I can never see myself as being one of those people who goes on Question Time,” Anne-Marie Duff says, thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t feel that’s where I can articulate myself. But I guess I feel like a political person. I’ve never defined myself that way, but everything is a political issue. And I’m a mum, so everything cracks you open and forces you to think about your village, your global village. And you give a damn.”
She smiles and sits back in her chair. We’re talking in the bar of the Almeida, deserted except for the occasional delivery man. Politics is on the agenda because she is starring in Beth Steel’s epic new play The House of Shades, a saga of working-class life that tracks the fortunes of a family from the relatively hopeful mid-1960s, when a belief in progress for the poor seemed to be engrained in society, to the disillusion and frustration of 2019, when jobs and prospects have vanished.
