Facebook X Email Print Save Story Dame Maggie Smith, who died on Friday, at the age of eighty-nine, was one of a generation of female British actors who carved out a long career on the stage, in the movies, on television, and, in a final unexpected turn, on TikTok. Recently, a clip featuring a conversation between Dame Maggie and Dames Joan Plowright, Judi Dench, and Eileen Atkins, from a 2018 documentary, “Tea with the Dames,” directed by Roger Michell, went viral. In it, the four eminent and versatile performers discuss their later-in-life professional opportunities.
“We’re going to work forever if we’re asked,” Dame Judi avers, earnestly. “But you’re always asked first, if I may say so,” Dame Maggie shoots back, with mannered disdain. “Don’t turn on me!” Dame Judi replies, meekly.
“I’m turning on you,” Dame Maggie continues, fixing a stare on Dench. Then, suddenly, she slides into a working-class Cockney accent, Eliza Doolittle in reverse: “It’s all comin’ out now,” she says, with mock ruthlessness. Dame Joan interrupts to say that she’s having trouble following the exchange: one of her hearing aids has cut out.
“Do you want one of mine?” Dame Maggie says, before raising a hand to her brow in a gesture of hopelessness, and dissolving into giggles. The omnipresence of Judi Dench notwithstanding, Smith’s career was substantial and varied—a testament to her flexibility as an actor and to her rigor as an artist. She played many o.
