By: Brinlee Edger
Photography: Sean Gleason
Elizabeth McGovern enters the conversation like someone walking into a memory—luminous, curious, and entirely self-effacing. Despite a career spanning over forty years, she wears her success lightly. Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe nominations are footnotes in her story, not the headline. Her presence is unguarded, almost wistful. It’s not that she doesn’t see what she’s done—it’s that she’s more interested in what she has yet to do.
“I kind of feel like I sit around all day,” she jokes, in the way only people who’ve worked relentlessly can. It’s not humility for show—it’s a worldview. McGovern doesn’t measure her life in awards but in creative attempts, in the slow labor of building something meaningful out of uncertainty.
That spirit is what drew McGovern to Ava: The Secret Conversations, the book about Golden Age actress and Hollywood icon Ava Gardner that she would go on to adapt for the stage, direct, and star in. McGovern is bringing the play to New York City this summer—July 29 to September 14—at the New York City Center in Midtown. The play will then head to Chicago for a short run.
The text is a delicate, sometimes volatile exchange between Ava and her ghostwriter Peter Evans. What begins as a professional assignment blooms into something far more intimate—a trust fall between two people reckoning with artifice and vulnerability. “What I found so compelling was the dynamic between them,” McGovern reflects. “It wasn’t a romance in the traditional sense, but there was something charged about it—two people drawn together by truth-telling, by the act of trying to shape a life into something coherent.”
Jane Atelier champagne metallic woven two-piece tunic, bootleg trousers; Knatchbull black velvet tuxedo jacket with silk satin lapel; Jewelry all Elizabeth’s own
In McGovern’s hands, Ava’s fragmented reminiscences become not just scenes but moments of revelation—charged with regret, nostalgia, and fleeting clarity. She resisted turning the story into a greatest-hits biopic. Instead, the audience is invited into a liminal space: not the spotlight of Ava’s past, but the shadows where her humanity lingers.
“I think I was drawn to the ambiguity of it,” McGovern says. “It’s about memory. About how we rewrite ourselves. And about how we sometimes perform even in our most private confessions.”
The journey to the stage wasn’t linear. McGovern approached two writers to adapt the book. Neither delivered. “I finally thought, ‘Let me just try this.’ I opened a notebook. I didn’t know if it would work—I just knew I couldn’t wait anymore.”
That small, private act—writing quietly, with no promises—transformed into a years-long labor of persistence. “You have to keep showing up even when no one else sees what you see yet.”
That ethos, of doing the work regardless of outcome, permeates everything McGovern touches. Her play, after multiple director shifts and near-starts, found a home at L.A.’s Geffen Playhouse. “They just happened to have an opening,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop being grateful for that stroke of luck.”
Moritz von Stuelpnagel eventually came on board as director, and according to McGovern, he helped crystallize the emotional architecture of the story. “He understood it wasn’t about spectacle. It was about presence. Stillness. Intimacy.”
There’s an urgency in the themes McGovern explores: celebrity as a form of erasure, womanhood refracted through media distortion, the complicated freedom of aging out of visibility. Ava Gardner, who was both deified and dismissed, offers a mirror to every woman who’s tried to own her story after being consumed by someone else’s.
And yet, for all its gravity, the project isn’t heavy. McGovern’s vision is deeply human. There’s wit in Ava’s dialogue, warmth in her contradictions. “I didn’t want her to be a victim or a saint,” she explains. “I wanted her to be real.”
Burberry sunglasses and cream crescent shaped mini satchel; GIVE YOUR BEST green macintosh and jeans with special thanks
(giveyourbest.uk/); Jimmy Choo camel suede high heel pumps; Jewelry all Elizabeth’s own
Burberry sunglasses and cream crescent shaped mini satchel; GIVE YOUR BEST green macintosh and jeans with special thanks
(giveyourbest.uk/); Jimmy Choo camel suede high heel pumps; Jewelry all Elizabeth’s own
Burberry sunglasses and cream crescent shaped mini satchel; GIVE YOUR BEST green macintosh and jeans with special thanks
(giveyourbest.uk/); Jimmy Choo camel suede high heel pumps; Jewelry all Elizabeth’s own
Parallel to the Gardner project, McGovern returns to the world that made her a modern icon: Downton Abbey. The new film releasing this September, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, turns its focus inward, telling what McGovern calls “the smallest and most honest story yet.”
“It’s about Lady Mary’s divorce,” she says. “And in a way, that simplicity is what makes it powerful. Downton was never really about plot—it was about texture. The tension of a glance. The silence between two people at breakfast.”
This latest installment marks another collaboration with her husband, director Simon Curtis. “He joined at a time when a lot of us were unsure,” McGovern shares. “He grounded the project. He saw what it could still be.”
In the midst of it all, McGovern hasn’t put music aside. Her band, Sadie and the Hotheads, recorded a new album during lockdown. It’s a meditation, she says, “on who we are when the noise quiets. We made something we needed to hear. It’s not about making a splash. It’s about staying close to something true.”
Deborah Milner ivory satin and crêpe tuxedo, with drape satin you shaped lapel; Jimmy Choo black high heeled and crystal cutaway pumps; Baukjen boat neck T-shirt; Jewelry all Elizabeth’s own
That quest—for truth, for expression without pretense—runs through every aspect of her life. Her daughters reflect that, too. One works in television writing, the other teaches primary school. “She keeps us grounded,” McGovern says. “In a house full of creatives, she’s the reality check. And the soul.”
Even now, McGovern’s gaze turns forward. She’s written a screenplay—one she’s not quite ready to name. “I’m almost afraid to say it out loud,” she says, laughing softly. “It’s that phase where no one believes in it yet. But that’s okay. I do.”
That sentence could sum up her entire creative journey. In an industry obsessed with instant validation, McGovern builds slowly. She trusts the long arc. She believes in invisible work. And she never stops choosing the kind of art that’s harder to sell—but easier to live with.
“I don’t know what comes next,” she says, “but I know I want it to be mine.”
Azzie and Osta light khaki sculpted two piece suit; Jimmy Choo shoes; Jewelry all Elizabeth’s own
CREDITS:
Photographer: Sean Gleason
Stylist: Mary Fellowes @ The Only Agency
Hair: Paul Jones @ A-Frame Agency
Makeup: Bethany Jane Long
Location: Premier Comms Studio, London