Pippa Bennett-Warner On Maxxx, Roadkill And A Very Prolific 2020

In 2020, television has become king. As lockdown regulations took hold earlier this year, with a true end still not in sight, we have turned to beloved series and consumed fresh, new options with hunger. If you own a TV, in this year of all years, then you have almost certainly come across Pippa Bennett-Warner.

Gangs of London, on Sky Atlantic in April? Pippa was in it. Sitting in Limbo, on BBC One in June? Pippa was in it. Look At Me on ITV in August? Pippa was in it. Harlots, on BBC Two in September? Pippa was in it. On Saturday, BBC One kicks off David Hare’s new drama Roadkill, and later this month Channel 4 airs riotous new comedy Maxxx. Guess who’s in both?

I first met Pippa in February of this year, at a lavish dinner hosted in a Mayfair restaurant. Catching up over the phone, six months later, it’s a shame that such a meeting is firmly off the cards, although Pippa found the initial stages of lockdown more manageable than some. ‘Within the profession, you just never really know what's coming next’, she explains. ‘So there is that element of everything always being very uncertain. But this is all so ongoing and so unfamiliar. On one hand, it felt like it always does when I’m not working, but on the other hand, I could never work again!’

That, I firmly assure her, is unlikely to be the case. But the arts have suffered tremendously, and the face of the industry will be forever changed.

‘I'm devastated about the theatre’, she says. ‘Of course about the actors, but also the technicians, the wardrobe mistress, the costume designers, the ushers. It’s a whole world that makes the theatre go. It’s so much more than the people on stage. I’m just really hopeful that next year the theatres can start again, especially in London. We’re such a theatre-positive city that without it, it feels odd.’

She has got through lockdown with the help of the obvious cultural offerings – Unorthodox, I May Destroy You, Tiger King – but also discovered a guilty pleasure.

‘I ended up watching the entire Mark Wahlberg back catalogue’, she admits, sounding slightly embarrassed. ‘I’m a fan now. I’ve watched a couple of them twice. I don’t know what was going on, but he got me through.’

She is surely paying it forward with her own TV presence, and while Pippa was always going to have a screen-heavy 2020, it has caught her slightly by surprise. ‘When I finish any job, I shut the door on it and start the next thing,’ she says. ‘It’s just my job, in a way. But there hasn’t been a next thing! So it’s been more clear in my mind that I’m on the telly. It’s a bit weird.’

Gangs Of London was a must as soon as she sat down with the script. ‘I remember reading the opening two pages, and just thought, “Oh, my God”’, she recalls. ‘Immediately, you’re sucked in.’ She filmed the show alongside her work on the third series of Harlots. ‘To play an ex-prostitute in London, and then Shannon in Gangs, it was nice to be able to dip into the two worlds’, she explains. ‘I think they’d get on quite well, actually.’ Then, it was onto Maxxx, a comedy series about a former boyband member who’s trying to relaunch his career and regain the attention of his ex, Jourdan Dunn.

‘It’s a completely different skill, comedy,’ Pippa says. ‘Luckily the other actors are comedic geniuses – I’m surrounded by people who can do it very well. So you have to flick a switch in your brain. It requires a different skill. That was the challenge, that I didn’t know if I was actually going to be very good at it.’ She is: Maxxx is a real, well-observed treat, uproariously funny.

‘I’m a bit of a laugher’, Pippa concedes. ‘I laugh a lot off camera. With Maxxx, there were takes that I couldn’t get through because I was laughing so much. But I had to laugh on MotherFatherSon too, just because it was so, so serious. Or with Roadkill, you’re dealing with tricky materials, but you have to giggle between takes. It’s the balance: you have to know that you’re taking the work seriously, but you don’t have to take yourself seriously.’

MotherFatherSon, which aired last year, was indeed pretty serious. It was, at times, so dark and unceasingly sad that it was difficult to watch. For Pippa, though, it meant working alongside Hollywood royalty, with her character an assistant always at the side of press magnate Max Finch, played by Richard Gere.

‘The first time I met him I literally said “this is Richard fucking Gere”, and then I had to have a conversation with myself’, she recalls. ‘I said to myself “you need to pull it together. You’re in pretty much every scene with him. He’s such a pro. You have to do your job.” Helen McCrory, who also starred in the show, joins her again in Roadkill, which stars Hugh Laurie as a politician whose life begins to spiral. David Hare, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter, is behind the script.

‘I almost worked with David a few years ago, but it didn’t work out, so this was a 100% yes’, says Pippa. ‘I thought the piece was really good, and of course the cast – Hugh Laurie, Helen McCrory – is so good.’ It seems an inevitable success, but she doesn’t look at work in this way.

‘I think I've learned not to try and predict’, she says. ‘Because there's so much content out there, and you just don't know what's going to land. Something can come out and get terrible reviews, but everybody watches it. Then something else comes out, nobody watches it and it gets great reviews. You’re rolling the dice and seeing where it lands.’

Nevertheless, it’s been a good year: Gangs Of London was a huge hit - ‘It’s a brilliant show, but it was also just so needed: people really needed something like that to watch and invest in’ – while the BBC’s acquisition of Harlots (it had previously languished on ITV Encore) gave it a new, much-deserved lease of life. ‘It’s a show led by, directed, produced and starring women’, she points out. ‘But no one could find it! It’s a really important show, I think, so it’s great that people are enjoying it now.’

If her 2020 output is anything to go by, Pippa has earned a rest while the world and its arts scene takes stock and rebuilds. But then, who knows? Maybe a Mark Wahlberg film?

‘God yeah’, she laughs. ‘It would be a walk in the park. I’d have my freak-out before going to set, but I’m sure it would be fine.’

Mark, await her call.

Roadkill will premiere on BBC One on Sunday October 18th at 9pm

Maxxx will premiere on Channel 4 on Thursday October 29th at 10pm

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