Matthew Macfadyen & Elizabeth Banks Tell Us What Les & Lindy Littlejohn Would Get Up To Next

In The Miniature Wife, Les and Lindy Littlejohn have been married for decades – but their long-lived-in relationship is about to get a little more complicated.

When one of scientist Les’s technological experiments goes horribly wrong, his wife Lindy wakes up to find she has been shrunk to just six inches tall. Mayhem naturally ensues – and plenty of the marital kind.

Starring British actor (and future George Smiley) Matthew Macfadyen and American actress Elizabeth Banks, C&TH sat down with The Miniature Wife’s leading duo to delve behind the scenes.

Quick Fire Q&A With Matthew Macfadyen & Elizabeth Banks On The Miniature Wife

Matthew Macfadyen as Les & Elizabeth Banks as Lindy Littlejohn in The Miniature Wife. (Peacock/Sky)

Can you give us an elevator pitch for the series?

MM: It’s The War of the Roses (1989) mixed with Scenes from a Marriage (1974)… Mixed with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)!

EB: Don’t forget the shrinking part! It’s ultimately a relationship comedy about this couple who has a big crisis in the shrinking of the wife that I think really enhances all the themes of the show: being made to feel small in relationships, power dynamics between couples, how to work together on something to actually bring yourself together with your partner.

How would you describe each of your characters?

MM: Heroic, sexy, distractingly handsome, a literal genius… 

EB: I’ll give you that one! They are both very talented narcissists. They are brilliant people, and they deserve each other. They’re not for everyone, but they are for each other, and that’s what makes the show work, I think. But they lost their way.

It’s very much about a long, lived-in relationship, which leads to a lot of silliness. What was it like to sink your teeth into that playfulness? 

MM: It was great! And we’ve both been married a long time, so you sort of use that. It’s that lovely thing of being in a long relationship: you know your partner intimately, and also you know which buttons to press, and you know what makes them laugh. So that was all in the mix.

EB: I also think there’s a great mutual admiration here between the two of us. We were big fans of each other’s work for so long, and then getting to know Matthew was such a great, special experience. Having that undercurrent of respect is very much what the Littlejohns have. They’ve just, on the surface of their relationship, become very competitive with each other. They’ve become very disconnected from each other. But there always is that incredible undercurrent, and I think I felt that between us, and that’s what I knew we could rely on. And the audience, I think, is picking up on it and rooting for us because of it.

Elizabeth Banks as Lindy Littlejohn in The Miniature Wife. (Peacock/Sky)

I love that idea of pushing each other’s buttons. Was there a scene that was the most fun to film?

MM: Quite early on, we shot the scene in the party in our bedroom, and Les is having a meltdown, because he thinks he’s going to lose control of his invention, even though he’s got the money from the VC investor. And it’s just a wonderful scene. Lindy calms him down brilliantly.

EB: You sort of see their history and their dynamic and what good they can bring to each other’s lives. And then he immediately dismisses her, and makes her feel small. 

MM: It’s sort of weirdly very funny, very tender, really annoying on Les’s part. 

EB: And that’s ultimately what the show is!

Did you know each other before filming? How did you go about creating your dynamic?

MM: No, we’d never met. And it was just delightful. We just jumped in. I think the first big scene was the big argument when Lindy was shrunk. Anyway, it was just wonderful. We just sort of began, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be great!’

EB: We went to lunch together, and the barista brought us matching cappuccinos with our faces on them. Each of us got our own face. We thought that was so silly, and it sort of set the tone. Like, ‘OK, we’re in something together, and this is going to be so weird and awkward, but it’ll be fun.’

Matthew Macfadyen as Les & Elizabeth Banks as Lindy Littlejohn in The Miniature Wife. (Peacock/Sky)

Any memorable moments off camera?

EB: We played a lot of Bananagrams off camera.

MM: Very, very, very competitive. 

EB: I am very competitive. But Sian Clifford, actually, was the winner. She won most of the time, and is brilliant at all of that. Crosswords, Wordle, Scrabble, Bananagrams, you name it. She was a genius.

MM: Elizabeth’s being very modest. Elizabeth’s very good, dauntingly so.

EB: I like competing at games.

MM: It was just a real playground. Actors always say that, but it really was. You know, our bedroom was turned into a moat! Like, they filled it with water, and people were wading around in it.

EB: At one point there was a fire you were putting out in your underwear!

MM: It was just total mayhem, so for an actor, that’s just joyful. You’re like, ‘OK, yep, let’s just break all the rules’. And the joy of it, actually, is in committing to the absolute life and death truth of it. Even though it’s ridiculous, the stakes are still very, very high. So it’s very rewarding and satisfying to jump into that.

Who was your favourite person to work with?

MM: Zoe Lister-Jones. I loved working with Zoe, who plays Vivienne. Kind of quite frightening.

EB: O-T Fagbenle is incredible.

MM: Aasif Mandvi and Ronny Chieng… We had a really brilliant supporting cast. They were very, very funny. 

Matthew Macfadyen as Les & Zoe Lister-Jones as Vivienne in The Miniature Wife. (Peacock/Sky)

If you were miniature, what would you get up to?

MM: I would hide. I would hide until I was saved.

EB: I would stowaway to the White House and change everything. I would just get up on the computers and start clickety-clacking away in there.

Anything in the series you’re most excited for everyone to see, if they’ve not got to it yet?

EB: The wedding sequence in episode 9 is hugely fun. It’s absolutely our favourite. It’s a flashback, and you see our wedding that goes to hell, and all of our family dynamics. I think it gives you a real rooting interest in this couple going into the finale. You understand why they are the people that they are.

If you could extend the story, what would happy to Les and Lindy next?

EB: Well, I think Lindy is going to write her next book, and it might be called The Miniature Wife. And hopefully it doesn’t make Les criminally liable for anything.

MM: I think Les would be very nervous about the publication of this new memoir, even though he’d be grappling with himself.

EB: I think the power dynamic will change, and it’s exciting to think of it.

Matthew Macfadyen as Les & Elizabeth Banks as Lindy Littlejohn in The Miniature Wife. (Peacock/Sky)

WATCH

Matthew Macfadyen and Elizabeth Banks star as Les and Lindy Littlejohn in The Miniature Wife. All 10 episodes are streaming now at nowtv.com