GRETA SCACCHI Enjoys a little mid-life angst - Mayfair Times

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in profile
Scenes
with
Scacchi
PHOTO: REX FEATURES
IN ‘SHOOT ON SIGHT’
SCACCHI PLAYS SUSAN, THE
ENGLISH WIFE OF TARIQ ALI
(NASEERUDDIN SHAH)
At the press conference for Greta Scacchi’s latest film, the
tension in the room is palpable. The film, Shoot on Sight,
depicts the climate of fear in London after the 7/7 bombings
that irrevocably scarred the city. Its title refers to Operation
Kratos – the police “shoot-to-kill” policy to deal with suspected
suicide bombers. The film may be fictional, but with such loaded
subject matter and such parallels to real life, it was bound to hit
a nerve.
The press conference, for example, takes place on July 22
– exactly three years since the death of John Charles de
Menezes, the innocent man shot dead by police in a terrible
case of mistaken identity. The film itself, which centres around a
Muslim police officer and the difficulties he faces, comes after
Tarique Ghaffur, Britain’s most senior Asian police officer,
accused the Metropolitan police of racial discrimination. And
the film’s original release date, considered too close to the third
anniversary of 7/7, was postponed until August 22 out of
respect for the victims’ families.
Scacchi plays Susan, the English wife of Tariq Ali
(Naseeruddin Shah), a successful Muslim police officer. When
an innocent Muslim is killed by the London police force after
7/7, Tariq is asked to lead an investigation to hunt down
IN THE 1980s, GRETA
SCACCHI PLAYED THE
VIXEN IN FILMS SUCH AS
‘HEAT AND DUST’ AND
‘WHITE MISCHIEF’. NOW
SHE PREFERS A BIT OF
MIDDLE-AGED ANGST,
REPORTS KATE WHITE
suspected suicide bombers. The investigation is clouded by
allegations of racism and religious profiling in the police force,
as well as the ongoing threat of terrorism in London. At the
same time, Pakistan-born Tariq has his loyalties questioned
both by fellow Muslims and colleagues in the force, despite his
long service at Scotland Yard. He becomes torn between his
family and his professional duties, and is forced to question his
priorities both as a senior police officer and a Muslim.
So what drew 48-year-old Scacchi to the role of Susan? “I
was persuaded by Jag [Jagmohan Mundhra, director], who did
a very persuasive pitch over a glass of wine one evening,” she
says. “I was galvanized by his stories of having been a regular
visitor to London all of his life to suddenly finding that he
couldn’t hail a taxi. It was horrific, rife.”
“Taxi drivers would not stop for me in the days following 7/7
and I could understand why,” says Mundhra, who is not a
Muslim. “The fact that I had always found London to be an
extremely culturally-tolerant city made this change in
atmosphere all the more shocking.”
The film poses the question: is it a crime to be a Muslim? “I
can’t bear prejudice,” says Scacchi. “We’re living in a consumer
society and the media is always going out to sell more, so our
attention span gets shorter. Prejudgment and pigeon-holing are
rife. Soundbites are so much part of our society. We have this
lazy attitude of quickly summing up who we are — the more
papers there are, the more TV programmes and channels, the
less subtlety there is, so tolerance is going to diminish.”
Like most people, Scacchi remembers where she was on
the morning of 7/7. “I was somewhere in south-west London,
and I rang my girlfriend whose daughter works in Bloomsbury. I
called her immediately, to check that everything was all right. It
is one of those JFK kind of moments, isn’t it?”
The best thing about playing Susan, she says, was the onscreen
tension between her and Tariq. “The stress on [Tariq]
causes some friction at home, so that was nice – a bit of
middle-aged friction going on.”
Scacchi is no stranger to a bit of midlife angst — she’s just
finished playing the leading lady in the West End production of
Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play all about the perils of pushing 50,
The Deep Blue Sea. It was a performance for which she
received rave reviews. “It is the best role,” she says. “I’m just so
lucky because I’ve got that little bit of star status from films and
producers in commercial theatre need a bit of that before they’ll
dare to stick their necks out and put money into things. So this
producer who I’d already done a Noel Coward play with,
Private Lives, three years ago in Bath, was very pleased with �
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