Maureen Lipman Anthony Devlin/Getty Images Dame Maureen Lipman, who played Adrien Brody’s mother in Roman Polanski’s 2002 Oscar-winning Holocaust drama The Pianist and currently stars in the long-running U.K. series Coronation Street, is bracing for a potentially turbulent appearance in a London suicide-awareness play after two actors withdrew from the production over her public comments about Israel and Palestine.
“The evening of the 10th may, I fear, be noisy,” Lipman tells The Hollywood Reporter by email, referring to her scheduled Sept. 10 performance in Right Before I Go at the Soho Theatre.
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The play, written by Golden Girls and Gilmore Girls veteran Stan Zimmerman, draws upon real suicide notes and the experiences of people who survived attempts. Each performance is followed by a discussion involving the audience and a mental-health professional. Sept. 10 coincides with World Suicide Prevention Day.
But in the days before its limited London run, the production became the center of a political controversy after actors Gerard McCarthy and Iz Hesketh withdrew following the announcement of Lipman’s casting.
McCarthy, the Northern Irish actor known for Hollyoaks and The Fall, said they were leaving because of views Lipman has “publicly and repeatedly expressed regarding Israel and Palestine.”
McCarthy, who is nonbinary and uses both he/him and they/them pronouns, said they had not asked the production to reconsider Lipman’s casting or expected other performers to share their position. Rather, McCarthy said, they did not wish to use their platform to promote someone whose politics conflicted with their own.
Hesketh subsequently withdrew, saying that after becoming aware of Lipman’s public comments, “the next stage of the production” no longer aligned with her personal values and beliefs.
Lipman, 80, has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel. In 2024, she described left-wing actors’ protests against Israel as “close to fascism.” Earlier this year, she called for pro-Palestinian marches in central London to be banned and compared the level of antisemitism in Britain to Germany in 1933.
She previously called McCarthy “cowardly” for withdrawing without speaking to her directly and accused the actor of “virtue-signaling.” She also said she feared McCarthy had been “radicalised,” while inviting them to discuss her views face-to-face.
In her email to THR, Lipman said there was little she could add to an essay she wrote for The Telegraph, in which she implored McCarthy to join for “hummus and mint tea” to “swap uncertainties about the world.”
“Let’s behave as actors who believe in free speech and free thought, rather than engage in a new McCarthyism,” she wrote, referring not to her co-star but Joseph McCarthy, who led anti-Communist witch hunts in the U.S. in the 1950s.
But she did have something to add, describing the controversy in her email to THR as symptomatic of a broader unwillingness among activists to engage with people with whom they disagree.
“The irony, the resounding and universal irony, is that the actors concerned are UNCONCERNED to learn what we have in COMMON,” Lipman writes, preserving her emphasis. “We may share precisely our distaste for Putin’s shame in the Ukraine and both weep for the [Uyghurs] in China.
“This is symptomatic of today’s protesters and activists,” she continues. “No resolution through understanding or tolerance, just the statement and the empty platform.”
Playwright Zimmerman, meanwhile, says the dispute has diverted attention from the subject the production was created to address.
“It’s an unfortunate distraction to my goal of raising awareness about suicide,” Zimmerman tells THR.
The production uses a revolving cast, and McCarthy was never scheduled to perform alongside Lipman. The show’s creative team said in a statement that it does not vet performers according to their political beliefs and respects the sincerity of the actors’ decisions.
“Suicide and mental health affect people across every background and every political divide,” the statement reads, “and we believe the urgent work of raising awareness and saving lives is more important than our differences.”
The not-for-profit production, whose cast, crew and collaborators are donating their time, transferred to London following a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It runs at the Soho Theatre from Sept. 5 through Sept. 10, with Lipman still scheduled to appear in the final performance.
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