If you travelled to the London borough of Islington between January and February of 2023, there was a decent chance you would see a large, shivering crowd of women standing at night outside the stage door of the Almeida Theatre. They were there to see Paul Mescal, the Normal People and Gladiator II actor, who was starring as Stanley Kowalski in the theatre’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
But if those girls on the pavement came for Mescal, they stayed for – and they remembered – Patsy Ferran, the 35-year-old Spanish-British actress who played the show’s heroine, Blanche DuBois. ‘Mescal is tremendous,’ said the review in The Times, but ‘he’ll surely admit that it’s Ferran’s night’. The Daily Mail agreed: ‘Much the best reason for seeing this sold-out show – or at least praying that it transfers to the West End – is not so much Mescal, as the sensational acting of Patsy Ferran as Blanche.’
‘I don’t actually read reviews,’ says Ferran, sitting in a large garden after finishing the YOU photoshoot. Well, I say, everyone thought you were great. She laughs. ‘Phew!’
Top and dress, Róisín Pierce. Earrings, Completedworks. Rings, Dinosaur Designs. Tights, Heist. Shoes, Aquazzura
Ferran is, in the theatre world, one of Britain’s most-loved and hardest-working actresses. She made her debut aged 25 in 2014’s Blithe Spirit, which starred Angela Lansbury, and, a few months later, had a lead role at the National Theatre. Afterwards, a critic in The Observer said she was ‘one of the best young actors I have seen in the past decade’.
By 2017, she’d done her first film – God’s Own Country, alongside a pre-Prince Charles Josh O’Connor; by 2019, she’d won a best actress Olivier Award; and by January 2020, Vogue had picked her as one of 25 ‘bright young things’ from around the world who would, they predicted, ‘define the decade ahead’.
The Telegraph once compared Ferran to Maggie Smith. The theatre critic Nick Curtis disagrees: ‘I’m inclined to say she’s actually more like Judi Dench. Or Glenda Jackson.’ Like both iconic actresses, he thinks Ferran has ‘the ability to disappear into roles absolutely’.
Ferran was born in Valencia, the middle of three children, to a mother who worked in a biology lab and a father who was in finance. (Her parents are Spanish and the family speak the language at home.) Because of her dad’s job, they shuffled around: when Ferran was a few months old they left Spain for Southampton, then moved to Amsterdam, then The Hague.
Dress, Celia B
By the time she’d turned eight, they had settled in Surrey. There’s pressure to get this background information right. Ferran once gave an interview to The Times and a few days later the paper published a letter from a disgruntled reader called Carmen Narbona in Weybridge, Surrey. It said: ‘Your article on Patsy Ferran claims that she was born and brought up in England. In fact she was born in Valencia. I should know: I am her mother.’ Did her mum consult her before writing it? ‘No! Not at all! I found out months later. I am actually very proud of her, though. She’s got sass, my mum.’
Ferran went to a girls’ convent school, which meant she always had to act as boys in the plays. One of her early roles was Shylock – the complicated protagonist of The Merchant Of Venice who is, normally, played by a man in his 50s or 60s. Ferran, however, gave the part a go aged 15. She performed alongside four other school productions at a ‘Shakespeare Festival’, which was watched by the actor Paterson Joseph. At the end of the festival Joseph singled out and praised Ferran. ‘I think that was just what I needed. I still do, to a certain extent; I need people outside of myself to tell me I can do this.’ Doesn’t everyone need that, I ask? ‘Well,’ Ferran says, in a stage whisper, ‘I’ve met a couple of male actors…’
As Blanche Dubois opposite Paul Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire, 2023
She studied drama at Birmingham University and then went to Rada in London. During her last year, Ferran had a tiny part as a maid in the musical High Society. ‘I was just in the background for most of it, holding a tray.’ It must have been first-class tray holding, though. One evening the agent Deborah Willey came to watch. Willey knew that that spring Angela Lansbury (then 88) was returning to the West End for the first time in 40 years to star in Blithe Spirit. She also knew the production had yet to find someone to play Edith, the maid.
‘So she scribbled down, while she was watching, the name of Blithe Spirit’s casting director,’ says Ferran. ‘And then she wrote: “Patsy Ferran? Maid?”’ (Willey became, and remains, Ferran’s agent. ‘She kept that first piece of paper and years later she sent it to me in the post.’ The note is now stashed in ‘a box of memories’ in Ferran’s flat in London.)
A few days later, Ferran auditioned for said maid with the play’s director, Michael Blakemore. ‘I just remember him sort of smiling without smiling.’ At the end he said: ‘Well, I don’t have any notes.’ Within hours, she’d been given the part.
With her 2019 best actress Olivier for Summer and Smoke
It was another tiny role, but again she impressed. The Guardian called her ‘scene-stealing’, The Telegraph instructed people to ‘look out for [her] little gem of a performance’, and The Times declared that ‘the small role of Edith the maid is wrought up to maximum comic pitch by Patsy Ferran… it is her professional stage debut, and a hoot’.
Curtis remembers seeing the production. ‘Angela Lansbury was great but she [Ferran] absolutely stole the show from her – and from everybody else.’ Afterwards, ‘People were going: “Who is this woman?!”’ (Ferran concedes that she does give good maid. ‘Every time I put on a maid’s costume, if I’m doing a period piece or something, the costume designer always says: “God, this really suits you.” And I’m like: “I know, I know. I was born to play a maid.”’)
By 2019 she’d been nominated for best actress at the Olivier Awards for a Tennessee Williams play called Summer and Smoke. At the ceremony, she was sitting near the back of the room, and in the middle of the row – and assumed this awkward positioning meant she was not going to win. But, surprise, she did. So, she got out of her seat, clambered over various people, walked the long way down the aisle, got on the stage, and began her speech by saying: ‘Hello, I’m Patsy.’ Well, she says of this today, ‘there were lots of people in the audience I didn’t know!’
As a young Jane (right) in Miss Austen
When I meet Ferran, she has just returned from New York, where she had, alongside Mescal, revived A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. The reviews were excellent there, too – which was good because ‘I was convinced they were going to hate me’. Why? ‘Because I am not a conventional Blanche. She’s usually tall and blonde. I don’t want to diminish her but she’s quite princess-y, very feminine. And I’m definitely not that.’
She wasn’t supposed to do the play at all; the director Rebecca Frecknall had first cast the actress Lydia Wilson as DuBois. But, two weeks before the first preview, Wilson had been forced to pull out because of an injury. Ferran had just got married (her husband is an actor, but she wants to keep his identity private) and was due to go on honeymoon. Still, Frecknall asked if she would step in and Ferran agreed, cancelling her honeymoon – without actually looking at the script.
The day before her first rehearsal, Ferran opened the play and discovered ‘the relentless talking from Blanche DuBois’. There were so many lines. ‘I had the closest thing to a panic attack I’ve ever had in my life. That night, I was in bed, and at three in the morning I felt the adrenaline going through my body. I was unable to breathe. I just thought: “What have I done?”’
In the following days, all she did was learn lines and rehearse. Weirdly, it worked. ‘I remember Paul coming over to me during the second or third day of rehearsal, and saying: “How are you doing it?”’
On Mescal, Ferran admits she didn’t really know who he was. ‘I knew of him, obviously, but I somehow was living under a rock the whole time Normal People came out, so I hadn’t seen it.’ I ask if she’s watched it now and she says, in a sheepish way, no. ‘But I will!’
Top and skirt, Gayeon Lee. Earrings, Dinosaur Designs. Shoes, Grenson
She did, however, watch Aftersun – the film for which Mescal was nominated for an Oscar – at some point during the play’s run. The next day, ‘I told him how much I enjoyed it. And he went: “Thanks very much.” Then, cut to doing the play in the evening, I looked at him from across the stage, and I just thought: “Oh my god!” I got really fan-girly and flustered.’
Still, Ferran was shocked to see all ‘those people waiting outside of the theatre for [Mescal]. That’s when it really dawned on me how well-known he is.’ The pair are now friends. ‘He’s one of my favourite actors I’ve ever worked with, because he really cares about the job. And he’s also stupidly talented.’ (That sentiment is shared: Mescal has described Ferran as an ‘acting wizard’.)
The play had a lot of fake rain, which was tricky. One night, the stage had been hot-mopped beforehand, accidentally removing its grit. It became an ice rink. There was a moment where Mescal was supposed to run across the stage, and instead ‘he got on to his knees and did a knee slide from one end to the other’. Like a football celebration? ‘Yes, or a rock’n’roll moment. I thought it looked quite good. He was embarrassed people might think it was…’ she puts on a very thespy voice, ‘a choice.’
The day before I met Ferran, I saw a video of the singer Lorde leaving the Broadway version of Streetcar. She was unaware and is delighted – ‘Lorde came to see the show?! Shut up’ – then promptly trumps me by saying that Angelina Jolie watched it in London. They didn’t meet but she saw her from afar, in the theatre’s café. ‘She just walked into my reality for a second.’ At home, she made her husband guess who she’d spotted. ‘I was like: “Think of the most famous person on earth.”’
Jacket, Veronica Beard. Rings, Dinosaur Designs. Earrings, Completedworks
Ferran has had to get used to starry company. In the last year, she’s had a part in Mickey 17, alongside Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo; a lead role in Black Mirror, with Paul Giamatti; and this week she’s co-starring in new film Hot Milk with Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey. Shaw was ‘amazing’. They shot the film while Ferran was rehearsing to play Eliza Doolittle at London’s Old Vic theatre. ‘I think she [Shaw] had decided that she wasn’t going to do theatre any more. But there were moments within the conversation where she would just start reciting Shakespeare. Her memory is incredible.’
This February Ferran played Jane Austen in the BBC show Miss Austen. It was ostensibly about an older Cassandra Austen (Jane’s sister, played by Keeley Hawes) burning Jane’s letters, but, as the review in The Daily Mail had it: ‘The real stars, though, are Patsy Ferran as Jane herself, aged about 20, and Synnove Karlsen as the young Cassandra.’
Lots of young British actors moan about being pigeonholed by period dramas; not Ferran. ‘I hadn’t really scratched that itch. I loved the idea of playing someone who could be the smartest person in the room.’ Also, the costumes were comfy. ‘It was the best. Because of the structure of those dresses, you could eat what you wanted.’
In December, Ferran will be in Jay Kelly, a film about two middle-aged friends on a weekend reunion that was co-written by Emily Mortimer and has a stupidly starry cast: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keough. Ferran is tight-lipped, but says they filmed for three weeks in the UK and three weeks in Italy. ‘It was just a crazy experience. It was sort of like seeing Angelina Jolie, where you’ve been watching these people your whole life and when they walk into your own reality, it’s like a glitch happens. You go: “I’m sorry,”’ she gestures to an imaginary George Clooney, ‘“you’re not supposed to be real.”’
Well, if I were George Clooney, I would be nervous for the reviews to come out: Ferran will, almost certainly, steal the show.
Hot Milk is in cinemas from Friday
THE FERRAN FACTOR
Idea of holiday hell
Safari.
Last piece of clothing you bought
A pair of shoes from Sandro.
Spotify song of last year
Denial Is A River by Doechii.
Cat or a dog person?
Dog.
The word you most overuse
Outrageous.
Last thing you can remember losing
One hoop earring.
Superstition you can’t shake
I can’t walk over three consecutive drains.
Book you often gift to people
Less by Andrew Sean Greer.
Favourite possession
Coffee mug with Charles M Schulz’s cartoons on it.
Average screen time
Around 2 hours 45 minutes.
Website you spend too much time on
YouTube.
First thing you do in the morning
Coffeeeee!
Wordle starting word
Tears.
Picture director: Ester Malloy.
Stylist: Anna Hughes-Chamberlain.
Hair: Sven Bayerbach at Carol Hayes using Hair by Sam McKnight.
Make-up: Caz Wren using Tatcha skincare and Ilia Beauty.
Dave Benett/getty, Marc Brenner, Robert Viglasky/bbc
