Lucy Punch on Playing the Villain in London’s Great Britain & Getting Ugly in the Into the Woods Movie

Lucy Punch is back in the West End for the first time in well over a decade, having in the interim shot to fame in Bad Teacher, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger and the forthcoming screen adaptation of Into the Woods, in which she plays not-so-nice stepsister Lucinda. She’s currently taking on the aptly named Paige Britain in Great Britain, the freewheeling satire about journalistic practice from author Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors) at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Before a two-show day, the lively Punch chatted with Broadway.com about returning home to London, keeping up her energy, and the surprise of doing a musical on film.

It’s been nearly 15 years since we’ve seen you in the West End in The Graduate—what brought you back?
I had spent time in New York and seen a bunch of plays and was thinking, “Oh God, I’d love to do a play,” and then this came up and I thought, “Well, it’s a fabulous script but I don’t think I have a chance.” ...And I got the part!

Was that primarily to have a break from so much film and TV work?
I hadn’t done anything [on stage] for so long that I was quite nervous about it, but this was a great part and a great opportunity. Of course I’d love to continue doing movies and TV, but actually this has been the best sort of crash course for me—taking on such a huge part in a big theater.

You’ve taken over the leading role from Billie Piper, who originated the part of Paige. Did you see her play the role?
Ordinarily I wouldn’t have done because it wouldn’t have been helpful, but I did in this case in order to get a sense of the piece as a whole given that we had such an accelerated rehearsal process so it was a bit like doing an ensemble piece in isolation. I thought she was great.

The play is quite ruthless, albeit satirically so, about the British tabloid press. Is that a world you know at all?
My cousin is a journalist who works for The Independent, but it’s quite a different world working for a UK tabloid. He had some good stories about the way journalism works, but the truth is the tone of the show is extremely heightened and broad and the character I’m playing is a sort of extreme archvillain.

So it shouldn’t be mistaken as a documentary?
[Laughs.] Not at all. There are moments where you play stuff straight but on the whole, the piece is quite farcical; it’s a gag-run show.

How has doing the play for two months now affected your own view of the tabloids?
I never read them before, I have to say, but I do find now especially that The Sun, for instance, is quite sordid and dangerous because it says it’s a newspaper when really it’s about the headline and the photo. The text is so short that there’s no room for nuance. This is just me speaking personally, since I know Richard [Bean, playwright] has a fondness for old-fashioned tabloid journalism.

Did you have any run-ins with tabloids back in 2000 when you were in The Graduate opposite Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger’s ex-wife?
That was around the time of her divorce, and I remember cameras sneaking into the audience to take pictures of [Jerry] without any clothes on. She handled it all with a lot of grace.

Have you gotten to see the Into the Woods movie yet?
I haven’t yet, and I don’t know when I’m going to see it; soon, I hope!

Are you amazed to have found yourself in a Sondheim musical on screen?
I never thought I’d be in any type of musical and when this came up, I thought it was a bit of a joke if only because I had played an ugly sister in various things a couple times already.

But you’ve pulled it off!
That’s kind of you to say. What was great was that there was stuff for me to sing with the chorus but most of my own stuff was a speaky-singing type of thing which I feel quite confident with—though it was quite wild going into a recording studio and finding myself there with Stephen Sondheim.

Did Mr. Sondheim give you any notes?
He did to the other actors who have beautiful singing voices and had a lot more to do, but I had so little that I think he was not too worried about "ugly sister B" [laughs].

Had you done a musical before?
Not since I was about 16 or so, in a National Youth Theatre production of Pippin. I remember at the time singing along in the chorus and a very sweet musical director saying to me, “Lucy, you’re doing a great job, the facial expressions are great, but could you perhaps mouth the rest?”

Had you ever seen Into the Woods onstage?
I saw it at the Donmar [in London in 1998] and thought it was absolutely fantastic. I especially remember Sheridan Smith’s Little Red Riding Hood. She was so funny and so good. Obviously this has been cut down a bit because it’s a movie, but I think it’s still intact.

Speaking of cuts, Lucinda and Florinda suffer some nasty chops to the heels and toes during the film.
Yes, that was lots of fun [laughs]. I think that might have been the last bit we shot. But I also get my eyes plucked out by crows, you know, and I personally found that more grueling. Losing a bit of toe is like, “whatever!”