It’s a picture that would break any ex-lover’s heart – a picture that finally made me feel sorry for Amanda Abbington. And I say that as someone who has been her harshest critic.
What can the Sherlock actress have felt when she saw her former partner Martin Freeman on the red carpet at the prestigious Olivier Awards in London with his French girlfriend Rachel Benaissa, half his age, clinging on and looking up at him adoringly?
The Hobbit star, 53, appeared more than a little smug in a burgundy smoking jacket, with Rachel, 30, looking smokin’ hot in a cream silk dress split high up her lithe young thigh.
There’s not a woman alive who, after a long relationship that ended sadly, wouldn’t have been upset seeing her ex with his nubile new squeeze. And given that Amanda and Martin split after 16 years, you couldn’t blame her for screaming: ‘It should have been me!’
Especially as Amanda, who has two teenage children with Freeman, is a well-known and highly respected actress in her own right on both stage and screen. Unlike Rachel, who none of us had even heard about until she hitched up with Freeman because her most high-profile role appears to have been a bit part in the hit TV series Normal People.
The Olivier Awards are the Oscars of the theatre world. Everyone who is anyone was there: Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth Debicki, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton… but not Amanda, not even in the audience.
Martin Freeman on the red carpet at the Olivier Awards in London with his French girlfriend Rachel Benaissa
Yet here were Freeman and his girlfriend seizing the limelight. Her feted for being just fabulously in love, him as a multi-millionaire star of the stage and screen. While Amanda is completing her short-run series of the new play (This Is Not A) Happy Room in the tiny basement of a theatre in north London.
No, she’s not even in the West End where she has spent much of her illustrious 30-year career with notable stage successes, including starring in and getting rave reviews for The Unfriend at the Criterion Theatre and The Son at the Duke of York’s. Or shining in A Little Princess at the Royal Festival Hall.
She also had television hits, of course, not least with Freeman when they were still together in the hit TV series Sherlock, playing devoted Mary Watson, wife to his Dr Watson, who tragically died taking a bullet for Sherlock Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
It was during the filming of the series that their relationship disintegrated. Yet she soldiered on like the pro she is.
Amanda has not spoken much about the end of her partnership with Freeman, one imagines for the sake of their two children.
She has hinted that his success in Hollywood was the catalyst for their separation. He spent so much time away from home, first on the set of the Hobbit franchise playing Bilbo Baggins, then in the TV series Fargo.
Yet she remained loyal to her ex, saying in one interview: ‘We still get on really well, we still really admire each other as actors. He’s a great guy, but we just couldn’t live with each other any more.’
Still, one cannot help wondering whether the end of their marriage and him hooking up with a much younger woman created an abiding sense of betrayal from those she trusted, especially men.
Amanda Abbington stars alongside Una Stubbs and Martin Freeman in the BBC show Sherlock
It was during the filming of Sherlock that their relationship disintegrated, and Amanda has not said much about her split from the father of her two children since
And whether it was part of the reason Abbington spiralled out of control after she agreed to appear on Strictly Come Dancing.
We fans were delighted when Amanda first appeared on the show partnered by Giovanni Pernice. She was smart, sassy, sexy, a beautiful dancer and, within weeks, was tipped to win the show, with the sexual chemistry between her and Gio almost palpable.
Where did it all go wrong? Why did the divorced mum of two who’d captivated the audience suddenly turn on dance partner Giovanni, accusing him of behaviour in the training room that was sexually ‘inappropriate, nasty, bullying’?
Why did she launch a campaign of vilification against Gio? Was it because, having lost her partner, her security and status as the other half of a Hollywood star, she was conducting some kind of vendetta against men?
Who knows. But she would surely have been blindsided by the social media backlash against her during the Strictly fiasco, in which most women sided with Gio.
It must have left her feeling bruised. And now, she has been confronted with this picture of her ex-partner parading his little-known actress girlfriend.
So yes, I do feel sorry for Amanda. As would, I imagine, every woman who has ever been replaced by a younger version of themselves.
If any actress deserved to be at the Olivier Awards, or at least centre stage in the audience given her 30-year history in theatre, it should have been Amanda.
