Mrs. Micawber Imelda Staunton Micawber's devoted wife and mother to his many children, Mrs. Micawber always feels as if she has fallen unjustly on hard times. But, though her family urges it, she "never will desert Mr. Micawber." Fresh from working with her actor husband Jim Carter in Shakespeare in Love and a singing engagement in a New York club, Imelda Staunton recalls her work on David Copperfield: "The Dickensian stories can be very dark, with cold people, hopelessness. The Micawbers are sort of putting one finger in the air and saying, 'We are people who love each other and who are kind and have a lot of kindness in our hearts.' "They adore each other, and in those days you didn't just walk out, however tough things got. That wasn't really an option, even if Mr. Micawber is a bit bewildered, bothered, and bewitched. David Copperfield is a fantastic soap, and I don't mean that in any degrading way, because Dickens wrote it as a serial. It's a rich story and the characters are priceless."