Isla featured on the cover of The Daily Telegraph (UK)’s Magazine supplement yesterday, with a brand new photoshoot and interview! The interview and photoshoot were initially conducted at the start of the year, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Isla’s movie Blithe Spirit being pushed back, the publication of the feature was delayed, and the interview was re-done last month. It’s a really good interview – Isla talks about Blithe Spirit, why she pulled out of Guilty Party, how she’s handling the pandemic, her family and not talking about her kids publicly, some of her interests (collecting old tea sets), how she feels about aging, Marge In Charge, and her screenwriting. It’s also a beautiful photoshoot – which you can see in high quality in our Gallery. If anyone can help us out with scans from the magazine please get in touch!
Isla Fisher: ‘In the middle of the night, I have those “I can’t quite breathe” moments’
The star of a new film adaptation of Blithe Spirit talks about life with Sacha Baron Cohen and having to cancel work due to Covid worriesIn a low-key bakery not far from the Hollywood home she shares with her British actor/comedian husband Sacha Baron Cohen and their three young children, Isla Fisher is telling me about her latest role in a new film adaptation of Blithe Spirit, one of Noël Coward’s best-loved plays.
‘I was so nervous,’ she confesses, dipping a buttered baguette into a bowl of chicken soup. ‘Being an Australian in a British period drama! I was working with my dialect coach and I just thought, “If I get this accent wrong, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”’
It’s an unseasonably cold day when we meet – prior to the pandemic – and wrapped up in a brown coat complementing her trademark long red hair, wearing minimal make-up, she looks a decade younger than her 44 years. Having made an enviable career starring in popular Hollywood comedies – from playing the obsessive Gloria in Wedding Crashers (2005) to the lead role of Becky Bloomwood in Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) – her facial expressions and deadpan humour have got her where she is today. And they’re front and centre in Blithe Spirit.
Directed by Edward Hall (son of former National Theatre director Sir Peter), this lively adaptation of the 1941 comedy classic tells the story of a crime novelist (Dan Stevens) visiting an eccentric mystic, Madame Arcati (Judi Dench), in search of inspiration. She then accidentally summons the spirit of his first wife (Leslie Mann), who becomes embroiled in a hilarious love triangle with his current wife (played by Fisher). ‘Judi Dench is the greatest living actress on the planet and I was in a scene with her. I mean, that’s pretty amazing.’
Read full interview
