On 16 March 2020, Emilia Clarke went on stage with the cast of The Seagull. Previews had started, and the actor was about to make her much-anticipated West End debut after a decade starring in some of the biggest films and TV shows imaginable. At the half-hour mark, everything stopped: the government had decreed that theatres were to shut with immediate effect. Lost and adrift, everyone huddled into a pub, which was filled with crowds from the surrounding theatres. “My lawyer from America was calling about something,” recalls Clarke now. “And she was like, ‘Get out of the pub!’ We had no idea of the enormity of it.”
Events, of course, got in the way. Two-and-a-bit years on, we meet at The Seagull rehearsal studios in south London, a cavernous former warehouse with a skeletal stage set up in the middle of it. Not much is known about Jamie Lloyd’s production of the classic Chekhov play, but hopefully it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say – based on a diorama sitting on a side table – that it will feature some chairs. “There are no distractions,” says Clarke. “We don’t have a samovar. There’s no linen. There aren’t any trees. No one’s in crinoline. What we’re doing could be seen as quite radical. I think it might be Marmite.”
