MASTERPIECE Studio Podcast: Host Favorites

The MASTERPIECE Studio podcast boasts hundreds of in-depth, fascinating conversations with stars of shows such as All Creatures Great and Small and Sanditon, among others. With all those stellar interviews, wondering where to start? We turned to MASTERPIECE Studio host Jace Lacob for some of his most favorite episodes.

After 200 episodes of MASTERPIECE Studio, it’s difficult to think back on specific interviews as so many have stuck in my memory for various reasons. The conversations I’ve had with the various actors and writers and directors of MASTERPIECE dramas over the last six years have been at times illuminating, heartwarming, and surprising. Together, we’ve laughed, cried, reminisced, and deconstructed, discussing not only a particular scene or a storyline but also the very human stories at the heart of MASTERPIECE and its players. Sometimes the most surprising moments are the ones that were entirely unplanned and unexpected, a story that bubbles up startling even its teller.

But five specific MASTERPIECE Studio episodes stand out to me for various reasons and could be called, for want of a better term, my five favorites. Are they the same as yours, listeners? Possibly, but just as probably you have some very different selections than my own below.

Angela Lansbury
This remains one of my favorite MASTERPIECE Studio interviews for a variety of reasons. First, it’s Dame Angela Lansbury! We were extremely fortunate that Dame Angela agreed to participate and even more blessed that this was a one-hour interview in the studio, with Dame Angela sitting directly across from me. I remember that she opted not to wear headphones, so our conversation felt even more natural and intimate. The fact that I inadvertently made her cry — while reminiscing about how she only got to sing the theme to Beauty & the Beast once — and she described walking home with the anti-barrage balloons blotting out the sky during the start of World War II in Britain (and singing Noel Coward songs in a nightclub in Montreal at age 16) remains a true career highlight for me. Just a beautiful, touching, and charming interview through and through.Listen to Angela Lansbury on the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast.
Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw is one of our finest living actors today and there’s a reason she crops up everywhere from Killing Eve and Mrs. Wilson to Baptiste. But this more recent interview reminded me of Fiona Shaw the great thinker: an opera director and actor’s actor who can casually summon one of the most profound descriptions of grief I’ve ever encountered without even considering it (“Most sorrows… are like dreams, you know, they belong to each of us, but we all share the fact of them and we all lose people and then dissect the perspective of personal concern and worry in the larger picture of the world.") I could have happily spent another four hours on the line with Fiona Shaw and still found new ground to discover.Listen to Fiona Shaw on the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast.
Kenneth Branagh
I spoke to Sir Kenneth prior to the start of the final season of Wallander on MASTERPIECE for an hour-long interview that we split into three parts to match the final three episodes. The interview took place on a particularly brutal stormy day in January in a small cottage on the grounds of the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, a cottage my then-editor was convinced was haunted. Branagh was effortlessly charming and open and, as we sat in front of a cold fireplace, he remarked that we should have done the interview in front of the fire with whiskey as he discussed his final day as Kurt Wallander, and that heartbreaking scene with Kurt and Linda on the hill, like something out of Shakespeare.Listen to Kenneth Branagh on the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast:Kenneth Branagh Faces the End of Wallander Kenneth Branagh's Wallander Can't Catch a Break Kenneth Branagh's Last Day as Kurt Wallander
Rose Williams
We’ve since had Sanditon star Rose Williams on the podcast several times since this first interview, but that first meeting with Rose stands out. I remember we taped this in a hotel room in Beverly Hills during another hot Los Angeles summer during one of the very last pre-pandemic Television Critics Association press tours, and Williams swept in and spoke passionately about the “headstrong and helpful” Charlotte Heywood and about the unusual way the Austen heroine was introduced (lying down with a hunting rifle in her arms, if you recall). She was the epitome of an Austen heroine herself, and I could see instantly how she had landed the role and would go on to win viewers’ hearts as the confident and resourceful Charlotte.Listen to Rose Williams on the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast.Listen to Making Sanditon, Episode 1.
Inside the Grantchester Writers Room
I’ve had Grantchester head writer and executive producer Daisy Coulam on the podcast so many times over the years and she’s always a favorite guest, a fellow murder mystery obsessive and passionate telly viewer. (We even recorded a pilot for a sadly unrealized audio spinoff with her, now that I recall.) But this one, recorded during the early days of the COVID pandemic, was a bit different as Coulam and fellow Grantchester writers Joshua St. Johnston, and John Jackson welcomed me into the (virtual) writers room for a lively roundtable discussion about murder and morality. We ended up recording the entire interview for both audio and video, and released a chunk of it as a standalone video, but the entire interview was such a delight from start to finish, even with my overgrown pandemic hair and being taped as it was from my bedroom. Coulam, St. Johnston, and Jackson were so thoughtful and generous about the process of writing Grantchester and the happy place it's become for everyone on the cast and crew of the period drama.Listen to Insider the Grantchester Writers Room on the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast.
Honorable Mention
Caroline Blakiston, the grand dame of Poldark, Caro to her friends, still ranks as one of my favorite — and most memorable — interviews to date on MASTERPIECE Studio, not least of which because we discussed Star Wars (“Every time I see the film I think, ‘Why don’t you look more frightened?’ I was absolutely terrified.”) and because dear Caro gave me one of my most beloved and quotable lines from 200 episodes of MASTERPIECE Studio: “A costume can become a friend… a wig can become an enemy.”Listen to Caroline Blakiston on the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast.