Not that you could immediately tell from her chipper manner, but Emily Barber is tired and a little hungover. It is the morning after the premiere of Mobland and the cocktails went down a little too well.
“They had a Maeve cocktail, named after Helen Mirren’s character. It was just pure alcohol,” she winces.
But the exhaustion is also due to them having wrapped the filming of the series yesterday too. Which seems like cutting things fine.
“There’s normally a bit of breathing space but we have quite literally just finished it,” she says, “Seeing everyone at the premiere was funny, we’re just so tired. The whole thing’s been quite mad. It was written as we went so none of us knew our character arcs. It was unique and a thrilling way to work.”
Mobland is thrilling on screen too, a crime drama full of shocks, twists and excellent swearing; part-directed by Guy Ritchie, it has been a big global hit for Paramount+. Among the likes of Tom Hardy, Mirren and Pierce Brosnan, Barber has been sensational as 33-year-old Alice, who seems an innocuous friend of Hardy’s on-screen wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt), then turns out to be anything but.
Remarkably — and back on the exhaustion front — Barber was filming scenes during the day while also appearing in Operation Mincemeat on the West End at night.
“I mean, first world problems,” she says. “But I’d finish the show, drive to the Cotswolds, arrive at 1.30am and get picked up at 5am to do a day’s filming, then go back to the theatre at night. It was more about surviving. But actors spend so much time doing nothing, actually it’s an experience I’ll look back on with great love. But at the time it was more about surviving!”
Barber is from Peterborough and fell in love with the theatre early — “at a young age, I did Jesus Christ Superstar and I was Judas, and my dad was like, ‘You’re actually not bad’ — coming up via the National Youth Theatre and bagging her first stage roles in New York while still at drama school.
“One of my early jobs was The Importance of Being Earnest with David Suchet. He was playing Lady Bracknell, my mum. Between shows he’d teach me Shakespeare and has been a mentor ever since.”
As for Mobland’s scenes with other greats, that was surreal fun for her: “We had this dinner scene where Helen Mirren was passing me potatoes and Pierce Brosnan was carving the beef. I was opposite Bond — and a dame! But at the same time, because the scenes were being written as we went, everyone was just scared about learning their lines. We were all the same.”
Mobland is on Paramount+ now
Main shot:
Photographer: David Reiss
Stylist: Alexandria Reid
Make Up: Jade Bird
Hair: Michela Olivieri
