This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Victorian-era private detective Eliza Scarlet is never one to back down from a challenge, even if it’s one set by herself. 

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Clarence: You followed the police commissioner?

Eliza: If you’d just let me explain.

Clarence: The single most powerful man in London police. The man who could blackball you from Scotland Yard. The man who is the cousin to the Foreign Secretary.

Eliza: That’s not letting me explain. The poor woman was devastated.

And like Eliza, Miss Scarlet creator Rachael New’s ambitions are sky-high. By Season Three of Miss Scarlet, Rachael found herself not only writing and producing the series alongside her husband Ben Edwards, but rather unexpectedly making her directorial debut.

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Rachael New: It really was such an opportunity. And I do think you’ve sometimes just got to go for it, you’ve just got to seize the day, haven’t you?

As fearless as ever, this season Rachael once again challenged herself, this time stepping in front of the camera to portray the stern headmistress from Eliza Scarlet’s past, cruel nun Mary Agnes.

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Mary Agnes: Eliza Scarlet, yet again. Do you think you’re someone special?

Writer, creator, and now actor Rachael New joins us once again to discuss playing Mary Agnes, and what this formative moment meant for both young Eliza Scarlet and Rachael.

Jace Lacob: We are joined once again this week by Miss Scarlet creator and executive producer, Rachael New. Welcome.

Rachael New: Hello, Jace. Thank you for having me back.

Jace Lacob: Thanks for coming back. In Episode Five, we get a flashback to a young Eliza Scarlet at school being chastised by a rather stern headmistress.

CLIP

Mary Agnes: Eliza Scarlet, yet again. Do you think you’re someone special? Like the normal rules do not apply? Well, you’re wrong. You’re not special, far from it. Eliza Scarlet, are you listening to me? Good. And to get it through that stubborn head of yours, you will write out 100 times, “I am no one special.”

Jace Lacob: I had to pick my jaw off the floor when the headmistress turned around and I realized she was being played by you. How did this casting come about?

Rachael New: Oh, just you even talking about it, my palms have started to sweat. I’m feeling really, really hot. It was one of those ones where it started off slightly as a joke. And then the casting process, as it is, because we’re out in Belgrade, sometimes when you’ve just got, say, a one character scene, ideally, you would like to cast locally for obvious reasons. And it was just a one character scene. And originally, Ben and I wrote it that it was going to be local cast and potentially maybe a French nun, or sorry, when I say French nun, just somebody, like an accent.

Then when we went along, it’s like, yeah, but that’s quite distracting. You want to nail very, very quickly this is young Eliza, she’s at school. So it was just like, okay, I can do it. I was slightly dreading it. But as the day came, I was like, no, this is fine, this is fine. I put on the costume, it was so hot and heavy. Then walking onto set where everyone was just in hysterics. As I walked along, it was just mortifying, but I held my head up high. It felt like a really, really long day. We were filming that probably all morning. The little girl I was playing opposite was utterly wonderful. But yeah, I don’t think it would be a repeat performance. Mary Agnes, as the nun is called, is no more. Let’s just put it that way.

Jace Lacob: No, I’m hoping for a spin off. The Headmistress.

Rachael New: That’s not going to happen.

Jace Lacob: Oh, you’re killing me, Rachael. It’s such a vital, crucial scene in Eliza’s psychological development, such a formative experience where she must face head on someone telling her that she’s not special. She’s not important. The rules do apply to her. Why did you want to flashback to this juncture in Eliza’s life?

Rachael New: Because it was just one of those moments where we just wanted to connect up. Like, we’ve never seen a flashback of her at school. It’s really nice to get a sense of where she’s come from, who she is. And also in this episode, her and Blake are starting to get closer as well. He’s starting to get a sense of who she is. And she is extraordinary and she is interesting. And so it was just a really nice, elegant way to take the audience back and then obviously join it up.

Our director did a lovely job of joining up the curl in her hair. And suddenly she’s an adult and she’s running through the streets, capturing somebody, and then it’s like, we do the call back to, Oh, no one special. The teasers, what we call the scenes before the credits, are often the most fun to come up with for the episodes. And I was really, apart from having to play the nun, when we wrote that, I was really looking forward to shooting that because it was something a bit different to what we’d done before.

Jace Lacob: I do love that “no one special” line, as you say, that it was once an instrument of humiliation for Eliza and it’s turned on its head in the present day as she catches that criminal who asks her who are you?

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Silas Skinner: Who are you?

Eliza: No one special.

Jace Lacob: How does that particular line serve to underline the show’s themes of identity particularly in the face of patriarchy?

Rachael New: Yeah, that’s a brilliant question. Most men or people in power would see her as no one special because she’s a woman. And even though we are now in 1885, things haven’t moved on that much from when we started the show. She’s still got an awful lot to prove. I would never say Eliza is arrogant. I don’t think she thinks she’s someone special. I think she thinks she’s a determined woman.

She knows she’s smart. She’s obviously special to the people in her life, but to society, she would be seen as a bit odd and, maybe a bit embarrassing, you know, a woman wanting to run her own business and pay her own bills and be a private detective. So, we know that she’s special, but the world in which she’s living in, it’s only really people that get to know her that understand how special she is.

Jace Lacob: So, the headmistress’s punishment for Eliza is humiliating, you know, having to copy out a hundred times the line, “I am no one special.” And you play that moment with such perfect cruelty in that scene. You’ve talked about how insanely heavy the costume was, but this is, after all, your first time on Miss Scarlet on the other side of the camera. You’ve been a writer, a director, a producer. What was the experience ultimately like for you, and how did you get into the character of Mary Agnes?

Rachael New: It was terrifying, but I’m so glad I did it because I really, truly understood even just the tiniest amount what it is like when those cameras roll and you can rehearse the scene as much as you like, but honestly, I had to call our script supervisor in a couple of times, Alex and say, I can’t remember my continuity. It just escaped me. Because you shoot the scene so many times from so many different angles that if you’re going to sit forward, then you have to sit forward at the same time on the same point of the line over and over again.

And I was so intent on remembering my lines, which were really not very much. And when I said yes, that I would actually play the role, I actually cut the lines in half. There were a lot more lines originally. And I was like, yeah, I don’t want to be on screen too long. Oh gosh, I mean, I respect the profession of acting anyway, but it really drove it home to me how when you see some of these massively long scenes, like particularly Kate’s doing, she just makes it so easy. She uses every part of her body, her eyes, the smiles here and there. Her continuity is perfect. So I just don’t know how she does it.

Somebody said to me once, really good acting is sort of skimming along the conscious and the subconscious. You have to almost go into a different place. And when I was the head mistress, I was able to do that, but I was still painfully aware of my surroundings, which is when you get a bit self conscious and you start questioning continuity and lines, et cetera.

So it was really good for me. I’m always a big fan of stepping out of my comfort zone. Not to the point of jumping out a plane or a bungee jump, because I don’t like heights, but you know, just to do something where your heart does race a bit, I think is good for you. I wouldn’t want to do it again. And it’s just made me realize how tricky it is. Acting is hard. And then when you see people that are really good at it, you just are even more impressed.

Jace Lacob: So this was Rachael New’s bungee jump.

Rachael New: It was exactly, that is so true, that’s how it felt, honestly.

MIDROLL

Jace Lacob: Should we read anything metafictional into the fact that the character’s real life creator, who is her ultimate authority and does believe Eliza to be special and important, is playing a teacher, an authority figure who wants her to feel like she’s not special?

Rachael New: Yeah, I mean, I think I’d be lying if I… I’m sure everybody’s gone through painful school moments, but I really struggled with spelling when I was little and I had a teacher who wasn’t very nice about it. So I was channeling her and it’s so easy to undermine the confidence of a child, and I think it happens to lots of children. And there’s just something in that I wanted to sort of bring to the fore and say, look, this young woman, she lost her mother, she was raised by father. She had a horrible headmistress, horrible teachers, not very nice classmates, and yet, isn’t she terrific?

Like, she’s funny and she’s clever and we love her and she’s gone on to be ambitious and driven. And so it was just my little, I don’t know, my little way of celebrating Eliza prevailing against the odds. And I think that makes her a special person.

Jace Lacob: Which begs the question, I guess, was the process of writing that of having to be that character cathartic for you?

Rachael New: I think so. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, we all would like to go back to people that doubted us and maybe weren’t very nice or didn’t think that we were capable of much to go, oh, hi. I did alright. I think that’s a very common feeling among people. And I think this is just my nod to it.

Jace Lacob: Episode Four saw Patrick Nash depart for Australia to start afresh, as his career as a private investigator is over in Britain. “Out there”, he says, “anything’s possible.” Is this the end of Felix Scott’s tenure on Miss Scarlet, or might Nash return to the series at some point in the future?

Rachael New: He really is one of my favorite characters and I love working with Felix. We all do. I think it’s one of those ones where he’s such a great character that you have to service him properly. So in Episode One, he was only in a couple of scenes, but they were so crucial, those scenes. They were pivotal in that episode. And then obviously we knew that he was going to be the main focus in an entire episode. So, if Nash does come back and my hope, I would love him to, we have to service him properly with some really, decent, meaty storylines. He deserves that.

Jace Lacob: I love the fact that Nash himself sort of hedges his bets in that final scene.

CLIP

Nash: I’m going to start afresh. I can’t be a private investigator here anymore, but Australia. Out there, anything’s possible. Now, I have a boat to catch. Goodbye Eliza. Take the lady wherever she needs to go.

Eliza: Patrick, I’ll miss you.

Nash: And I’ll miss you too. Very much. But I’ll be back, probably.

Jace Lacob: Is he just gambling he’ll return to London, or is it sort of the optimism of hope? And does that optimism of hope help to inform Miss Scarlet as a show as well?

Rachael New: Yeah. And I think that this is the thing with Nash and that was the thing with the last scene of Episode One where they’re playing poker and he’s like going, you know, don’t sweat it, just get drunk and play poker and who knows what tomorrow will bring, kind of thing. He embodies that. He’s a chancer. He lives on his luck and I think he would love to come back, but who knows. He’s got a price on his head. He’s got a gangster that wants him dead and a Lord that wants to imprison him. So he knows it’s dangerous to stay in the city, but he loves his freedom.

And again, he’s just one of those characters that you can’t keep him down for long. And I think it’s that spirit that he embodies is the essence of this show, which is, you pick yourself up, and you survive. No matter how hard it is, you just keep pushing through and the clouds will pass if you’re having a cloudy day and the next day you’ll wake up and hopefully it’ll be sunshine again.

Jace Lacob: I love it. And if that fails, dress up as a headmistress and sneak back into London.

Rachael New: Exactly. If that fails, do a bungee jump.

Jace Lacob: Do a bungee jump. Rachael New, thank you so very much.

Rachael New: You’re so welcome. Thank you. It’s been absolutely delightful as always.

Next time, pigeons, foxes, and anticipation have the residents of Skeldale House on their toes.

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Audrey: Mr. Farnon, a rather unusual patient arrived. I told him to wait by the front, where is he? What’s wrong?

Actor Anna Madeley joins us to reflect on her character Audrey Hall’s harrowing and heartbreaking performance in this season’s Christmas special of All Creatures Great and Small.