The actor looks back at Friday Night Dinner, Sexy Beast and more with Yahoo.
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00:00 I do find it hard to watch stuff that I did when I was younger because I see so much of
00:09 what I didn't achieve.
00:10 What first sparked your interest in acting?
00:18 Acting in general. I think apart from trampolining, it was the only thing that made me feel
00:29 like it was worth pursuing. Obviously my trampolining career didn't pan out,
00:36 so I'm glad I had acting to fall back on.
00:39 I love that. Imagine if that was what would happen.
00:43 Imagine. And then you have children and then your trampolining days are done. So, yeah.
00:47 You've obviously worked in film and TV, that's what a lot of people know you for,
00:52 but you also worked in theatre. And I wondered how would you describe your
00:56 early experiences in the theatre and how do they compare to your work on TV and film sets?
01:02 I began my career on stage, which then was also accompanied by work on radio,
01:12 which I've done throughout all of my career. So the two were speaking to one another
01:19 about the full physicality of theatre, but then the full physicality of just the voice in audio.
01:26 So I love that kind of correspondence between the two parts. I think there's something
01:31 incredibly exposing about radio because you're painting very particular pictures
01:39 with a part of your body that's very exposed. I love the fact that the voice is placed in a
01:47 very exposed area in the body. So if you get it right, audio stuff can be intimately thrilling.
01:56 But I also trained as a dancer when I was younger, so theatre felt like a place where I could be
02:04 happily embodied. And then moving into screen stuff, you then use your body in a very different
02:12 way. So things are much more contained and stiller and more specific.
02:17 You obviously can't beat a British gangster thriller. There's so many great ones. I
02:25 wondered, did you have any favourites when you were growing up?
02:27 I went to a girls' school and I think it was very interesting to view and experience
02:38 the power play that go on in a single-sex school and to notice who were the most powerful. And it
02:46 was often the smallest people in the class who held the greatest power base. And I found that
02:53 very, very intriguing. Not so much when I became the target of the control, the way that all
03:02 children experience. I don't think that I watched gangster TV shows or films when I was young. So
03:10 I think it was really just looking at how people handle power and the desire to hold onto their
03:19 control, which I found at times intriguing but also quite repellent.
03:25 I mean, obviously, Cecilia as a character, she's this no-nonsense businesswoman. I thought it was
03:29 really great. It's obviously a bit of a different role that fans might not expect you to be in,
03:34 necessarily. I wondered, with that in mind, what you just said, did you draw on those experiences
03:41 to shape the way you approach the character or did you want to approach it in another way?
03:46 Cecilia Logan is a very exotic bird in her own world. She doesn't have other female
03:57 compatriots. She doesn't have friends. Her most intimate connection is with her younger brother
04:04 Don, but it's a complicated relationship because she's his older sister but also a mother figure.
04:10 So it's very complex. I don't think there are many women out there that I could sort of draw
04:17 on experientially. I read a really fabulous book called Queens of the Underworld by Caitlin Davis,
04:26 who looks at, historically, the women who were at the top of their pyramids criminally
04:32 and bizarrely have been sort of criminally overlooked because the stories of male
04:39 gangland kingpins are so dominant and the stories of the women are all seen as being kind of like
04:48 sidekicks or add-ons or gangsters' moles or mole cutpuss. It was one of the original ones
04:56 in the 17th century but it's always in relation to men and I found that really intriguing about
05:02 Cecilia is that she's a queenpin and she doesn't operate in relation to men within her world.
05:11 She's created this world that she controls. But then you very soon find out that she's actually
05:16 got connections with the kingpins in the other world. So, you know, Teddy Bass, who is the one
05:22 who holds most of the power cards, has actually been invited into her world to give Gal and Don
05:32 an in to climbing up the hierarchy. She's the one. So I found all of that very, very intriguing.
05:41 Obviously, the original Sexy Beast is kind of considered one of the great British classics
05:46 and I wondered, do you remember your first introduction to British cinema and really
05:51 kind of understanding what that meant as a genre? I loved the film Sexy Beast when it first came out.
05:58 I was, however, in the time of working a lot and also having my third child. So at the time,
06:06 I don't think I gave myself fully to things because, you know, your head is so full of other
06:11 stuff. But I remember thinking at the time that this is a really interesting story because all
06:19 of these people seem so afraid. Even the Don Logan character who turns up with all of his power and
06:25 energy and bulldog ishness. You know, behind that fury, there's always fear. And I found I was I
06:35 thought I really leaned into that. And everybody is terrified when you first sit down that really
06:40 awkward scene where they're all and you think what has gone on. And I think that's why Sexy
06:46 Beast, the prequel is so interesting, because I think everybody feels that when they see the film
06:50 is like what has happened to these people? Is Ray Winston a great, great actor of the
06:57 British cinema scene? But was there anyone from that era of gangster films or British gangster
07:03 films that you tried to channel when it came to your performance? Yeah, I don't know that I try and
07:10 channel particular characters in my way of working. I was very captivated by films like
07:21 Reservoir Dogs, where those kind of alternatives as people are presented with that fabulous way of
07:31 making music, the the accompaniment, the kind of underbelly to the scenes and the characters.
07:39 And the playfulness of that, that you watch something of extreme
07:43 assault, and then you have a catchy tune over the top of it. You know, it's so devastatingly
07:53 contradictory. So I think that's what I was thinking about with Cecilia and and and drawing
08:00 on that is that how because you know, she's very tough. She's a very tough cookie. And,
08:05 you know, it's hard enough playing her but being a you know, being in her company,
08:08 you can own it's like, it's like anchovy, you can only have so much in the dish before it takes over.
08:14 Everyone loves Friday night dinner. I wondered, do you have like a favourite moment from your time
08:21 working on that? Oh, that show. I mean, we did a 10 minute teaser in 2009, to pitch to the channel.
08:30 And it was, you know, I never think things are gonna go, I always just go just turn on, we'll
08:36 see what happens. So I kept turned up to do this 10 minute teaser, knowing that I was going to be
08:41 working with Paul Ritter, who played my husband in it, Marston Goodman. And just being in that
08:48 sort of tingly feeling of being in the presence of someone who's really brilliant with their craft.
08:53 And I think I remember that of that feeling of like, when they first said, Oh, we're casting
08:58 this and we're trying to get this guy called satical Paul Ritter. And I'm in, I'm in straight,
09:03 because I'd seen him on stage. So having the opportunity to, you know, to do stuff with him.
09:10 And then obviously, with Mark Heap playing the neighbour and those, you know, Tom Rosenthal,
09:17 Simon Bird, you know, all brilliant performers in their own right, very playful and alive. And
09:21 Robert Popper, the writer was always saying faster, faster, faster, he just wanted fast.
09:25 So that being involved in that kind of energy was was thrilling. If you know, it's hard,
09:31 you're in a house, you can't go anywhere. But what was really interesting is that when the
09:35 sixth series was, was aired, it was during lockdown. And everybody navigated towards that
09:44 show, because the show is stuck in its own house. You know, that house is like a character in the
09:51 in the show that contains them. And they're drawn in because it's home, they turn into idiot children
09:56 as soon as they step over the threshold. And the house just contains the wildness that then
10:01 happens. But I think people were experiencing that in lockdown, how they could survive being
10:06 contained in the wildness of this global weirdness. I wonder, are there any roles in general that you
10:15 would love to return to if you ever got the chance? I do find it hard to watch stuff that I did when I
10:21 was younger, because I see so much of what I didn't achieve. And I but I wonder whether that's
10:32 what gives it its credibility, is that you come with an innocence and a not finishedness. So
10:40 there's, there's a raw complexity about that. I don't think I would want to return to stuff so
10:49 much as move forward into, you know, I love performing Shakespeare. And I've had some great
10:56 opportunities with that. So I think that, you know, continuing to lean into so I would return
11:01 to particular writers. And, you know, I would return to Shakespeare because this, you know,
11:06 there's so much to be learned and experienced and revealed about the human condition in that poetry.
11:17 Oh, yeah, I never know what's coming. And I'm always thrilled with what turns up.
11:22 What were the movies that you loved growing up? And do you remember your first cinema trip?
11:26 Oh, I think my first cinema trip was going to see a Disney animation, possibly Bambi or Dumbo.
11:32 One of those. When I was in my early teens, I went to see the movie Grease in the cinema. And
11:38 I loved it so much that I went every day for a week. I didn't understand it. There were bits
11:43 just like, oh, I don't know what's happening there, but never mind. You know, in the back
11:47 of the car with Rizzo, no idea what was going on there, but I couldn't get enough of it.
11:52 We didn't go much to the cinema. There wasn't a whole lot of cash around for those sorts of trips.
11:59 But I remember every now and then my mom saying, oh, watch this, watch this film. And I remember
12:05 what I was showing me, the Matter of Life and Death, the Niven film, where he's a fighter pilot
12:12 who goes down in his, his plane gets hit and he goes down into the water. But the French angel,
12:21 who's meant to collect his soul, misses him in the British fog, and he doesn't die. And
12:26 what I found so remarkable was that my mom had said, watch this. Because she never did. You know,
12:32 she, we were all in our own little worlds, really. I remember watching a film with Jenny Agatha
12:38 called Walkabout with my mom late at night when I couldn't sleep and I got up and I thought she'd
12:43 shout at me and go back to bed. But I sat down and watched. And it was quite an unsettling film.
12:50 And her saying to me at the end, don't worry, it's just on the telly. It's just on the telly.
12:56 So that became a phrase of our family of like, you don't have to worry, it's just on the telly.
12:59 And I remember me when I was a little bit older saying that to her when I saw something on the
13:04 news. I said, don't worry, it's just on the telly. I mean, it was real, it was the news.
13:09 But it became a way of kind of removing yourself.
13:12 Did you have any mentors or figures in your life that really helped set you up in your journey
13:21 as an actor?
13:22 Well, my mom had done a performance when they lived abroad in the kind of amateur scene,
13:28 which had at that time a much more kind of professional vibe about it. It was sort of
13:32 seen as semi-professional. So it was well received. So she had done a lot of that. And so
13:38 my interest in it was accepted, but they never thought that it would be something that I could
13:45 earn a living from. You know, for my mom it was a hobby, but I wanted to make it a thing that
13:50 you could, that could sustain you. So I think her experience of, you know, play is profoundly
14:01 important. So I think probably her. But then just, you know, seeing brilliant performers and
14:11 going, wow, how do you do that?
14:13 If you could go back in time and give young Tamsin any advice on what to do or what to
14:18 do to change her origin story, what would it be and why?
14:21 I think our origin stories are what they are. And so going back to change things, as we
14:28 know in the space-time continuum, it's going to tear. You just live what you live. But
14:35 I think I would, I would encourage her to not be so afraid. To not think, you know,
14:47 that's that responsive. It's okay. It's just on the telly. It's frightening. It's
14:52 overwhelming, but you don't have to be afraid.
14:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]
14:58 (upbeat music)