Tamzin Merchant: The actress who quite literally followed her dreams

From Pride & Prejudice to The Tudors to children’s author, Tamzin Merchant speaks on her career reinvention

Tamzin Merchant: 

Author Tamzin Merchant has lived many lives.

You may know her as Georgiana Darcy, opposite Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in Pride & Prejudice, or as Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s ill-fated fifth wife in The Tudors. In recent years she’s starred in prestige TV series including Salem and Carnival Row. But the latest role for this chameleon — as the author of children’s books The Hatmakers and now The Mapmakers — hit her like a bolt out of the blue.

“I had the idea for The Hatmakers while I was filming Carnival Row in Prague,” she tells me. “I’d had this night-time costume fitting and the costume designer was incredible. She was talking about getting this hatmaker to make a special hat for [co-star] David Gyasi, whose character has horns in the show. That night I had a vivid dream about a family of hatmakers who live in London and make hats that are woven with magic. I woke my boyfriend up at half four in the morning and said, ‘I’ve just had an idea for a book’.” Quickly, before the dream dispersed, she typed the story’s main plot points into her phone.

“I think that’s really important to do if you ever have a really amazing dream, because they just go like smoke through your hands. That was three years almost to the day before The Hatmakers was published.”

The sequel The Mapmakers, published this week, picks up a few months after the events of the first book. Apprentice hatmaker Cordelia spends her nights searching the streets of 18th century London by starlight, using a magical map to track down her missing father, Prospero. She will need to use all her wits and guile not just to bring her father home, but to unite the warring Maker families to save the essence of magic itself.

Young readers who love JK Rowling, E. Nesbit and Diana Wynne Jones will gobble down this magical, atmospheric, and very funny adventure set in Georgian London. Thematically, the book emphasises the power of creativity and the importance of listening to your gut, and the characters’ names are a particular delight. Members of the extended Hatmaker family are named Ariadne, Tiberius, and Petronella; a particularly effusive actor is called Sir Hugo Gushforth. Both Shakespeare and Dickens influenced the naming process.

I ask Merchant what inspired her to set her story in Georgian London. “Basically it was a very shallow reason in some ways: I chose the Georgian era because I just think the clothes are so amazing,” she laughs.

“The men and the women looked like kind of these strange exotic birds — there’s a lot of plumage! And George III is quite an exciting character to have in the background.”

Both books get excellent comedic mileage out of the king’s supposed madness.

However, there were some aspects of the era that Merchant reworked for a contemporary audience. “I wanted to see women and girls being taken seriously and being in public roles, which necessitated a slight reimagining, because that definitely wasn’t the case then,” she says.

“I think writing a children’s book now, you have certain responsibilities to celebrate and portray diversity in different ways. I didn’t want to depict the characters as having this colour hair or this colour eyes or anything like that. I wanted every child reading it to be able to picture themselves as the hero, as Cordelia or Goose or Sam, and to be able to picture their version of what the characters looked like. I wanted it to belong to everyone.”

As someone used to working on a set, she relished the opportunity to take creative control. “It’s quite nice to be able to go between acting and writing, because as an actor, you’re often waiting for someone else to make decisions,” she says. “You tend to go into the world of the show or the film as the very last piece of the puzzle. But as a writer, you’re building the world from the ground up. Filmmaking is so collaborative and that’s one of my favourite things about it, but sometimes that comes with disagreements and differences of opinion. So it’s really nice to then go into a world where you are the creator with a capital C.”

Thus far, she has been able to successfully combine her two artistic outlets. “They’ve complemented each other really well,” she says. “A large part of the editing process for The Hatmakers happened when I was in Prague filming Carnival Row. I was writing on my days off. It makes you a bit more dextrous and a bit more workmanlike about it, which is good.” She laughs.

“I think if I had the choice, I would be so self-indulgent about, you know, having the exact right temperature cup of tea while I was writing and the exact right angle of light, but when the time is slightly more pressured, it really focuses your mind.” Given Merchant’s dual passions for writing and acting — talents she has put to good use narrating the highly entertaining audiobooks – I ask the obvious question: does she have plans to bring her books to the big screen?

“There was interest in buying the film rights, and I said no, because I really would like it to be a book and have its adventure as a book first,” she explains. “I’m open to making it into a film, but I’ve seen the ugly side of the film industry. It’s a big machine that I’m not sure I’m ready for my little story to go into.”

If the stars aligned, however, she would be open to a film adaptation, and ideally would be involved every step of the way. “I’m not leaving it to fend for itself,” she says determinedly.

“I’m ferociously protective of the book, but if I found the right people, the right producers, the right artists to help translate it to screen, then that’s definitely worth exploring.”