come over like that and she was the cuddly cook, whereas I was writing her as this ferocious woman...

JM: Well, I think that in this first episode you do see a steely side of Mrs Bridges, which gradually faded away.

FW: It faded away...

JM: And I adored Angela. She was one of my best friends in it. But I can remember her sitting in make-up, saying 'I don't understand. I don't understand. They love Mrs Bridges and they want to love Mrs Bridges' and I thought 'well, that's not the idea.' They will love her and they will also think 'oh, she's a bitch.'

FW: And then I was told that my lines were too difficult to learn.

JM: That's very funny.

MS: Did they give you an example?

JM: That's terribly funny coming from actors who've done Shakespeare and everything.

FW: Yes, no it wasn't from the actors, it was... no, I mean there were various reasons given to me and that was another of them. It was...

JM: They wanted obedience. The producers wanted obedience eventually.

FW: They wanted obedience. And they wanted no trouble and it was difficult. It was coming out at a great rate and it was true, there were all sorts of practical difficulties and you really couldn't cause too much trouble.

MS: So they thought you should know your place then, did they?

FW: Yes, of course.

JM: And she didn't, clearly.

FW: What?

JM: She went on and wrote lots of successful and brilliant books, which was also ungrateful of her.

FW: Yes, it was... well, yes, but I didn't owe it to them. But as a writer you find you have to... whichever area you're writing in they tend to despise you... if you write somewhere else it's all right. If you're writing television, everybody in television thinks, you know, let's get another writer. But if you write a novel, the television people think you're very exciting. If you write a novel, the novel people think 'oh, she's just a novelist'. 'She writes for television.' So you have to always keep your reputation going somewhere else.

JM: Move around.

FW: Yes.

MS: Did either of you have any experience of the American version, in effect, of Upstairs, Downstairs, Beacon Hill?

FW: No, I had nothing to do with it.

MS: Did you see it?

FW: But you did, didn't you?

JM: I saw it. But I wasn't consulted about it. I was asked... Eileen and I were asked for our joint permission with the company's, Sagitta, and it sounded like quite a good idea. And we would have made a lot of money if it had been successful. And they were going to involve people who were very good. Mainly, the actors who were in it were New York theatre actors. And then I did see it. I remember I was in America at the time when the first episode was shown and I walked - I was in Nantucket, a beach village - and I was walking down the street at night with my boyfriend and we looked in windows and every single house we passed, people were watching Beacon Hill. And I thought 'well, I'm going to be rich.' But it was a disaster, nothing about it works. And it would be very difficult to say where the blame lay, except I suppose with the producers. It was far from being the idea that Upstairs, Downstairs was. It was superficial and sentimental. It was silly. I could understand why we didn't make any money. And it stopped abruptly.

MS: Could either of you envisage Upstairs, Downstairs being revived, remade, reworked in any way?

JM: Well, we do get approached a lot and there've been millions of ideas but it's incredibly difficult because 68 episodes... Mr Hudson, Ruby, Mr Bellamy, those... the faces are imprinted on people. And look what happened... that television series Bewitched was made long after the event and it just didn't work. But there have been many, many suggestions of how to do it. The only suggestion - I've just remembered - that I thought was going to work was... some extremely good Americans were going to write a musical. And that was... Hugh Wheeler was doing the book and Burton Lane and Sheldon Harnick were doing the music and lyrics. And I thought that really has a chance of doing it. But then... I don't know, that fizzled away.

FW: I think the sort of ground in which these things grow is paved, it's not just the thing itself, but it is that Upstairs, Downstairs was written in the 70s, just as the feminist movement was getting going, and there was another element to it which was the nature of women's lives and women's work, which is now so different. But it wouldn't work, it wouldn't run now, in a way, because women's view of themselves, the audience's view of themselves and what's important is so very different now.

JM: If they did it again and moved forward in time, it simply wouldn't be the same situation. And then if you... we've had suggestions of remaking it, set in the period that it was made and writing new stories. And so you think 'I don't understand why anyone would want to watch it.'

FW: You see, if you tried to put it forward and did a science fiction version of it... you couldn't try harder could you... it wouldn't work. So why...?

JM: Not a bad idea.

MS: Now the house lights have come on, which I think is a reminder that I have to stop hogging Jean and Fay and turn the questions out over to the audience. So if you do have a question for them, then stick your hand up. Yes... is there a mic or do we just shout. Yes, I think so, oh no, there is a mic. We might as well hear it then everybody in the house...

Audience member: Shout...

MS: Yes, I think so... oh no, there is a mic. We might as well do it then everybody in the house can hear you.

Audience member: Hello. There is, of course, that famous quote about television being first-rate electronic theatre and not second-rate film, associated with Upstairs, Downstairs. I was just wondering, I can't imagine it being made either fifteen years earlier or fifteen years later because it's so of its time. And I wondered when you're acting and when you were writing for it, did you take into account that sort of very straightforward direction that was put on it, in the early 70s? That it's so... I think it's transparent. You don't get all the clutter of mise-en-scène and all the media studies junk that gets chucked at things nowadays. You just get people doing the character-driven pieces to a camera with very minimal interference. I wonder if... could you see it being done at any other time? Or do you think you grow as you evolve?

FW: I think that's very interesting because I... the first thing... I suppose I'd been writing television for only about two years or three years when I did this. But I've watched... I've seen it change, it is so extraordinary, just in those years. That we went from no edits - I was allowed one edit, I remember, which was done with a razor blade - otherwise you had to write almost as if live, and you wrote as you wrote for stage, except you knew that it was being filmed. And you could use different cameras. But that was the only cutting or editing there was. So you wrote differently. Now within the space of that three years, editing had come in. Scenes were getting shorter but that tradition of a filmed play was still there. And the tradition had to leave and move from the stage to cinema. And there was this odd bit in between, where, as you say, the camera just watched and cut, but by that time the writers were writing shorter scenes. Because you could do it whereas before you hadn't been able to.

JM: But something changed.

FW: But always the technology so wonderfully used to follow the writing.

JM: It used to be a writer's medium.

FW: It was a writer's medium.

JM: And then it became a director's medium.

FW: Yes. And if you wrote something which was difficult for them to do, they would invent a technology to make it possible to do it. Because this was the way... this was where the energy and the skill was going. Into creating something that... and to create a new media...

JM: We were terribly lucky as actors to be working in this at that time. We had... it was a very theatrical experience. And we had a lot of energy and immediacy. We rehearsed for at least eight or nine days. And towards the end of rehearsals, the crew were allowed to come in - cameramen, lighting men - and watch. And they would contribute something. We had two days in the studio: one long day, which was a technical day, just for cameras, and partially we might change; and then on the second day we did a dress rehearsal in the morning and we had usually three or three and a half hours for the whole one hour. So, of course we were very hyped up. It was a very theatrical experience. We had those long, long scenes. It wasn't done in order totally, because of wig changes or set changes but it was... there was a lot of continuity and it was wonderful for us as actors. It was much easier than doing short scenes that bore no relation to each other, which is what happens now.

MS: Anybody else, yes, you right in the middle there.

Audience member: Thank you. A question for Jean: you became a very much loved character during the series and I just wondered whether that remained a blessing to you or were there times that you cursed your popularity as Rose.

JM: Well, it remained a blessing. I was very lucky. I'd never played a maid before... I don't think I'd ever used my working class accent before. And I never used it I don't think again, really. I wasn't typecast ever. Yes, I was very well known as Rose but my name was known partly because of the publicity that I'd personally got for being in it and co-creating it. So I was as well known as Jean Marsh as I was as Rose and I wasn't typecast, so it remains to this day an unadulterated blessing and it's thrilling when people recognise me and say hello from that. Because they smile. They're pleased to meet me. Somebody talked to me yesterday on the tube and was very worried that I was on the tube. And why wasn't I in a chauffeur-driven car. And when he got off the tube, he said 'thank you for talking to me.' [laughter] I've been very lucky. I went on immediately... I started doing another job - I went to New York and did a play on Broadway - before the series was ended. They recorded it out of order so that I could go. And I've played loads of different parts. And the only kind of role that I've played consistently over and over again are witches. I've done nine witches. But only one maid. So it's been blessing, yes. [laughter]

MS: Anybody else? Yes, on the second row here.

Audience member: A very short question, also for Jean. Were you surprised by the - well for both of you actually - were you surprised by the popularity in the United States, of the series?

JM: I was stunned by the reception of it - that Time magazine reviewed it on its first outing, very, very favourably. But what it... it was a success so quickly, again in America, not that one got used to it but... why not? And after all, it was shown in America on a special network. It wasn't one of the three major networks, it was shown on Public Broadcasting and I think when it was first shown, it was called The Educational Programme, which is not such a big turn-on. I'd worked in America a bit, I went to New York when I was 22 first of all, to do a play and I'd worked in everything. I'd done some classic cult work - you have to be very careful if you say 'cult' - so I knew America quite well and I did think that America would like it. Especially if they were told to by the press.

MS: Did it bring any positive benefit for you, Fay, success in America?

FW: Well, not particularly because, you know, because again at the time the writer was really a very minimal part. You were part of the crew really. You know. So it didn't... I didn't doubt it would be a success because it just seemed to be a real offering. And actually if you give something real to people, they usually respond.

MS: Yes, there's one at the side there.

Audience member: Thanks for coming, huge fan, Jean, whatever tablets you take, can you let me know which ones they are. You both look great.

MS: You're that man on the tube, aren't you?

Audience member: No. I think we all think that, that's why we're here. The success of the series, incredible characterisations, people still 30 years later know when they call butlers, they call them Mr Hudson, Mrs Bridges, you know, it's incredible. Working with those great people, how much of it was - when they moved on - was it the producers saying 'had enough of John Alderton' or Chris Beeny or whatever and how much of it was them moving on themselves? And as a question to Fay, which characters who then moved on did you go 'bugger, there was so much more we could have done with them.' You know, like Pauline Collins left after a couple of series.

JM: Well, I can answer about Pauline. Pauline's part was originally devised and written for Eileen Atkins. We had thought of the television series so we would play the maids. And then Eileen was working and couldn't do it, and didn't really want to be in a television series. So it was re-written for Pauline. But it was written as a character who only came in briefly, and then it was extended a little bit. So it... she wasn't fired in any way, in fact she was brought back when she wanted to. I think John Alderton wanted to leave. I know that Lady Marjorie, Rachel Gurney felt that she wanted to go - and she regretted it, she wanted to come back but of course she couldn't because she'd drowned on the Titanic. [laughter] With Meg Wynn Owen, that was mutual, they couldn't think of... she thought she'd stretched the character as much as she could so she didn't mind leaving and they didn't mind her going. I don't think anybody was fired. I used to threaten the cast with being fired if they weren't nice to me because we had a wonderful thing of... if anybody went to Southwold to stay with Lady Marjorie's mother, it meant either that they were going to die or go, or they would have two or three episodes where they wouldn't be paid, of course. So nobody... I used to say 'if you're not careful, you'll be sent to Southwold.' [laughter]

MS: Fay, is there any character that did leave that you thought 'I could have done another series with them'?

FW: Well, I suppose Pauline, one felt... you know, you felt you could have taken that on. And yet... you know, with all these things, it is quite hard to develop them because they have... they are in the end what they are. And you can't do too... you can change their circumstances but you're not going to change them. And, in a way, any of the characters you think you could have done more with because... but there wasn't the time or the space or the possibility.

JM: And then Pauline was such a volatile character that she wouldn't have been like that if she had settled down in Eton Place.

FW: No, she'd have become... she feared herself didn't she?

JM: Yes. So that was correct.

MS: I think we might have to end it. Do we have time for one more question? Yes, we have time for one more, oh, I'm sorry, let's have a very quick one from the front there then and I think we'll have to end it there. The microphone is on its way to you.

Audience member: From what you've just said, does that mean that you had actually no input at all into the Thomas and Sarah series that came on after Upstairs, Downstairs?

JM: I didn't have any input into Thomas and Sarah. I had to be asked if it was all right, of course. And many people had to be asked because those characters were created as much by writers. But I didn't have any input into it and I've never seen it either. But then I haven't seen all of Upstairs, Downstairs so that's... one of those things.

MS: With that, we really do have to end it, I'm afraid. So it just remains for me to ask you to join with me to thank Fay and Jean very much for coming to talk to us this evening. Thank you very much Fay and Jean.

[applause]