Capturing Mary a Dark HBO Drama Set in London
Dame Maggie Smith Stars in Dramatic Film by Stephen Poliakoff
Nov 14, 2009
Capturing Mary is a dark HBO movie starring Maggie Smith as Mary an older woman who revisits a once grand London Mansion to relive a life changing memory from her youth. Mary visited the mansion she was often invited for elegant parties when she was an up and coming young journalist. Joe (Danny Lee Wynter) was the teenaged caretaker of the empty mansion who allowed Mary inside and became her confidant. Capturing Mary is a companion film to Joe's Palace, written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff.
Dame Maggie Smith Stars as Mary
Capturing Mary is the companion film to Joe's Palace, which should be seen first as it introduces the mansion and Joe the caretaker. Joe was an innocent and naïve teenager, whose wide eyed interest encouraged adults to talk and act freely and naturally around the young man.
Mary Gilbert (Maggie Smith) revisited the mansion, once a place that offered grand parties attended by the elite of society in London. Joe cared for the empty mansion for an eccentric and reclusive billionaire who lived across the street. In spite of instructions to never let in outsiders, he allowed Mary inside, because there was just something about her.
Mary hesitantly accepted a tour of the mansion from Joe and she began to tell young Joe about the grand parties at the mansion and about a sinister man named Greville White (David Walliams). Mary described walking down to the dark and creepy wine cellar with Greville, who confided ugly secrets about himself. Mary was repulsed with what he told her and rejected the man, who set out to destroy her life, eventually bringing about her professional and social ruin.
The story of Mary was told in flashbacks, as Dame Maggie Smith narrated. Young Mary was portrayed by Ruth Wilson.
Statement by Writer Director Stephen Poliakoff
Capturing Mary started with the idea of a grand house at its zenith that went into decline .Poliakoff explained in a press release “I wanted to make a film about a great house at its peak, before it went into decline. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, there were a lot of these grand houses, where the elite mingled and virtually ran the country. I am haunted by the fact that so much of 20th-century British life has been governed by what went on at these great London mansions.”
Poliakoff disclosed in a press statement that he had a disturbing encounter with a powerful producer who had a reputation for going after people and destroying their careers, so this was a story he felt he had to write.
“Capturing Mary is one of the darkest films I've ever made. But it had to be, because there were some very, very dark people around at that time in the late 1950s. There were people you knew that, if you crossed them, they were very dangerous. They could not necessarily snuff out your career, but they could make it very difficult.”
Cast of Capturing Mary
- Dame Maggie Smith as Mary
- Ruth Wilson as young Mary
- David Walliams as Greville White
- Danny Lee Wynter as Joe
Stephen Poliakoff is the writer, director and executive producer of Joe's Palace and Capturing Mary.
Capturing Mary is an HBO film production.
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