From Dr. Elizabeth Corday in ER to the no-nonsense spy Fiona Banks in FlashForward to the gun-toting intergalactically gallivanting adventurer-assassin-scientist River Song in Doctor Who, Alex Kingston's characters aren't exactly pushovers.
So it came as a surprise to learn that Kingston, who has even assayed the role of first-century A.D. British warrior-queen Boudica (in 2003's Warrior Queen), agreed to star in the new iteration of the British soap Upstairs Downstairs, which hasn't been known for featuring many women warriors.
Well, now it has one. Kingston stars as Dr.
Blanche Mottershead, a fiercely independent lesbian archeologist in the second season of Upstairs Downstairs, which premières Sunday on PBS's Masterpiece.
"When the character of Blanche was described to me and it was revealed that ... along with being an eccentric and a mysterious woman, she actually is a lesbian, it became quite enticing," Kingston, 49, said.
The new version of Upstairs Downstairs picked up in its first season six years after the original series concluded. It's the late 1930s; Hitler is on the rise, and the new occupant of the house, Sir Hallam Holland (Ed Stoppard), is a foreign-affairs adviser who needs to get Britain ready for another long war.
Kingston's character is Hallam's aunt, and she's introduced in this, the second season. She's newly back from north Africa to attend to matters after the death of her older half-sister, Maud, Lady Holland (Eileen Atkins). Blanche ends up replacing Maud in Sir Hallam's house, which he shares with wife Lady Agnes Holland (Keeley Hawes) and his sister-in-law, Lady Persephone Towyn (Claire Foye).
Blanche is as wilful as Maud and anything but a traditional British woman. She may even be the series' first flesh-and-blood feminist.
"We figured that Blanche always was independent," said Kingston.
"She went to Cambridge and studied archeology and had wanted to make it in the truly male-dominated world of the explorer and archeologists who strike out into other cultures and lands."
Blanche's ambitions demanded she mold herself in the image of her male counterparts: "In a weird way that allowed her to be herself, and so she was able to go tramping through the hot sands of Egypt and sitting with the men and sharing goodness knows what - a hookah, or drinking whisky."
The irony, Kingston said, is that Blanche felt nowhere more out of place than in 1930s England and at Eaton Place, where she would be required to play the aristocratic lady. Blanche finds her vocation by helping run a foundation that sponsors Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany.
Kingston says she was disappointed that Upstairs Downstairs will not return for a third season. BBC said in April there were no plans for the show's return.
"There was so much more to explore with Blanche, so many possibilities," Kingston said. "She's such an amusing character."
Upstairs Downstairs airs at 9 p.m. tonight on PBS.
