To perfect her accent, Peggy Ashcroft got the BBC Archives Department to send her recordings of the Austrian singer Lotte Lehmann. She said: "I listened to them over and over...and tried to get the vowel sounds, which are always the key, exactly right".
Peggy Ashcroft said she had a very specific idea of her character: "She was an upper-middle-class Viennese, had a husband who was a Nazi in the war but didn't care for the Nazis herself because they said ' Heil Hitler' rather than 'Gruss Gott' and caused a terrible servant shortage. One assumes she is a widow, now lives alone and has never had any children. That is why she is half attracted by the young man and half repelled".