Lucy Punch thinks she lacks a lot of mothering skills. But there is one area, the comic actor concedes, where she truly thrives: in making every day fun and silly for her two sons, aged seven and three. Even after wildfires came dangerously close to her house in Los Angeles, where she lives with the boys and her mystery husband (Punch, I discover, is very private), she managed to keep the children entertained.
Returning home after being evacuated, one of them acted as though he’d been on holiday because he’d had such a brilliant time. “Meanwhile, we’d been looking at our phones, going ‘F***ing hell, help,’ and crying,” the 47-year-old says, her elastic features miming her hysteria, hunching over an imaginary iPhone. “It’s such a small window when you’re a kid, so I’m just trying to make it magical until they’re confronted with teenagerdom and the reality of life.”
That Punch is now synonymous with motherhood has almost everything to do with a hit BBC One comedy, in which she starred as the blow-dried alpha mum of the playground, the devil in a Land Rover. In Motherland, which ran for three seasons and two Christmas specials until 2022, her character Amanda was the person viewers loved to hate, whether she was whipping her battalion of fellow mummies into shape, or using any opportunity to put down the beta parents.
When she’s not playing the school run’s pretentious elitist, Punch is usually on screen being sneaky and faintly evil. Think of her doomed thesp in Hot Fuzz, or the passive-aggressive thorn in Cameron Diaz’s side in Bad Teacher. But now, for the first time, she has a well-deserved starring role, in her character Amanda’s very own spin-off, Amandaland. Really, it’s Punch’s biggest career moment yet. “I haven’t thought about it too much, otherwise I’d have freaked out a bit,” she says demurely. “I’ve never been front and centre; I’m used to playing a supporting character, and I like that. It’s less pressured.”
In person, though, Punch is absolutely the centre of attention. When we meet at a restaurant in central London, she bounds over to co-conspire with me, hyperactive and unignorably tall; she is strikingly chic, distinctive and very blonde. She must have looked me up online because she knows where I used to work – her brother worked there too. “Don’t you want a coffee? I want a coffee,” she asks, standing quite close. It’s 5pm and dark outside. “Otherwise I’m going to be bleurgh!” Cue: a comic dead face.
I tentatively copy her order to match her energy, though it only hurts me and doesn’t seem to have touched her sides. My bag is complimented. She mistakes me for younger than I am, and convinces me to have a brioche with ice cream. She’s delightful to be around, a whirlwind. Her vivid mannerisms make me feel as though I’m speaking with an angelic Amanda on a Light Mode setting.
How does someone so charming get typecast as a snide character? “Maybe it’s the beady eyes,” she says, staring intensely into mine. It’s probably more to do with what her friend and fictional mother, Joanna Lumley, says about her own typecasting: the posh voice. The two have an uncanny resemblance, having played mother and daughter not just in Amandaland and Motherland, but previously in Ella Enchanted. Then of course there’s the fact that her surname is Punch, Judy’s terroriser. “At school I played Miss Havisham, so I was a twisted, bitter old woman when I was about 17, and I was also in a musical where I played a nasty fascist pig. So I was really getting typecast from a very young age,” Punch offers drily.
She discovered she’d be getting her own show with all the glamour of a cold email from her agent. Obviously she was thrilled, but she had the same concerns Motherland viewers might have about the new spin-off: “Amanda is this unlikeable villain, so how is she going to be more centralised? And can that character carry a show and have people care about her and be invested?” Cleverly, the Motherland writing team, which included Sharon Horgan, had planted seeds of potential for a softer side to the role. “Even when she was a more minor character, it was important that she was really devoted and loving, because otherwise she’s despicable,” says Punch.
When we meet Amanda in her own world, nothing is going well. She’s firmly ensconced in her small, post-divorce life, her regional boutique Hygge Tygge is long closed, and her kids have to go to a new state school. The horror. About the only thing she has going for her is her steadfast pushover pal, Anne, a returning character from Motherland. “I’d always thought of Amanda as a teenager in Motherland,” says Punch. “Now, she’s had her coming-of-age and she’s in the real world, scrambling like everyone else. She’s not as evil at all now; she’s far more fragile and damaged.”
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Sadly, Amanda even has to resort to getting a real job at a kitchen and bathroom fitting shop. To the outside world and followers on her new lifestyle influencer Instagram account, this move is spun as a “collab” with the brand. Punch has never had Instagram on her phone before, so researching influencers was her favourite part of preparing for Amandaland. “I went down an absolute wormhole, as you do. I was scrolling for hours, absolutely fascinated. I can’t put Instagram back on my phone again. It’s a weird alternate reality, isn’t it? It’s weird that people can make that their careers now,” she says.
At an early point in the creation process, there was talk of Amanda moonlighting as an estate agent in the vein of Selling Sunset glamazons like ponytailed Christine Quinn. That was vetoed by Punch because she didn’t know how to play Amanda with her hair up: “The hair for me is the crucial thing – it has to be down and it has to be bouncy for Amanda. It has to be bouncy.”
It’s Amanda’s dysfunctional relationship with her mother, Felicity, played by Lumley, that shines in the spin-off. The pair have become utterly co-dependent, both at personal lows, needing each other more than ever. Through this toxicity, viewers will understand Amanda’s origin story: her nightmarish traits have been handed down to her. “Bullies have usually been bullied, so Amanda’s got this mask and defence mechanism that is a callus that’s built up from being slightly abused by her mother for years and years,” says Punch. “It’s learned behaviour of backhanded compliments and snipes.”
While Punch hopes she doesn’t have too many of Amanda’s characteristics, she admits that she shares her delusional attitude. Every time she gets a meeting about an acting job in a new city, she believes she’s moving there, starts mentally preparing, thinking about how the kids will need a new school. “I actually think it’s a saving grace, because you need some blind hopefulness,” she says of acting. “Then after the audition, it’ll be s***, and I’ll fall back into self-loathing.”
Punch starts to pretend-cry, and mouths: “Why did I think I was going to get that!?” Then she snaps into an Amanda impression, which is truly fabulous to witness: that sly smile, with her chin low, pivoting to a hair toss and an optimistic look over my shoulder. “But, like Amanda, then I’ll swiftly dust myself off for the next opportunity: ‘On to the next!’”
Punch has lived in LA, where she says she finds it easier to land jobs that aren’t just Smug Posh Lady, since the mid-2000s. Though she’d appeared in a few films in her early career, it was Woody Allen who provided Punch with her big break in Hollywood by casting her in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger in 2010. In it, she played a gorgeous, evil money-grabber from Essex who cheats on her new, much older husband.
She brings up the role when we talk of her professional regrets. “There are plenty of those that I don’t want to actually resurrect and talk about. My list of failures? I did a film with Woody Allen, a very long time ago, and I’d been out of work for a long time before I got that. That really changed my life, getting that job, because I was ready to pack it all in. It’s difficult to say that now because of all the stuff that’s happened around him since then.” She is speaking carefully, given the obvious context of sexual abuse accusations against Allen, which he has denied. “I’m proud that I got the role. And I also had a good experience working on it. But there’s controversy around him, so it feels that good experience is tainted by that.”
It’s a moment of seriousness in an otherwise buoyant chat. As with Amanda, it sometimes feels like humour and sophisticated turns of phrase are Punch’s armour to keep the possibility of penetrating questions at bay. A couple of times, she turns tricky questions back at me, asking what I think. It’s career talk that she enjoys: the fact that she can’t bear to watch herself on screen; that she owns a couple of original Hygge Tygge candles; that she enjoys it when kids come up to her, delighted and slightly scared, because they recognise her from A Series of Unfortunate Events or Into the Woods.
Once Amandaland is out – and she hopes that people enjoy it for what it is, rather than miss the absent Motherland characters – she’s keen to move into drama: “I’m biding my time to be an evil stepmother, but equally I have more range than that. I’d love the opportunity to play different types of people from different worlds.”
Motherhood, though, is a personal topic that is on the table. She thought she might like to be a mother but wasn’t sure – then the person she wanted to do it with came along, confirming her desire. After asking me if I have kids (no) and want them (unsure), she says to worry less about the money required to raise children, and more about getting the person who might support me emotionally and practically through the process.
She brings up people she knows who didn’t find the right partner in time to have children. “I know plenty of women – especially in the States – who are really successful, strong, and independent, but didn’t meet someone in that [fertility] window,” she says. “It’s so cruel for women; it’s awful. And then they just decided to do it alone. I have so much admiration for that, and I’m really glad that that exists as an option. But I think [to have kids without a partner] would be very difficult.”
After a long goodbye, Punch paces out with her PR. I hang back five minutes so we don’t run into each other, hoping to avert an awkward second farewell. But in pure cringe comedy style, when I go outside, they’re hovering next to a nearby cab. I politely turn away, looking at my phone, but Punch lurches over, touches my arm and says, “I was just talking about how lovely you are! Thank you for being so lovely!” She may be the queen of snide on screen, but in reality, she couldn’t be sweeter.
‘Amandaland’ begins on BBC One on Wednesday at 9pm
