The Theory Of Everything was based on your memoir, Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen. How do you feel about the adaptation?
They made a beautiful film and I had to reconcile myself to the compromises that one has to make for the film industry. Stephen’s colleagues all became one character called Brian who is always there as his companion. Sadly, I didn’t seem to have any friends or relations at all.
Stephen Hawking has said that, at times, he couldn’t tell himself from Eddie Redmayne. How did you feel about Felicity Jones, who played you?
When they were filming, she came to dinner several times and we talked and we talked. I thought, “What is she going to make of me?” But she is a method actress and when I saw her on screen in those first shots when she arrives at the party I was just astounded. I thought, “She’s stolen my personality!” because she had my mannerisms, she had my speech patterns. It was a very weird experience.
In Redmayne’s award-winning performance, there are subtle hints that something was awry from the off. When you met at college, did you have any inkling about Stephen’s health?
No, it never occurred to me. I had scarcely met Stephen, and then one Saturday I met some old friends for coffee and they were saying, ‘Gosh it’s terrible about Stephen, isn’t it?’ They told me that he had been in St Bartholomew’s hospital in London having horrible tests and then had been diagnosed with an atypical form of a rare disease – motor neurone disease. I was stunned because I liked him and he was fun and it hadn’t occurred to me that dreadful things could happen to people of our age. Now, of course, I know a lot better than that.
With a sick husband to care for, did you ever question your choice to have children?
No, not really. All I wanted to know was that this was not a hereditary disease – partly, I suppose, because I was so young and carefree and optimistic. I thought we were going to beat this disease and be a normal family like everybody else.
Did Stephen’s work change how you viewed the world?
Stephen tried to explain to me in metaphorical language what was going on. And I was very excited by it. The gas man came one day and he said, ‘What does your husband do?’, so I told him and he said, ‘What’s the use of that?’ He had a point, but on the other hand I firmly believed in Stephen and his brilliance. I encouraged him to popularise his science just because the gas man had been so insulting.
When did the fame kick in?
It started well before A Brief History of Time. In 1974, he became the youngest fellow of the Royal Society since I don’t know when, so he had attracted public attention. Cambridge News had a lovely way of putting it: “City man wins award.” Just priceless. Then, with A Brief History of Time, the whole thing exploded.
Do you still feel defensive of him?
I don’t like to see him attacked because I still feel very proud of him. He’s phenomenal because he has such perseverance and determination. In the very early days, when it began to be difficult to write things down, he had to memorise everything. Somebody said his work was like composing a Mozart symphony in your head.
In the film, you struggle on without help for years. Was there a breaking point?
Yes, there was. That was when Tim [their youngest son] was little. Stephen fell ill with some sort of bronchial infection and he refused to have treatment and he refused to go to hospital. I had a bronchial infection as well, and finally his doctor said he was going to reserve a room for him in a nursing home. Stephen was livid, absolutely furious. I suppose he was afraid he might be there for the rest of his life. So there was always an understandable reason, but sometimes it seemed to be a rather unreasonable reason.
How did technology help?
[After Stephen] had the tracheotomy, it seemed that there was no way at all that he could communicate. It was Stephen’s secretary Judy Fella who was instrumental in bringing in a Californian computer firm that had a computer system with a zapper that Stephen could [use to] bring up letters on a computer screen. Then someone else brought a computerised voice and fitted that to the wheelchair. It was extraordinary that it should have coincided with the dire need. The great thing was that he found that he was liberated, not just from his own very inadequate powers of speech but from dependency on everyone else because he could speak again – albeit with an American voice. And now that voice, of course, is inexorably identified as Stephen’s voice.
Was it a shock when Stephen ended the marriage in the 1990s?
I suppose I was still optimistic and unrealistic and I just hoped we could keep going as we were. But no. That was not good enough for Stephen, so off he went. Those were hard times, they really were. But then I suppose divorce is always hard.
Do you still get together as a family?
Yes, we do. And when we are together, we do things together, which is lovely. I think it is terribly important – the parents might be divorced but they are still the parents of the children.
You completed a PhD, then went into teaching. Why?
It was in a small way the fulfilment of many, many years of education, which my dad set great store by – so I felt almost that I owed it to him to use these qualifications. And it was, frankly, a liberation from the kitchen sink. Catching up with women’s lib at last.
