Natascha McElhone in HOTEL PORTOFINO | ©2024 PBS

HOTEL PORTOFINO is now in its third season Sunday nights on PBS’s MASTERPIECE THEATRE.

Created by Matt Baker, HOTEL PORTOFINO is set in 1920s Italy at the title establishment. The hotel is managed by Englishwoman Bella Ainsworth, played by Natascha McElhone, although it technically belongs to her husband Cecil (Mark Umbers).

Bella and Cecil have been married for thirty years, have two living children and one deceased. Bella pours her heart and soul into the hotel; Cecil sees it only as a source of income. By Season 3, Bella would like nothing more than to get Cecil out of her life, and Cecil wants a divorce, but nothing is simple – including the rise of fascism in the village where the hotel stands, the family finances, and everyone’s love lives.

McElhone (pronounced MAC-ell-hone), a native of London, England, has an impressive career in films and television in the U.K., the U.S., and Europe. Her credits include SURVIVING PICASSO, THE TRUMAN SHOW, SOLARIS, CALIFORNICATION, DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, THE FIRST, THE CROWN, and HALO.

Speaking from her kitchen, which has an intriguing pattern of vines on the ceiling, McElhone gets on Zoom to discuss HOTEL PORTOFINO.

McElhone has been with HOTEL PORTOFINO from the start, but says she wasn’t told much about Bella when she was brought aboard.

“To be honest, I wouldn’t say that it was incredibly defined at the beginning. They very much invited collaboration and idea-sharing and being at the drawing board, which was great fun, and incredibly generous of them. So, yeah, there were a lot of changes as we went through.

HOTEL PORTOFINO key art | ©2024 PBS

“That’s true, actually, for all the characters, really, that they also developed in different directions, and in surprising directions. I think Matt worked with what he saw, and then continued to develop threads and amplify things that perhaps actors brought to their roles, and then let go of things that perhaps didn’t serve the story as well as he thought it might, like any good writer and showrunner/collaborator.”

McElhone is pleased that many of her thoughts about Bella have been incorporated into the series. “Matt, the writer, has been really open to the suggestions. The apothecary, developing this business [that Bella starts in Season 3 with her friend Claudine Pascale, played by Lily Frazer], I ended up contributing a fair bit to that idea.

“Also, I think this idea that the relationship with Cecil isn’t black and what, that it’s difficult to sever from when you have children with someone, and a shared life, and a shared history of having lost a child, and the binding, bonding, and also the fissure that that can create in a relationship.

So, aside from the obvious, the recent violence that is depicted, the thirty years prior to that, these are dynamics that change all the time, and if only dot, dot, dot hadn’t happened, would they still be together, would they have made it? If only dot, dot, dot, if only he hadn’t misunderstood that letter, would he have responded in that irrational way? All those kinds of things that are complicated about long relationships.

“I found looking at that stuff was good and interesting. And also, I suppose her discovering a new lease on life, an idea of reinventing herself, pivoting and changing and being excited by new people, Claudine, this professional venture, this new love in her life, learning a new language, living in a new country. I like that messaging, that you continue to change.”

McElhone says she doesn’t recall most of what was jettisoned from the original concept. “Gosh, I can’t even remember now. I really can’t. One disposes of the stuff that you don’t end up using. I just remember, we did a pivot on a few things, and then you breathe life into that, and that felt right.”

Among the things that have remained consistent is Bella’s management of the Hotel Portofino, and that her husband Cecil has always been, to put it mildly, a jerk.

“A cad,” McElhone specifies with a laugh. “And in fact, that ended up being one of the most fun relationships to play. I think near the beginning, it wasn’t certain whether his character would remain or be got rid of. And then, of course, no one could live without Mark. So, he had to stay, and he became such a great character.”

Umbers has said that a scene was shot in which Cecil rapes Bella, but the scene was never aired once it was decided that he would remain on the show, as it was felt the act made the character too heinous.

However, McElhone feels that this violent incident may be part of both characters’ unseen history. “I think in a funny way, when you film more than you need to for a show, it’s always good [to remember what was excised]. What Chekhov said, ‘Previous circumstances are everything.’ And so, in a sense, the more you do to build in to a character, even if it doesn’t end up on screen directly, the world-building, I think, is always super-useful. So, the fact that he had been abusive towards her, she could carry that then as part of their story, and that was the [source of] resentment, obviously, and the upset, and the fact that she couldn’t continue to be in the same house as this person, or trust him, it was all grist to the mill.”

Although it is set in coastal Italy, HOTEL PORTOFINO is actually shot in Croatia. Had McElhone ever been to that country before?

“No. Only on this show. But we spent three summers there in the end, and that was a joy. I absolutely loved, loved, loved that coastline. It was incredible. Jumping into the sea every morning before work, amazing way to start the day.”

She feels a set of ownership about the villa that plays the hotel. “‘This is my home.’ Yeah, very much so, because it isn’t a studio. It is a house. So, it’s not as if you walk past a door, and suddenly you’re against a chipboard wall. It is all a beautiful old house.”

Unlike Bella, McElhone confesses she can’t actually speak Italian. “It would be lovely to. I’m not disciplined enough. Carolina [Gonnelli], who plays the character of Paola, is a wonderful actor and friend, she would shepherd me through those [Italian] lines tirelessly.”

McElhone says she did actually learn a lot about making perfume for Bella’s venture in Season 3. “All of the alchemy practices – we actually had a consultant on set, which was wonderful. And the smells, the aromas, the mixtures, on that set, it just smelled exquisite. We had real rose petals and orange peels and lavender, all the herbs and spices. Everything was collected locally, and used and, yeah, we made perfume.”

McElhone’s hair and makeup as Bella are very different from her real-life look. Is the hair hers, just styled to defy gravity, or is it a wig?

“It’s a wig. I’m very happy that you had to ask, because I worried that it might be very obvious that it was a wig some of the time. I was telling [another interviewer] it did have a life and mind of its own, and almost had wings of its own. The temperatures and the humidity and the sea air and various other things meant that it was quite a lot of maintenance for the hair and makeup department. [The hair department] was great. They’re very good at that.”

Bella’s wardrobe looks authentically period, but much more comfortable than what we might associate with women’s wear in the 1920s.

“Yes,” McElhone affirms. “I loved the costumes. The thing that was less comfortable were the shoes. They were absolute agony. So, ankles up, fantastic, but whenever possible, whenever the camera was close [in shots that didn’t show feet], the shoes would come off. Because they were from the 1920s, and they were worn out. And we walk a lot on gravel, as you probably could tell, up and down that drive. Not fun.”

The opportunity arises to correct a misperception about McElhone’s departure from DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, which ran for two seasons on ABC 2016-2018, and then had a third season on Netflix in 2019. McElhone played the U.S. First Lady, married to the President, played by Kiefer Sutherland. The characters had a loving marriage, but the First Lady dies in a car crash in Season 2.

This was neither, McElhone says, because she was written out so that she could do another project, nor because the producers wanted to get rid of the character. “It’s funny how press gets hold of things. I read that I’d left because I was going to do Beau Willimon’s show, THE FIRST, which isn’t the case. I got that job long after I left.

No, on DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, the showrunner that I signed up to do the show with, David Guggenheim, was let go in the first season, and there were four showrunners in the first season. So, it was a very different beast than the one that I was super-excited to sign up to do. David Guggenheim was no longer attached to it, and it was his writing that I really enjoyed and loved, and his characterization of the part that he’d written for me. And then, obviously, with his exit, that emphasis and focus changed.

“And so, they were very completely understanding and lovely, I said, ‘Look, is it okay if I just sort of see it out to a conclusion that suits the story? But it’s so different from what we set out to do.’ So, yeah, that’s ‘What shall we do? Shall we kill her?’ ‘Yeah, sure, that’s dramatic enough.’”

One bonus of the DESIGNATED SURVIVOR gig is that cast member Kal Penn, who had served in the Obama administration for two years, “got us access to go to the White House and do research, just as the [2016] election was imminent. I had assumed that Hillary would go in, but that wasn’t to be. But a very interesting time.”

Speaking of politics, what did McElhone know about the situation in Italy when she became involved in HOTEL PORTOFINO? Did she do any research into the period?

“I did, and I always love that kind of research. I read a really wonderful book that was set in the ‘20s. It was huge. It took me a very long time. It’s interesting that I can no longer remember [the title].”

McElhone adds that she wondered whether real-life writers might show up as characters in the series. “For some reason, I thought that the hotel might become a place for literary figures to sort of swan in and out of, as seemed to happen back then, whether it was the [James] Joyces, or American writers, too, that traveled an awful lot around that time, and through Italy, and they all seemed to find each other. Maybe the Bloomsbury set.”

Other books sparked insight into Bella’s character. “I read a book that built a lovely kind of world, sort of sylvan idyll where these people would meet. and also, not that this was directly germane, but [Maggie Shipstead’s novel] GREAT CIRCLE, which started actually in the late 1800s and then went into the ‘20s, and it’s [about] a female pilot and that period.

“I [thought] that maybe Bella would be reading Jung, becoming aware of psychoanalysis, becoming aware of Simone de Beauvoir, which was a little bit later, but just awakenings and movements of that time. Emily Dickinson, the poet, I drilled quite deeply into her, because that was obviously one of Bella’s heroines. So, that’s always fun, doing that stuff, and it’s good. It’s like a plumb line. It just puts you straight into that mindset, I suppose.”

What’s up next for McElhone? “I’m about to do a show called THE YOUNG SHERLOCK, and play Sherlock’s mother. It’s a look at Sherlock Holmes before he was Sherlock Holmes, and it starts off with him as a teenager in Oxford. Joe Fiennes plays the father, Colin Firth plays one of the characters, and a lovely young actor called Hero Fiennes-Tiffin plays Sherlock. I don’t know who the other cast members are yet, but I think it’s building fast. And that’s period as well, actually, that’s Victorian era. So, more costumes,” she laughs. “That will be fun.”

HOTEL PORTOFINO Season 3 ends on something of a cliffhanger. Does McElhone know whether she – and the show itself – will be back for a fourth season?

“I love the story and I love everyone in the show. I’d always be up for that. I don’t know what the plan is, actually. I know we’re not doing it this year, but they haven’t said, ‘Never.’ So, we’ll see.”

And what would McElhone most like people to know about HOTEL PORTOFINO Season 3?

“Alchemy. We all need alchemy in our lives. And you need to watch it.”

Related: HOTEL PORTOFINO: Creator and writer Matt Baker on Season 3

Related: HOTEL PORTOFINO: Actor Mark Umbers on Season 3 of the PBS Masterpiece series

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Article: HOTEL PORTOFINO: Actress Natascha McElhone on Season 3 of the PBS drama series

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