Gemma Arterton Remembers… Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Overview

David Nicholls's 2008 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles provided Gemma Arterton with her first lead role on television. She joined a cast of young talent, including Eddie Redmayne and Jodie Whitaker, as well as established names like Anna Massey and Kenneth Cranham. Gemma tells us how she got the part, the research she did for it and the skills she had to learn, such as riding a horse and milking a cow. She talks about her favourite scenes and the day Eddie Redmayne had to repeatedly carry four women across a flooded path. She discusses Nicholls’s adaptation, written before he made his name with novels like One Day and Us, and the book’s central themes: class, faith and misogyny, subjects which still hold relevance to this day.