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Fiona Button: “Divorce brings siblings closer together”

Fiona Button: “Divorce brings siblings closer together”

“Abi likes to test us, doesn’t she?” says Fiona Button, star of beloved BBC legal series The split. “Abi” is the show’s creator, Abi Morgan, and “we” are the Defoe sisters – Rose (Button), Nina (Annabel Scholey) and Hannah (Nicola Walker).

She’s right. Over three series watched by more than five million viewers per episode, the sisters have certainly been put to the test. While Hannah endured a long and painful divorce from her lawyer husband Nathan (Stephen Mangan), torn between her family and her lover, Christie (Barry Atsma), Nina had a baby with an irresponsible comedian and decided to raise him on her. clean, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and was defrauded of her savings by the deceitful Tyler (Damien Molony).

Rose, the “baby of the family” and the only Defoe not working in the divorce law firm run by their mother Ruth (Deborah Findlay), has in the meantime suffered a miscarriage, lost her husband James in a road accident and had doubts. on the identity of his biological father.

Although the focus is on women, The Splits A rich dive into the complexities of human relationships has made it beloved by all genders – or at least in our household. Is this also Button’s experience?

Screen sisters, from left, Annabel Scholey, Nicola Walker and Fiona Button (Photo: Daniel Escale/BBC)

“Actually, people who come up to me in the street and tell me that they feel really attached to it, it’s quite egalitarian in terms of gender,” she says. “I think maybe (watching the show) is encouraged by the women in the household but is not challenged by the men. We can all relate, right?

In fact, Button takes umbrage with critics who have called The split “soapy”. “Being arrogant like that always bothered me,” she says. “And I think it’s a little sexist actually. If there’s no homicide or an alien landing, then it’s about relationships and it’s about feelings and so it’s somehow less than. Most people are lucky enough not to have been close to a homicide in their life, but everyone has known love and everyone has been part of a family, so it speaks to a common experience .

We meet in the lobby of a discreetly luxurious London hotel to discuss two specialties of The split which will be broadcast on BBC One tonight and tomorrow. The third and final series aired in 2022 – with Rose finding closure after James’ death by visiting the man who received her deceased husband’s donor heart.

The specials see our favorite characters, plus a few guest stars (including Toby Stephens), decamp to Catalonia for a wedding. Whose marriage and what happens in Spain must stay in Spain for fear of spoilers. “It’s kind of a romantic comedy gift to cheer us up at Christmas,” Button says. I’m a little surprised she calls it a romantic comedy, because the first episode I watched ended with a characteristic stew of messy relationships to the breaking point. “Of course, everything works out,” she replies.

Two new special episodes of ‘The Split’ take place in Barcelona (Photo: Daniel Escale/BBC)

In person, Button is friendly and funny. When I ask her about her work with Nicola Walker, this accomplished interpreter of deep emotions, she replies: “Yes, but she is dead inside. » In fact, Button says she learned a lot from her co-star. “A lot of actors get a script and they’ll have problems, but Nicola is literally there to service the script. I don’t want to give the impression that she does good scripts. What I mean is, she has such integrity…she’s all there.

Button herself was born in 1983 in Lausanne, Switzerland, to a Swiss mother, Jacqueline, and an English father, Charles. “My mother picked him up hitchhiking when he was in Switzerland,” she says. “They were very young when they had my sister and I, and then it quickly became clear that they weren’t meant for each other.”

Her parents divorced when she was four, Button and her older sister went to live with her mother in Berkshire, while her father started a new family. “One of the things about divorce is that it brings siblings closer together. Certainly, my older sister and I have a pretty unbreakable bond. Because my father’s side of the family was separate, it was like we were a team.

This experience shed light on Rose’s relationship with her father Oscar (played by Antony Head) in the first series. “I could definitely exploit some things there, for sure,” she says.

Fresh out of drama school, Button was cast alongside Dame Judi Dench in Yukio Mishima’s 2009 production Donmar. Madame de Sade. Button, suffering from the nerves of the first night, gleaned an important life lesson from Dench. “It’s just theater,” she said to the young ingénue. “It stuck with me,” Button says.

Since this inauspicious beginning, Button’s stage career has flourished, including a title role in Royal Shakespeare’s famous re-imagining of JM Barrie, Wendy and Peter Panand most recently as Cecily Cardew in a 2018 West End production The importance of being serious.

“Sometimes TV can be a real chore,” she says. “But there is a magic in theater. You can’t beat the moment when you see everyone putting on their costumes and it’s opening night and all that.

Theater may have been her first love, but she now prefers doing television because the schedules are more conducive to raising her seven-year-old daughter, Fordy. Button married Fordy’s father, screenwriter Henry Fleet, in 2014, although the random story of how they met seems worthy of a subplot in The split.

“My best friend introduced us,” she said. “We had planned a first date and I didn’t come because I had met someone in the meantime. The poor guy was waiting outside the theater, but this was back in the Nokia days and I had sent him a text and it didn’t arrive.

As fate would have it, the couple met again at the Royal Court two years later. “Maybe if we had gotten together sooner it would have been a disaster. Who knows?

Button’s other recent TV roles include finally playing a lawyer (in the acclaimed third series of the BBC One series). Industry), and Channel 4’s euthanasia drama true love. “It didn’t make much of a splash because Mr. Bates versus the Post Office was broadcast the same week,” she says. “But I thought (assisted dying) was a very interesting topic. And it’s so relevant now.

She also has several upcoming television roles, including a remake of The Forsyte saga and BBC One dope girls. About Soho’s illicit night scene that developed after World War I, dope girls can be presented as filling the void left by Peaky Blindersbut it’s yet another drama, like The splitwhich puts its female characters at the forefront.

“And it’s much more common now to see women of different ages on these shows,” Button says. “Meanwhile, there are so many wonderful young female writers creating these roles – Lucy Prebble, Sharon Horgan and Phoebe Waller-Bridge for example. It’s less obvious behind the camera, even though we had Giulia Gandini directing. The split special. I think I saw an interview with Nicole Kidman where she said she was only going to work with female directors, so we’re looking to find a balance.

Abi Morgan, who also directed episodes of The splitruled out other series, while a spin-off series featuring an Asian British lawyer family in Manchester, The separationwas delayed for “editorial reasons.” In the meantime, fans will enjoy the two Christmas specials. As Button says: “It’s cold outside and the world is a scary place, so let’s look at some more characters on vacation.” »

‘The Split’ is on BBC One at 9pm tonight and tomorrow