![]() On another occasion, one of the cast said to me ‘you’re very foxy as Miss Marple’. So I suppose I’m fairly simpatico, and I think Miss Marple is the same. I was interviewed recently at the National Film Theatre and the interviewer said I had a kindliness about me. “There has to be some aspect of me in her – there is in any role I play. “Am I at all like Miss Marple?” McKenzie muses. She laughs self-deprecatingly when asked if she shares any qualities with her celebrated alter ego. When we meet in a central London office, the actress displays Marple’s winning melange of magnetism and mischievousness. McKenzie, who is married to the American actor Jerry Harte, is equally charismatic in person. To win Inspector Neele’s trust in A Pocket Full of Rye, for example, Miss Marple flirts with him like a brazen young starlet, flattering him by coooing that "you have the looks of the young Errol Flynn about you.” “I do like a bit of a twinkle,” she twinkles. She endows the role with great warmth and twinkles like the lights on a Christmas tree. The actress is a splendid new captain of this impeccably polished ship. “I thought, ‘have they put another script in here?’” McKenzie concedes she was equally taken aback by these scenes. Yes, that sound you can hear is Christie rotating in her grave. In one early scene, a young couple are seen frolicking in bed in a manner that leaves little to the imagination. Not involving the saintly sleuth, of course – heavens forfend! But several sequences featuring other characters are definitely rather more raunchy than the usual Miss Marple parade of genteel ladies eating neatly trimmed cucumber sandwiches in elegant drawing rooms. Seismic tremors shook Miss Marple’s cosy world of tea and tweed when it emerged that A Pocket Full of Rye, broadcast last Sunday, contains scenes of an adult nature. The unlikely-sounding combination of sex and the spinster has sent the papers into a right old lather and prompted headlines such as “No Sex Please, Miss Marple” and “Naughty, Miss Marple”. The new series of ITV1’s Agatha Christie’s Marple has already hit the news pages for reasons that would surely have brought on an attack of the vapours in the hugely popular titular investigator. “It was something along the lines of ‘so glad you got the job.’ So I wrote back saying, ‘it will be hard to fill your shoes!’ It was so thoughtful of her.”Īll the same, it has not been an entirely smooth transition. “I’ve never met Geraldine, but she sent me a sweet note when I took over,” reveals McKenzie, who has also had memorable roles in Notes on a Scandal, Death in Holy Orders, The Old Curiosity Shop and Blott on the Landscape. She discloses that her introduction to the role was greatly helped by the kindness of her predecessor. But I’m afraid if they want to enjoy Miss Marple, they’ll just have to stick with me.” They have huge Christie conventions, for instance, in Japan. ![]() “I’d never quite realised there was such passion for this character. “There were so many fanatical fans who have only had short period of bereavement for Geraldine,” declares McKenzie, who has also made a splash recently as Mrs Forrester (pictured right) in BBC1’s gorgeous period drama, Cranford, which is returning this Christmas. Miss Marple aficionados are known for their ardent devotion to the cause. So many terrific actresses have played Miss Marple in the past, that to be joining those echelons was truly scary.”Īnd then there are the fans. In fact, if there is a word for ‘even more than daunting’, then that is what it was. “It’s such an iconic role,” acknowledges McKenzie, sipping a cup of tea in impeccably Marple-esque fashion. To add to the pressure, everyone has their own, very set idea about what Miss Marple should be like. She was well aware that it was a responsibility to live up to the exacting standards set by McEwan – to say nothing of the other titanic actresses who have played the role: Gracie Fields, Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Dulcie Gray, Helen Hayes and Joan Hickson. McKenzie admits to jangling nerves beforehand. She took over the role from Geraldine McEwan, who retired last year after starring in twelve episodes as Miss Marple. ![]() The 68-year-old this week appeared for the first time in the part of Agatha Christie’s much-loved amateur detective.
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