Fane Productions has released a conversation between Dame Maggie Smith, Kathleen Turner, and host Gyles Brandreth, recorded in April of 2021, which is believed to be Smith’s final recorded interview prior to her passing last week. Watch the full conversation in the video here.

“I’ve never been in the position to choose, I’ve just had a vision of people with piles of scripts, you know. People say why did you do this, what made you do that, and I actually do what’s turned up,” said Smith.

When discussing the film she won an Oscar for, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Smith revealed: “There’s something weird about films, because the first things I did were inconsequential. I never felt that I was in a film. When you start, you’re just a person who appears for a morning and you don’t feel that you belong–of course you don’t belong because you have no idea what they’re doing. So the only time you feel like you’re making a movie is when you’re involved in it and do more than nod in for half a day’s filming. So that was the only time. But I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Kathleen Turner met Maggie Smith in 2000 while they were performing in adjacent theatres in London’s West End – Maggie in The Lady in the Van at the Queens Theatre, and Kathleen in The Graduate at the Gielgud Theatre.

Dame Maggie Smith and Kathleen Turner In Conversation with Gyles Brandreth was originally broadcast on Thu 8 Apr 2021.

Best known for her screen roles in the Harry Potter film series and Downton Abbey, Smith had several stage credits to her name, and won a Tony Award in 1990.