Natascha McElhone: Heroine Bella pivots, reinvents herself in 'Hotel Portofino' Season 3 - UPI.com (2024)

1 of 3 | Natascha McElhone's "Hotel Portofino" is now streaming on PBS and available on DVD. Photo courtesy of PBS

Mark Umbers plays Bella's estranged husband Cecil, while Oliver Dench and Olivia Morris play their adult children Lucian and Alice, and Lily Grazer plays Bella's closest friend and confidante, the thirty-something singer-dancer Claudine.

Seasons 1 and 2 were set in the summer when various guests would arrive, cause drama, enjoy romance and depart.

Season 3 takes place at the beginning of the autumn with most of the guests gone, Cecil returning to seek a divorce from Bella so he can marry a young mistress and the Bella's father George (David Schofield) and sister Amelia (Camilla Rutherford) unexpectedly arriving.

As fascism rises in Bella's adopted country and the stock market crashes, the future of her hotel is in jeopardy, so she starts creating her own line of fragrance products to keep herself and her loved ones afloat.

"I loved the whole idea of Bella having a lab and being like a startup entrepreneur. Mother is the necessity of invention," McElhone told UPI in a recent phone interview.

"She got pushed into a new role in order to make money and save the hotel and then, of course, there are 50 other story lines that are just as important. But I was very excited about exploring a new skill set for her."

The Halo, The Crown and Designated Survivor alum said she has enjoyed playing a character like Bella who gradually becomes more independent from season to season.

"She has been able to see a world where she is not forever condemned to live with a man that she no longer loves or who perhaps mistreats her and she finds these exits and I think Claudine is quite a big part of that, a liberator in her life," McElhone said.

"Even though they're very different characters and they are different stages of life, I think she acts as an inspiration for all that's possible, and you can reinvent yourself and pivot. You don't have to be a victim of your circ*mstances."

The actress said another objective of Season 3 was balancing the "chocolate box" aesthetic created by the British people who operated and visited the beautiful boutique hotel on the Italian Riviera, with the realities of the politics and financial woes that plagued this time period between the two World Wars.

"They were impostors, I suppose. They were ex-pats living in a land where people were having a huge political shift and they were having to catch up with it and it became very relevant and invasive," she said. "It kind of burst the bubble that they were in."

The show has not yet been renewed for a fourth season.