Joyeux Noele

This was quite a find and will be a tremendous treat for people who watched the recent PBS three-part series Nolly, which starred Helena Bonham Carter.  If you haven’t seen it, there’s still a lot to like in this (and I’ll give some background), but again, for those who did see the show, it may blow you way.
 
A friend highly-recommended I watch.  While I wasn't bowled over by the show, I definitely enjoyed the first episode enough to keep watching, and liked the second episode even more.  It was very well-produced, Helena Bonham Carter was wonderful, and it had some excellent supporting performances -- but -- it was the third episode that totally won me over.  That finale episode was truly superb, on a lot of levels. And made it all highly worth-while.
 
Nolly is the true story of Noelle Gordon, who was a wildly popular soap opera star on British television of a show called Crossroads, the queen of British soaps for 18 years – until she was fired with no explanation, sent off into the sunset, as it were, sailing away on the QE2, waving to her show’s ‘daughter’ on the dock.  It was a huge national controversy at the time, she was such a beloved personality for so long.  She had been on the ATV network for 26 years, and not just as an actress but was the first woman to interview a prime minister on television, and in fact was the first woman broadcast on British TV in color when it was just experimental.  And how she dealt with the firing and humiliation, including going on to appear in well-regarded production of Gypsy and handling all the questions of why was she sacked, is the focus of the third segment – which has two particularly superb monologues/scenes in it.  (I don’t want to describe them more, in case anyone does decide to watch the show.)
 
For those interested, the whole thing is only about 2-1/2 hours, and you can watch it on the PBS Passport site, which you can see here after signing in with a PBS subscriber account.  Here's the trailer.  

​Which brings us to "the find", and the point of this all.
 
This video is an appearance by the real Noelle Gordon on a British chat show that took place less than one week after her final episode aired on Crossroads.  The next episode hadn’t even been shown yet.  It’s a fascinating interview, open and honest, gracious and pointed, and talks with host Russell Harty about her plans ahead (including working on Gypsy!).  There are also a few unexpected moments I won’t give away, but will say it is surprisingly moving at times.  At one point, too, she tells a story about auditioning in front of composer Frederick Loewe for the British production of Brigadoon – a story they use in the series, and she adds more detail here.  (She got cast in the show, by the way.)  She even sings a couple of songs during the interview.  If you watch, stick around to the very end, because it looks like they kept the cameras running even after the broadcast was over.
 
Unfortunately, I'm unable to embed the video on an outside website, but you can watch it here on YouTube.
​