Helen Mirren is busy.
Over the past year, she has starred in TV series like 1923 and MobLand, filmed movies such as Switzerland and Goodbye June, and is now promoting her most recent project, The Thursday Murder Club. Mirren, 80, caught up with The Hollywood Reporter Thursday night (no pun intended) and shared what it’s like to balance it all.
“Sometimes it’s a bit of a car crash of projects, and they sort of pile up,” the Oscar winner told THR. “And you have very little time in between, which actually is a good thing. You get into a work mode, and you just live in that work mode for maybe five months, six months. So it’s been great, actually — all very interesting, very different projects.”
Directed by Chris Columbus, The Thursday Murder Club is based on Richard Osman’s bestselling novel. It follows four retirees — Elizabeth (Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan), Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) and Joyce (Celia Imrie) — solving murders as a hobby, but things change when they find themselves in the middle of a real whodunnit mystery.
While Mirren and Brosnan don’t play husband and wife in this film, they do in the hit Paramount show MobLand. And this film marks their third time working together as they first starred in the 1980 gangster film, The Long Good Friday. For Brosnan, this film was a chance to reunite with his “old friend” Columbus whom he worked with on Mrs. Doubtfire, he told THR.
Brosnan credits his “admiration” of the acclaimed actress to what makes them such a power duo onscreen. “She’s beautiful; she’s human; she’s real; she’s sexy; she’s fun; she’s fragile; she’s everything that you would want in a woman and fellow actor,” Brosnan told THR. “We get on together; we just kind of hit the ground running.”
The Queen star admits the respect is mutual. “I’m so, so fond of Pierce. He’s such a great guy. And that was a lovely surprise that someone with the incredible career that Pierce has had, the incredible success he’s had,” she said. “We just work in the same way, the two of us, we get on with it. We don’t make a fuss. And I just adored working with him. So I’ve been very lucky in the last year. First of all, I had Harrison Ford, who was fantastic, and then Pierce Brosnan. I’ve been a very lucky actress.”
The next time Mirren and Brosnan are set to appear together is in MobLand season two, which also stars Tom Hardy. Mirren told THR she hasn’t read any scripts yet, and they haven’t started filming, but she thinks “we probably will start at the end of October.”
So, it looks like there’s no slowing down, as the actress admits she doesn’t have plans to retire anytime soon. “I mean, sure, I love to not work. Don’t get me wrong; I love not working, and especially now more than earlier, I feel I’ve earned it; I deserve it,” she said with a laugh. “But no, I mean, if there’s a project that I want to do, and if I have the mental and physical capability to do it, I’ll do it.” She says what’s left on her bucket list is to do a “very radical, interesting piece of theater.”
Soon, catch her in The Thursday Murder Club, which is available to stream on Netflix Aug. 28.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Netflix