Podcast Transcript - Episode Nine, Michelle Dockery

Patrick : [00:00:02] All right, hang on. Let me get my stuff together. Just arrived at Michelle Dockery's house, and I've got my colour card out, and I'm just making sure she's got Farrow & Ball on her front door. And, yes, it's breakfast room green. How? That's so embarrassing. You weren't meant to catch me. Are you checking the colour of the door?

Michelle: [00:00:21] Hello? Come in, come in. Come and have a cup of tea. Thank you.

Patrick : [00:00:28] Hello, I'm Paddy O'Donnell, and this is the Chromologist from Farrow and Ball, the podcast where paint and colour meet life.

clip: [00:00:35] I've always had a very strong connection with colour. It's always just been a way of life for me.

Patrick : [00:00:41] I'm a colour expert and I spend my life helping people transform their dreams about colour into reality.

clip: [00:00:48] As a colour, it's this shocking, wild, really vivacious, in-your-face pink. And that's exactly what the club night was about.

Patrick : [00:00:57] It's through these conversations and the ones I've had on this podcast, and reading your memories and comments on Instagram, that I'm endlessly captivated by the power of colour to guide our lives.

clip: [00:01:09] I love it. It's very peaceful.

Patrick : [00:01:11] It's that really lovely, lovely blue that you get through the backbone of the mackerel.

clip: [00:01:15] It's quite like the colour of your eyes, actually.

Patrick : [00:01:17] Is it? Yeah. Are you flirting.

clip: [00:01:18] With me. Yeah.

Patrick : [00:01:21] I remember Mary Portas saying in our last series, I've never told my life story through color, but everyone should do this. And so we're back with a new series in which I ask people to choose four pivotal colors that have shaped their own lives.

clip: [00:01:34] I think we underestimate how much color does influence us and how it makes us feel. And it's so easy to say, oh, I just love yellow. Why?

Patrick : [00:01:42] So without further ado, on with the show. For the first episode in the new series of The Chromologist, I'm thrilled to welcome the one and only Michelle Dockery, an actress who's best known for starring as the dynamic and brutally honest Lady Mary Crawley in the TV series Downton Abbey, for which she's won a number of awards. Michelle has said she's a proud Essex girl at heart, coming from a family of very strong, opinionated, tough women. We'll find that out later. She's also said her kitchen is the most important space in the house. It's pretty beautiful too, because I'm in it. Michelle, it's wonderful to be here. Not while we are in your kitchen today, which is really exciting. And the acoustics are really good because we're sitting on a really beautiful rug. Hello, hello. So we're down here in your beautiful kitchen cum living room cum dining room, and it's a really fantastic space. Are you down here a lot?

Michelle: [00:02:38] Yeah, I spend most of our time down here. Yeah, we just love having people over. And as you can see, we've got a lovely dining table down the end. And it's a really lovely space to host, because then you can have dinner and then you can come down here and, you know, have a coffee or a drink afterwards. 

Patrick : [00:02:55] A dog bed. 

Michelle: [00:02:56] Yeah, that's for Alfie, our four year old lurcher. That bed is actually huge. Sometimes we look at it and we're like our dog's bed. I mean, he's a big dog.

Patrick : [00:03:07] Well, you're obviously madly busy. So how does Alfie fit into all that? Can you take Alfie on set with you? Sometimes.

Michelle: [00:03:13] Yeah, he's okay on set. I mean, he he can sit in my trailer and he just goes. If I've given him, like, a really good run, he can just snuggle up in my trailer and. And actually, on the most recent Downton film, which we just wrapped, it was like a dog crash. There were so many dogs. Our producer has a dog and some of the ads had their dog, so it was great.

Patrick : [00:03:35] Now when I come into people's homes, all I look at is colour. So your dog bed is slightly vert de terre. I think it's very chic.

Michelle: [00:03:42] My niece and nephews sort of snuggle in with him. Do they? They get in his bed because it's massive. Look at it. It is huge.

Patrick : [00:03:48] It's perfect. And there's a kind of lovely liberty of colour choice here because you've got blue going on, you've got red Read going on. You've got dark green going on. Are you doing all this yourself, or do you use an interior designer? No.

Michelle: [00:04:00] I feel I have good taste and I and I really enjoy it. I do really love doing it. But a house this with this much to do. When we renovated it, I really needed to bring someone in. And I worked with a fantastic interior designer called Emma Ainscough, whose work is absolutely beautiful. She is an expert in choosing colour. She also has really, you know, pattern. I always thought, oh, you can't mix pattern and pattern and like two different patterns and like the chair you're sitting in is very different from the carpet and but it all sort of works.

Patrick : [00:04:36] We're going to look at the colour of your childhood, your first colour. So yeah if you can share what that is.

Michelle: [00:04:42] So I went for slipper satin okay. My the house we grew up in my mum's very house proud. This is in Essex. This is in Essex where I grew up. We had a beautiful home and my mum loved and still loves pinkish cream. Okay, you know, all the walls were that lovely creamy colour, you know. She would always have like beautiful cushions that had that lovely, those lovely tones. And she loved greens as well. We had a lovely green sofa growing up, a very big green like a suite. And my dad always had his chair. Chair. He was dad's chair.

Patrick : [00:05:20] Like Jim in the Royal family.

Michelle: [00:05:21] Yeah, it's dad's chair. Yeah. Dad's chair. So my mum would have lovely colours like greens and pinks. And I remember always seeing those big tables when I was a kid and them doing, putting the wallpaper up themselves. And, you know, she'd have like a change every few years. But it was often those lovely sort of pinkish cream, like the slipper satin. And also I chose that because it, it reminds me of so much of my childhood because I, I danced, I went to ballet school. Okay. And at this wonderful stage school in Essex where I grew up, called the Finch Stage School. And that color really reminds me of ballet. Of course. Ballet shoes. Yeah, of course, which is why it's called that. And sewing on your ribbons to your ballet shoes and or getting new ballet shoes each year. And, you know, it's sort of really reminds me of that time and that kind of pinky tone as a little girl, you know, it just always sort of makes me think of that time when I loved those pinkish kind of ballet slippers or like the little ballet leotards we wore.

Patrick : [00:06:24] And I mean, where we are now, there is a kind of very delicate pinkish note to these walls. I know this isn't slipper satin because we talked about the colors earlier, but it's kind of that slightly pinkish white note, isn't it?

Michelle: [00:06:37] Exactly. I've carried on that tradition. Yeah.

Patrick : [00:06:40] Your folks come here a lot.

Michelle: [00:06:41] They do? Yeah.

Patrick : [00:06:42] You're still really close. You're hanging out together?

Michelle: [00:06:45] Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick : [00:06:46] You're a riot when you're together.

Michelle: [00:06:47] We are. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun and laugh. We laugh a lot because.

Patrick : [00:06:52] Have you got Irish roots as well?

Michelle: [00:06:54] Yeah, my dad's Irish. We can get into really big chats and especially, you know, around the dinner table or sometimes, like at Christmas time, we sort of communicate through the telly, you know, we love sitting down and watching a film or.

Patrick : [00:07:07] Which is a real trad thing to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coming back to your slipper satin, this lovely, as you say, kind of slightly soft, pinkish white greyish almost with a tiny bit of yellow through it. You talked about your mum's house, and it kind of represents the living room and growing up with splashes of green through the place. Any other kind of reference for that sort of gentle, sort of soft pink? White?

Michelle: [00:07:30] I think the colour, because it reminds me so much of that time in my childhood. It's comforting. I feel like it's a really and calming. It's lovely, calming colour and bright. I feel like it was, you know, coming home from dancing or school. At the end of the day, our house was always very bright. Right, okay. His lovely bright. And it was it was a small house, you know, we grew up in a pretty small house. You know, we were forever fighting over the bathroom. My poor dad, he grew up with him three, you know, three girls. And I remember those summers coming home and and our house was always, always very warm in the winter and very cool in the summer. Maybe it was also something to do with where the sun set, right? Yeah. Um, where the sun came up and set and, um, so I remember always coming home to a really like, after, you know, dancing for a few hours and being really hot and bothered and coming home to a really cool house. And I think that that was the color because you couldn't.

Patrick : [00:08:26] Get into the bathroom because your sister's getting lippy. Yeah, exactly.

Michelle: [00:08:30] Exactly. This is the office.

Patrick : [00:08:37] There. So nobody's working very hard.

Michelle: [00:08:39] Working very hard. Yeah, well, it's a bit echoey because we've just painted it and there's not much furniture in it.

Patrick : [00:08:44] Actually, it's kind of an antidote, isn't it, to the rest of the house. I mean, I know you've got white walls, but that feels very calm. Very soft in there.

Michelle: [00:08:50] Yeah.

Patrick : [00:08:51] And another whopping dog bed.

Michelle: [00:08:53] I know.

Michelle: [00:08:54] Look, he's got two.

Michelle: [00:08:55] He's got.

Patrick : [00:08:56] His. They're his and hers, aren't they?

Michelle: [00:08:58] He's the most spoilt dog.

Michelle: [00:09:00] It's because he moves around a lot. He's always wanting to sit near us. So we had to sort of have enough. But the thing is, he always ends up on the sofas and the chairs. So I don't know why we've got these dog beds. I'm sentimental. I don't want to get rid of him cos he's had him since he was tiny. Yeah. No, I know.

Patrick : [00:09:13] I'm like that. We've got really manky sheepskins for our dogs and I don't get rid of them. They're really horrible and matted. I like a bit of drool in my bed. Yeah. So we're going to be moving on now to your second colour, which is the colour of your youth. So if you can share what that is.

Michelle: [00:09:33] So I've gone for Green Studio Green which.

Patrick : [00:09:36] Is our blackest green. Yeah. It's really elegant I love it.

Michelle: [00:09:39] It's beautiful.

Michelle: [00:09:40] And we've used it a lot in the house, the studio. I chose Studio Green because my sort of teenage years. It makes me think of my indie years 13 to 16 I went through a real like grunge phase.

Michelle: [00:09:55] Did you?

Michelle: [00:09:56] Yeah. Really grungy. And my mum actually was. She's a brilliant dressmaker. And she. She didn't do that for a living. But she loved. She just loved making clothes. And she used to make me these. There was a real fashion for, like, long skirts and Doctor Martens. Yeah. You know, and I remember I had this dark green. She found this really cool dark green fabric with, like, a really cool pattern. And she would make them for me when I went through my grunge years. The sort of like Alanis Morissette.

Michelle: [00:10:23] Okay, years, you know?

Michelle: [00:10:25] And I had, like, the long hippie hair.

Patrick : [00:10:27] And it's kind of a strong woman moment too, though, wasn't it? It wasn't kind of like external to society. It was kind of women finding their voice, wasn't it?

Michelle: [00:10:35] Absolutely.

Patrick : [00:10:37] Yeah.

Michelle: [00:10:37] Yeah.

Michelle: [00:10:38] And and. Yeah. And I loved her. She was I loved her music at that time, you know. And that album just blew up and then other clothes that were just. I remember I had this dark green top, which was really fashionable in the 90s. It was sort of like cotton. And then you had a sort of mesh over the top. It was very kind of Spice Girls era as well. You sort of had that. Yeah. You know, Paddy used to wear them.

Patrick : [00:10:59] Yeah, I used to wear them all the time in my 30s. Yeah.

Michelle: [00:11:03] And it sort of had this the only way I can describe it as like a tattoo across the top, like a sort of shape of a tattoo. Yeah. So it was my slightly grungy goth years, and then I cut my hair off really short and I went sort of really a little bit punky and cutting my hair short, I think, upset my. It definitely upset my, my nan, my granny. She really. Yeah. She really didn't like my hair short. And I remember she always used to say, you know, grow it back. Grow it back. I wish you'd grow it back. So she'd be very pleased now because, look, my hair is very long.

Michelle: [00:11:35] Yeah. You have.

Patrick : [00:11:35] Very lovely, lush tresses, don't.

Michelle: [00:11:38] That Color for me is also sort of teenage teenage angst. Yeah.

Michelle: [00:11:43] Green. And actually, when I see it now and we, you know, we have it a lot in the house and you can see my kitchen is very it's a very sort of dark green. It doesn't make me think of that time. It's just it's actually a really calm I think it's a really lovely, calm colour. But then it felt like it was the sort of, you know, those it makes me think of those years of like teenage angst and, you know, a bit bit moody.

Patrick : [00:12:05] Were doing your kind of dark green, slightly grungy, emo, Alanis flag waving moment, was that to kind of get a response from anybody? No.

Michelle: [00:12:15] It was more my way of finding myself, I think, and expressing myself. I remember when I was old enough to go into London on my own, I would get the train from Romford into Liverpool Street and then I'd go to Camden.

Patrick : [00:12:27] Legendary Camden.

Michelle: [00:12:29] And I'd go to Camden sometimes with a friend, or I'd just go on my own with my Walkman and my headphones, listening to Nirvana or Alanis Morissette and in my green skirt and my DMs, I sometimes get those henna tattoos.

Michelle: [00:12:44] Do you remember those markets?

Michelle: [00:12:45] Yeah. And I get them on my hands, and I'd go home and my mom would be like, mm. That's interesting. Thank God it's not a real one, you know? But I loved them. I would have these, like, little henna tattoos on my hands. And and it was it was a real time of sort of my first, like taste of freedom.

Patrick : [00:13:03] Were you kind of. Obviously, because we all know you as an actor, were you doing acting?

Michelle: [00:13:09] The stage school I was at, I was there right up until I was, you know, 17. And then when I got to senior school, they had a great drama department and I had a wonderful teacher called Jude Bert, who I'm still still friends with now. And she really encouraged me with the acting and encouraged me to audition for the National Youth Theatre, which I then did when I was sort of 16, 17 and then eventually drama school. So and I think really maybe that time as well of wearing certain clothes and being a sort of style, it was like putting on a maybe a little bit of kind of putting on a character or, you know, I think everyone goes through that, don't they? Of expressing themselves at that age, it's like finding who you are. And but maybe there was also a little bit of wanting to look like Alanis Morissette, you know, or I'd see a movie and, you know, like Baz Luhrmann, like Romeo and Juliet. And she was Juliet was always in sort of long dresses and with the long hair, and I sort of wanted to kind of be her. So there was a bit of that going on at that time.

Patrick : [00:14:12] So you've got my favorite runner on the stairs, that lovely Sinclair tilt, sort of. It's Jude, isn't it? But it's really.

Michelle: [00:14:18] Thick. It's the.

Michelle: [00:14:19] Peacock one, so it sort of looks like feathers.

Patrick : [00:14:21] And it's got every colour in it. There's lovely orange, isn't there? There's kind of a neutral Duke color. You've got emerald green and a bit of lilac. Do you walk on that in bare feet? Because it's not the softest thing in the world, is it?

Michelle: [00:14:32] It's so.

Michelle: [00:14:32] Hard. It's brilliant for a staircase because it's so hard wearing, you know, and great.

Patrick : [00:14:35] For getting the dry skin off your heel.

Michelle: [00:14:38] It's a free pedicure.

Patrick : [00:14:42] So moving on. We're going to move to your defining decade now.

Michelle: [00:14:46] So for that decade from sort of early 20s through to early 30s, I wanted to find a color that was really vibrant and, you know, had a big impact. So I went for Red. I just thought, I've got to go for red because that period was just hectic and fun. And I'd just started working. I had just become an actor and I was doing theater and then, you know, Downton then came along when I was 27 and it's Downton 27. Yeah, I was 27. Yeah. And so I sort of wanted to kind of do that period between leaving drama school and then those 14 years, but particularly those Downton years, the series more than the films, which was ten years. Yeah. Pretty much. It was sort of eight, you know, 8 to 10 years. And it was just fast pace and red carpets and you know it. So I thought, I have to choose red. So I went for bamboozle. Yeah.

Patrick : [00:15:43] So Bamboozle is one of our sort of more recent colors. And I never know quite how to describe it because Aussie Bamboozle itself is kind of, you know, the bamboozle, you know, to bamboozle somebody. But the actual colour is really like a harissa red or rose harissa red. I suppose that's kind of the easiest way. It's really almost kind of leaning towards orange, but not orange. So it's not a true red. It's. Yeah, there's a lovely vibrancy to it isn't it. But yes. So going back to the red carpet, the kind of glamour, the frenetic kind of ness of that nature.

Michelle: [00:16:13] So yeah, it's just a sort.

Michelle: [00:16:14] Of energy of of that colour. And I think I wore a lot of red at that time. So yeah. So on Downton as well. Lady Mary was wearing red a lot. One of the first, I think one of the first episodes, actually, I'm in a red evening gown and then lots of Burgundy and lots of it was always a colour that suited the character and suited me, I think so. The costume designers were always putting me in red and then as the show, you know, became so successful in America. And of course, that opened up the whole that whole mad time of, like, flying to L.A. and doing all these press junkets in New York and LA.

Patrick : [00:16:52] Was that your first experience of the craziness of what it's like stateside?

Michelle: [00:16:57] Absolutely.

Michelle: [00:16:57] And I remember the first time the show was nominated for Emmys. I didn't know what they were. I was like, what's an Emmy? No idea. It was so new to me, and the first dress I wore at the Emmys was Burgundy. It was red. And then there was another time where I wore this beautiful custom Prada gown, and the bottom half was Burgundy and the top half was bright red. That color really.

Michelle: [00:17:23] Stands out from those.

Patrick : [00:17:24] Dresses.

Michelle: [00:17:24] No, no, are you not? No.

Patrick : [00:17:26] I ripped them off your back.

Michelle: [00:17:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're amazing. Then they're put into archive and or sometimes you can auction. Sometimes they're auctioned. That one actually was auctioned for charity. But that bright the top half was that bamboozle color.

Michelle: [00:17:39] Bright bright red.

Patrick : [00:17:39] Spicy sort of red. Yeah.

Michelle: [00:17:41] So and that and it was very busy frenetic time, you know, traveling and always on a plane and or filming and so, so yeah I went for that color because it does for me that's what that time was like.

Michelle: [00:17:56] It was very bright, a lot of energy.

Michelle: [00:17:58] Yeah, I do love red as well. I wear red, I like wearing red and I love red. You can see lots of pops of red in.

Michelle: [00:18:05] There are lots of accents.

Patrick : [00:18:06] The red aren't there on your runner and on the beautiful rug that were on. Yeah. And you got a red cushion behind you?

Michelle: [00:18:12] Yeah, my red cushions.

Patrick : [00:18:13] And when we came in, I was being really nosy. And I looked in your boot room and you've got a red window frame with black and white tiled floor and beautiful. Yeah, I think slow blue units in the boot room. Yeah, but this lovely framing of the glass.

Michelle: [00:18:28] I love painting window frames. Yeah. Having just a little pop of colour color of the window frames, and I wanted to do it in that room. And then the door, the front door, one half of it, as you saw, is breakfast room green? Yeah. And then the other side is red. And I wanted the two to sort of face each other.

Patrick : [00:18:46] So that's your genius?

Michelle: [00:18:48] I'm not.

Michelle: [00:18:49] Really much because.

Patrick : [00:18:50] I won't have a job.

Michelle: [00:18:52] I do, as you can tell. I love it, and I think if I wasn't an actress, I'd probably have.

Patrick : [00:18:57] A little foray into.

Michelle: [00:18:58] Interiors. Yeah, I love it.

Patrick : [00:19:00] That's fantastic. So forget Michelle Dockery for a minute. Let's talk about Lady Mary Crawley. How do you think she would respond to the color bamboozle?

Michelle: [00:19:07] Well, here's a spoiler. In the next film she wears, I wore this beautiful bright red dress, and it has that kind of orangey red tone to it. So yes, she does.

Patrick : [00:19:19] She embraces.

Michelle: [00:19:19] She embraces it. And there is. And in the story there is a sort of new it's a bit of a new chapter, and I've never worn that color before in the show. I mean, as I said, I've worn lots of different reds, but never a bright, bright, quite modern red for the time for 1930. And it's my favorite dress in the film, and it is pretty much bamboozle.

Patrick : [00:19:42] What room is this?

Michelle: [00:19:44] Well, it's the dressing room.

Michelle: [00:19:45] Yeah, it's my very that.

Patrick : [00:19:47] And this is the cherry bloom in the glass. Yeah. It's really glamorous, isn't it? And you've got a beautiful lacquer. Is that true, studio Dugan? Um.

Michelle: [00:19:55] It is. Yeah. Dressing table. Again, it's that pop of red.

Michelle: [00:19:58] I love it against the blue.

Patrick : [00:20:00] It's glorious with the blue, isn't it? And the lovely block print on the blinds with the red again. Picking up the red.

Michelle: [00:20:05] And I wanted to do gloss because it reflects the light. Because it is a darker colour. But it's really cosy and looks great with all my washing hanging out, doesn't it?

Patrick : [00:20:18] Yeah, it looks beautiful. It's a really lovely room. So we're going to be talking about your Colour of now, and I'd love to know where this is going to go because obviously I know you're doing a bit of music too. Oh, yes. So does that come into where you are now?

Michelle: [00:20:34] Yes, I guess that does.

Michelle: [00:20:36] The last few years I've really loved blue. So for this last one, I've gone for Inchyra blue. I'm sort of really drawn to that colour in what I wear and paint colour. For our house renovation, we did. I've used a lot of blue in the house and particularly that colour. It's it's gorgeous. I think it's a really calming blue. Yeah.

Patrick : [00:20:58] I suppose for anybody who doesn't know what Inchyra blue is and how dare you! If you're listening to this podcast, you should know every colour. Um, but it's it's dark, isn't it? I mean, I always kind of call it slightly gunmetal with some warmth. Yeah, that's kind of slightly steely blue, a little bit of green in it, but it's it's really forgiving, isn't it, for a dark colour. It's not. It's not too much. It's not overpowering. There's a kind of warmth to it. It's really cosy.

Michelle: [00:21:22] And I think actually maybe it reminds me of some of those amazing places that we filmed in, not just on Downton, but in other work that I've done that has the setting has been in those beautiful old estates. There's that's something.

Michelle: [00:21:35] About that.

Patrick : [00:21:36] Estate color and everything like that.

Michelle: [00:21:37] Yeah. And also there's certain restaurants and places that I've been in that have that have that color blue. I just feel like it's a sort of color of this time or the last few years for me. And I guess coming out of Bamboozle, out of that red time into blue, it's like a slightly calmer color for me. I'm always drawn to it for some reason.

Patrick : [00:21:58] Well, I mean, there's a color psychology thing that greens are very restful and blues are quite thoughtful as well. So, yeah, maybe.

Michelle: [00:22:05] I'm in my thoughtful time.

Patrick : [00:22:06] You're in your. You've grown up, you got married, you're all settled. You're growing up. You got a.

Michelle: [00:22:12] Dog, got a.

Michelle: [00:22:13] Dog. It's a sort of calmer time. Yeah, I do definitely take a little bit of more time out.

Patrick : [00:22:19] Now, where does the music fit in? So? So obviously that is removed from acting. It's still performing. Yeah, but where's that fitting in?

Michelle: [00:22:27] So Michael Fox, who plays Andy in Downton, he's a great friend and we've worked together for a really long time. We started bringing our guitars to set and started playing together and writing songs together. And just for fun, really. And then, you know, we thought, let's just go for it and start, you know, start actually doing it. And we performed at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn a few years ago, and somebody was in the crowd and who who became our manager and, and then we signed up and started doing it, you know, and started recording. And we've got two EPs out now and I've loved it. And it's such a different way of performing and, and a way of working, you know, you're speaking somebody else's words when you're, you know, when you're acting and, and with music, it's it was something that was really new and and quite daunting at times. You know, writing, you know, what are you start you know, what do you write about. And, and we have this way of working where Michael will start a really beautiful riff. You know, he'll start something and we'll have a kind of idea of a line or a feeling or a saying or. And then you sort of mumble your way through it, and eventually you kind of find the story. Yeah. And actually often a lot of our songs sort of become a story, like a story about a couple or about a friendship. And I think maybe that's where our acting, you know, the influence of us being actors comes into our, our songwriting.

Michelle: [00:23:54] Because I'm not saying.

Patrick : [00:23:55] This because I'm here, but I was listening to some of the tracks on YouTube. Did you? And you have both of you have really beautiful voices, and you do pair beautifully together.

Michelle: [00:24:04] Oh thank you.

Michelle: [00:24:05] Well, people have said we're almost like brother and sister how siblings sing.

Patrick : [00:24:09] It's really lovely.

Michelle: [00:24:10] The sibling and I have it with my sister actually, where you can harmonize really well together. But Michael and I have always sort of had that. We harmonize very well together.

Patrick : [00:24:22] I know you said you're going through a blue phase at the moment, because to me, in Cairo, blue kind of feels like I wonder if it's a bit of your Irish roots. Oh yeah. To me it feels a bit sort of outdoorsy. Like water on stone walls with lichen and everything. It's gone. I wonder if it's taking you back.

Michelle: [00:24:38] It sounds so lovely.

Michelle: [00:24:39] Yeah. Perhaps. Yeah. I think it's a sort of ground. Maybe I feel more grounded. I feel like it's, you know, it's a different time. And like I was saying, you know, my 20s and 30s were very heightened and, you know, always travelling and moving around and and also this house is I've moved around a lot and here feels like we're going to be here for a long, for a long time.

Michelle: [00:25:00] Like a.

Patrick : [00:25:01] Forever house.

Michelle: [00:25:02] Yeah. And I think that, that maybe that color is a sort of more grounding. It feels quite its roots. Yeah. Yeah. It feels quite rooted. I've been, you know, so lucky. And I've stayed in the most beautiful places and all over the world and travelled so much. And, and I've stayed in gorgeous hotels. And it's not.

Michelle: [00:25:20] Quite the same, though, is it? It's never quite your own bed and.

Patrick : [00:25:22] Yeah.

Michelle: [00:25:23] And I sort of always, you know, I need I at some point was like, I really want. A home, I want to put all my things and all my memorabilia and all the silly things that I've collected along the way in one place. And it really feels like that this time. And that color, just it, you know, as you can see, it sort of pops up all over the house. It's like really?

Michelle: [00:25:42] And you got versions of it because you've.

Patrick : [00:25:44] Got bits of blue bits of green in that kind of dark spectrum. Yeah, which is kind of filtering colors from the inside out.

Michelle: [00:25:51] Anyway, we've got.

Michelle: [00:25:52] Some, um, fitted wardrobes upstairs and it looks beautiful. And the gloss, oh it's.

Patrick : [00:25:57] Lovely because you get much more of the nuance of the undertones, don't.

Michelle: [00:26:00] You. Yeah. And the.

Michelle: [00:26:00] Reflections.

Patrick : [00:26:02] So this is where we move on to me giving you a color. Okay. And actually you've used quite strong colors apart from your childhood. You use quite strong because your life is probably quite frenetic. It's quite full on and you need those moments quite so. We have a color called old white, which is a really beautiful, elegant, slightly dirty, but, you know, really calming, really wrestle white. And I always rename these colors and I'm calling it. That's a wrap white. She's rolling her eyes at me.

Michelle: [00:26:32] No, I love it.

Patrick : [00:26:34] So I know it's really cheesy name, but I kind of thought at the end of the day and actually, it feels really fitting to your story about blue is when you walk off set, you go back into your world where you control it. It's a bit quieter, it's a bit calmer, and this is about you finding that breathing space after kind of doing your press junkets and massive crazy filming schedule and stuff.

Michelle: [00:26:56] So it's kind of.

Patrick : [00:26:57] It's like calm my time, my personal space, my family space. Time for you to just breathe and stop.

Michelle: [00:27:05] I love it.

Patrick : [00:27:05] Here's your tin of. That's a wrap white. Oh, my.

Michelle: [00:27:08] God, I've got to paint something in this color now that's.

Michelle: [00:27:11] So special.

Patrick : [00:27:11] Really good. Actually. It's really good. Full circle because it's the best trim, color, woodwork, skirting and ceiling color to go with in China. Blue. Okay. They work a treat together.

Michelle: [00:27:21] Right.

Michelle: [00:27:21] That's it. I'm using my color. And that's a wrap.

Patrick : [00:27:24] And that's a wrap. Thank you very much, Michel. It's been a hoot. So thank you so much.

Michelle: [00:27:30] It's such a.

Michelle: [00:27:30] Pleasure. This has been a treat.

Michelle: [00:27:31] Thank you, thank you.

Patrick : [00:27:37] So if you can't wait 12 months for the third installment of Downton Abbey the movie, Michelle will be appearing in October in the new, brilliant Robert Zemeckis film here. I'm saying brilliant. I haven't seen it yet. You can also follow us at Farrow & Ball. Come and Find me. I'd love to know if you've enjoyed this conversation. And if you have, then please do tell your friends. My guest next week is the gardener and landscape designer Sean Anthony Pritchard. The Chromologist is a Farrow & Ball and Feast collective production. The producer is Sarah Cuddon Until the next one. Goodbye and big hugs.