* Matthew Macfadyen started out in theatre before his breakthrough TV role playing Hareton Earnshaw in ITV’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights in 1998. The bonus is that we get to hang out and spend time together!" It’s natural as breathing, and Keeley is a brilliant actress, so I’m lost in the scene and working with her. We didn’t have any qualms about working together again, playing husband and wife. Matthew says: "We first acted together in Spooks, and this was our fourth screen outing as a couple. What was it like working with your wife Keeley Hawes as Barbara? Even when John is talking absolute nonsense or trying to dig himself out of a hole, she is always there in the background watching quietly, all seeing and all knowing!" Barbara was a bright woman, and they were a very good team. Matthew reveals: "In the story as we tell it in this drama, there was real love and affection between John and Barbara, and she was very ambitious for John. What was John’s marriage to Barbara like? He was a shining light in the Labour Party, and destined for higher things had Labour won the 1970 General Election." Good-looking, charismatic and very personable with people, by all accounts he was a very good MP and good at talking to people from different social backgrounds. Matthew says: "The young John Stonehouse was a bright, self-possessed man.
CAST RANDHOUSE SERIES
I just had a vague memory of something I had read about him, and I conflated it with the 1970s TV series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Matthew says: "I was born the month before John Stonehouse faked his own death in November 1974, so I didn’t know much about the story before this project came along. How much did you already know about John Stonehouse? Matthew Macfadyen, who plays the lead role of John Stonehouse, reveals more on starring in the ITV1 drama alongside his wife Keeley Hawes, with whom he has two children. (Image credit: Getty) Stonehouse cast - Matthew Macfadyen on playing John Stonehouse John Stonehouse was Labour MP for Walsall North and minister for technology in the 1960s and 70s. He retained his job as an MP before being declared bankrupt, found guilty of fraud and sent to prison, where he suffered three heart attacks. But he was also facing criminal prosecution. He vanished from the beach of a large luxury hotel in Florida in November 1974, leaving a neatly folded pile of clothes as he swam into the sea, intent on faking his own death.Īfter pulling his Reggie Perrin-style stunt to avoid the impending scandal, Stonehouse’s story grew even more outlandish as, after being spotted in Australia, he was mistaken for the missing peer Lord Lucan, whose nanny had been murdered the month that Stonehouse vanished.īrought back to the UK by Scotland Yard detectives, John Stonehouse found that he was crucial to keeping the Labour government in power with its wafer-thin majority. He then applied for a passport in the dead man’s name and began to weave an elaborate conspiracy, seeking a new life in Australia. His complex finances and relationships eventually took their toll, with Stonehouse deliberately stealing the identity of a recently deceased constituent. However his personal life started to spiral out of control as he became involved with the Czech secret service in the 1960s, embarked on an affair with his secretary Sheila Buckley ( Showtrial star Emer Heatley), and was suspected of fraud after a number of investments failed.
Then he left his loving wife Barbara and three young children as a shocked public and media presumed he'd drowned off the coast of Miami, or had been eaten by sharks.įrom a working-class background, John Stonehouse graduated from the London School of Economics, was in the RAF during World War 2 and seemed the ideal candidate for a lie in politics. In the 1960s when he won his parliamentary seat, John Stonehouse was charismatic, oozing charm and brimming with so much confidence, he really impressed the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Labour Party bigwigs from the moment he arrived in parliament.Ī rising star in the Labour ranks, John Stonehouse became a Cabinet minister under Harold Wilson (played by Kevin McNally) and was tipped for high office. Stonehouse reveals the incredible life story of John Stonehouse, who became Labour MP for Walsall North, with a glittering political career.
Stonehouse plot - what happens in ITV's true-life drama?
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