\n<\/p>\n
Patsy Ferran will not judge a book by its cover. But covers are important to her. \u201cSee?\u201d she said, palming a copy of a Barbara Kingsolver novel at a Brooklyn branch of McNally Jackson bookstore. \u201cSuch a good cover. Aesthetics do matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferran, a London-based actress, is currently starring in Tennessee Williams\u2019s \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire<\/a>\u201d at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, just up the road from the store. A latecomer to reading for pleasure, Ferran picked up fiction, particularly American fiction, during the pandemic lockdowns and has yet to put it down. Currently working her way through Percival Everett\u2019s \u201cJames,\u201d with Samantha Harvey\u2019s \u201cOrbital\u201d cued up next, she had promised herself that she wouldn\u2019t buy any more books. But the shelves were calling.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of explore cities via book shops,\u201d she said. \u201cThat and good coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n In the store, Ferran, lively, shrewd and lightly self-deprecating, (\u201cI do my own glam,\u201d she said wryly as she shook out her hair from a woolly hat) picked up and put down several recent paperbacks, enthusing about their feel. \u201cBritish paperbacks are so stiff, you have to crowbar them open, which I hate,\u201d she said. Ferran decided that she might buy just one. Or two. Certainly not more than three.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ferran, 35, made her professional debut just after her graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in a production of No\u00ebl Coward\u2019s \u201cBlithe Spirit.\u201d More stage roles followed, including her first lead, as Alma in \u201cSummer and Smoke,\u201d also by Williams, directed by Rebecca Frecknall<\/a>. \u201cThis young actor is a genuine marvel, as hilarious as she is heartbreaking,\u201d one critic wrote<\/a> of the performance. Soon she was recognized as one of the most talented stage actresses of her generation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Small and quick, with dark, curling hair, Ferran was an unusual choice for Blanche. A great American heroine, \u201can aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty\u201d in Williams\u2019s words, Blanche is typically played by willowy, languorous blondes. (Recent New York Blanches<\/a> include Cate Blanchett and Gillian Anderson). Ferran knows this. She worried that audiences would dismiss her as the wrong cover for this particular book.<\/p>\n \u201cMy gremlin in my brain was going, They\u2019re going to hate you,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause you are a very unconventional Blanche.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ferran leaped onto the London \u201cStreetcar\u201d at the last minute. Another actor, Lydia Wilson, had been cast opposite Paul Mescal\u2019s Stanley. But when Wilson had to withdraw days before previews began, Frecknall, the revival\u2019s director, thought of her former colleague and friend. Ferran was at the bank when she received Frecknall\u2019s text asking her to join the production.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Briefly, she resisted. She wondered how it would look to replace another actress and the run would mean postponing her honeymoon. Besides, she didn\u2019t see herself as Blanche. \u201cNo way, Jos\u00e9,\u201d Ferran, who is fond of old-timey epithets, said. \u201cBlanche has this flighty, coquettish, airy energy.\u201d Ferran, who was cast in boys\u2019 parts all through school and typically favors an androgynous look, felt far away from all that.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a naturally feminine woman,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But her husband convinced her that if she turned down the role, she would regret it. Besides, she is a people pleaser. \u201cI was like, \u2018She needs me,\u2019\u201d Ferran said. So she called Frecknall back and said she had one more day of shooting on \u201cMickey 17,\u201d<\/a> the latest Bong Joon Ho film, but then yes, she would do it.<\/p>\n That night, studying the script and realizing the number of lines she would have to memorize, Ferran panicked. She called her agent and attempted to back out. It was too late; a news release had already been sent. The next day at rehearsal she saw Frecknall, and the two women burst out laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, Oh, we\u2019re going to be OK, because we all know how mad this is,\u201d Ferran said.<\/p>\n She slept very little those first weeks and acquired many more gray hairs. But everyone welcomed her, and in Mescal, her co-star, she found a real theater animal. (She hadn\u2019t realized how famous he was until the show was up and running. \u201cLike, oh my God, people really love him,\u201d she said.) In the past, Ferran had always had the luxury of time to prepare. Now she had to go on instinct alone. She couldn\u2019t worry that she wasn\u2019t a typical Blanche or change herself to become more Blanche-like. Instead she brought Blanche to her, creating a Blanche who was nervous, nervy, achingly vulnerable, smarter than the other characters assume.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBecause I had no time, I only had myself as a filter,\u201d Ferran said. It is, she believes, the best acting of her career. The Times critic Matt Wolf agreed, writing<\/a> that he had rarely seen \u201cthe anger that coexists with Blanche\u2019s fragility conveyed as clearly as it is here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She has tried to apply some of these lessons to her film and television acting \u2014 in addition to \u201cMickey 17,\u201d she also has a major role in an episode of the new season of \u201cBlack Mirror\u201d and plays Jane Austen in \u201cMiss Austen,\u201d the PBS Masterpiece series that premieres on May 4. \u201cOnscreen, you have to be as unprecious and free and relaxed as possible,\u201d she said. \u201cSo you learn to just go with the flow.\u201d<\/p>\n But flow doesn\u2019t always come easily to Ferran. After the London run ended, in February 2023, Ferran had something approaching a Blanche-adjacent nervous collapse. \u201cMy body reached breaking point and I wasn\u2019t very well for a couple of months,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n