Given that Lady Tressilian rarely leaves her boudoir, it was an enjoyable role. “I was very happily in bed, one of my favourite places, generally,” says Anjelica Huston, of the regal aristo she plays in the new BBC adaptation of the 1944 Agatha Christie mystery Towards Zero. Despite the fact she is mostly horizontal, occasionally at a chair by the window and peering through a telescope at the Devon bay beyond, Tressilian is a domineering character, presiding over the younger relations she has assembled at her seaside home and making her displeasure known at their various life choices. There will, of course, be murders.
Huston was reminded of the older women she had known from her childhood in Ireland, “mostly on the hunting field, but occasionally in their bedrooms. They were very dignified and gracious, and they ran life with a rod of steel. They were very brave and had big reputations. The men were always a bit in the background.” Tressilian’s bell rings, and everyone from servants to her relations and lawyer (he’s there on the thorny matter of her will), is commanded to attention. “It’s a great way to presage a character, an inbuilt warning,” says Huston.
