Tea With the Dames

Dames Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith get together for tea to reminisce and discuss their acting careers. Dames Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith have let the cameras in on a friendship that goes back more than half a century. The four acting greats discuss their careers and reminisce about their humble beginnings in the theatre. Longtime friends and professional colleagues, legendary British actresses Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith, occasionally get together at one of their country homes, this one time they letting the cameras in to film their discussion. With the occasional off screen prompting by director Roger Michell, the four women both fondly reminisce and commiserate about their professional lives, including the somewhat parallel paths of their careers, the evolution of both their own acting and acting in general over that time especially in they primarily working on stage doing the classics in the early part of their careers, the sore point that is the role of Cleopatra especially as none of the four, even in their own eyes, were considered classic beauties in a profession that values beauty as an attribute, working with their respective actor husbands and with each others' husbands, most of this discussion focused on arguably the most famous, Plowright's husband Sir Laurence Olivier, their professional relationships with others in the business, what it means to get old in the business, and what they would do differently if they had to do it all over again knowing what they know now. On their personal lives, they talk about activism during the Vietnam War period, and what being bestowed the title of Dame (signifying appointment to the Order of the British Empire) - with Plowright having the additional title of Lady - means to them personally and for their lives holistically.