Dame Joan Collins and Isabella Rossellini Speak to British VOGUE Ahead of Upcoming Wallis Simpson Biopic

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In the last years of her history making life, Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor, was a widow locked in a château, fading from sight under the control of a malevolent lawyer. Now Dame Joan Collins is set to play her alongside Isabella Rossellini, an array of dazzling outfits and a pack of pugs.

In a new interview for British VOGUE, the two women speak with British VOGUE about working together on My Duchess, aging and ageism in the industry.

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When Dame Joan Collins visited the Parisian villa of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the mansion still had the feel of a museum. There, preserved as if the Windsors had just stepped out for a stroll in the Bois, were Edward’s Imperial Seals and Wallis’s Molyneux suits and monogrammed negligées:

“Well, of course, I loved the Duchess from the moment I laid eyes on her satin knickers.”

Collins discusses how the idea for My Duchess came to her:

“It was 10, 20, 30 years ago, when everybody said, ‘Oh, there are no roles for women over a certain age. You have to find your own subject.’ So I thought, ‘Well, surely this is a good subject.’”

Still, it would take until 2023 to find a producer through — of all possible connections — His Majesty King Charles III, the Duke of Windsor’s great-nephew:

 “One day I sat next to this really nice gentleman at a dinner for The Prince’s Trust at Claridge’s, and told him the story and he said, ‘I’ll think about it, blah, blah, blah,’ and I never heard from him again.”

Until she did. The nice gentleman was John Gore, who had just launched his own namesake film studio in London. Within 72 hours of reading Louise Fennell’s script, he decided to greenlight it:

“Well, Louise and I were jumping up and down like schoolgirls.”

Isabella Rossellini plays French lawyer and confidante, Suzanne Blum, and in her hands the more violin-screech moments of My Duchess are horrifying and hysterical. Rossellini says:

“It’s very original, the script, in terms of the tone, but also because these two old ladies are in their 70s.”

As a prominent lawyer from the 1920s onwards, Rossellini points out, Blum would have been forced to repress her more “feminine” traits just to keep herself in work:

“So her falling in love with the Duchess, who everyone says was incredibly seductive, was probably also her falling in love with her own femininity… We’ve discussed a lot, ‘Is she a lesbian?’ but to me it’s more complex than that.”

As much as Rossellini enjoyed her seven minutes of screen time as Sister Agnes in Conclave, she says it’s a relief to:

“Finally be able to play a meaty role instead of a supporting one.”

Even for the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and the muse of David Lynch, it’s been more challenging to find parts with real heft to them past middle age — though she’s achieved considerable recognition for the ones she’s landed, including a first Oscar nomination aged 72. Rossellini is droll:

“Go figure. After 50, whatever you do, you’re asked the question, ‘Why do you do it?’ and the answer is: ‘Well, because I like to work.’ Or people say: ‘How do you age gracefully?’ Well, I haven’t aged gracefully or ungracefully; I’ve just aged. Everybody ages. You can do plastic surgery, or not; you can dye your hair, or not; you can manoeuvre it however you like, but you’re going to age.”

For her part, Joan was delighted with her “ball-of-fire” costar — although:

“I did have a moment of pause when I had to tell Ingrid Bergman’s daughter to bugger off.”

It’s My Duchess’s warnings about the dangers of ageism that sold Rossellini on the project. Strip away Wallis’s Harry Winston hardware and Blum’s Hollywood Rolodex, and the story is grimly familiar. Rossellini comments:

“We’ve all known a person who’s gone into decline at the end of their life, and there’s been someone taking care of them, at first you think, ‘Oh, thank God,’ and only later you find out, ‘Oh no, oooh dear…”

Collins comments on the injustices suffered by the Duchess of Windsor:

“I’m always fascinated by women who everybody says are nasty people. And when you strip it all off, you find out that they’re not really.”

Collins discusses her struggle to shed her Dynasty Persona of “superbitch” Alexis Carrington:

“If I’d ever met Wallis, I could have commiserated with her about how the press treated me while I was playing Alexis. I mean when [Dynasty producer] Aaron Spelling said, ‘Joan is Alexis,’ that haunted me for so long. I said, ‘Aaron, why did you say that? You know that’s not true,’ and he said, ‘Honey, it gets headlines.’”

Dame Joan Collins reflects on being pigeonholed as a “bad girl” and “sexpot”:

“[In the ‘90s], I did [a BBC adaptation] of Noël Coward’s Tonight at 8:30, where I played eight different roles, ranging from the elderly hag to the socialite to the abused housewife — but it doesn’t matter what you do. They have this image of you.”

Although her Miss Havisham-like turn in My Duchess might finally shatter that image:

Did she find that hard?

“No. Fame and glamour are ephemeral… I never chased that. I always chased being a good actress, and work, because I was the breadwinner for most of my life. I still am.”

Collins admits she finds red carpets quite hard going now:

“You have to get your face done. You have to get your eyelashes on. You have to choose the right dress. It’s just endless, before you even go.”

She will admit to a certain pride in this film:

“I absolutely hate watching myself, I always have done, but, you know… I thought I was rather good, actually. This was my passion project and it came to fruition. My other passion project, which never did, was Cleopatra. And then my friend Elizabeth Taylor got it.”

Read the full feature online and in British VOGUE’s June issue on newsstands Tuesday 19th May.

[Photo Credit: Venetia Scott, Courtesy of British Vogue]

• Isabella Rossellini
• Joan Collins
• Vogue
• Vogue UK