Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Emmy and double BAFTA-winning actor, known for Line of Duty, Motherland, Ludwig, Until I Kill You, and campaigner for SEND families.
On the island
Eight records
I want to celebrate the Acorn Antiques Opera, which I went to see when I was about 14 or something like that. She takes off the overall and then there's another overall underneath, and she's wafting around the tray, it's all stuck to the tray. Absolutely. I mean, honestly, she's amazing. But anyway, this is for Julie really and her dancing around so brilliantly in Billie Elliott.
The Greatest Love of AllFavourite
Anyway, it's the greatest love of all. Love the lyrics, stand by them all. I remember once we went on a holiday to Tossa in Spain on a coach, from Beverly to Tossa, and I can tell you that's a long, long coach ride. You weren't allowed to do a number two on the coach, only a number one. So I think most people left that trip with bowel problems. And I remember I just played Whitney Houston, my Whitney Houston tape on my Walkman endlessly. I loved Whitney so much.
Oh, Together in Electric Dreams by Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroda. And I've chosen that because it's really about friendship. I have an amazing, wonderful, life-affirming group of friends from university. We have been through so many things together. They have got me through so many things. And I hope and feel I've contributed positively to their lives. And recently I have an exceptional friend I made when our children were young. She's just battled cancer... she turns around, she just battled cancer, she just flings it in the air above her head. And I looked at that in that moment with the bag of compost floating over perilously over her head, and I thought, I love you so much. I do. I just thought, I love you so much. Everything you stand for, everything you've been through, and you're still flinging compost around. And this is for her. It's for all my friends and her, yeah.
Oh, it's Puccini's Omeo Babino Caro, which means to my beloved father, and it's um Maria Calla singing it. We did play it at my dad's funeral, but it's also that um when I thought about acting when I was young, a film I watched over and over again, and it was I was thinking I just want to be in a film like that. was Room with a View and this is played in Room with a View. I don't know if you know the scene, but it's when they kiss in a poppy field and it's so romantic. Oh my God, it's so romantic. And I also think, oh, I'd love something like that to happen to me. Simply like grab grabbed and manhandled in the feet. Um and I and I just wanted to be in films like that and I l I I love this song, it's beautiful and and it reminds me of my dad.
You know, grief is a form of heartbreak, and then there's heartbreak, isn't there? Romantic heartbreak. When I think about it when I was young, you know, it is such a monumentous and shaping moment, how you come through it, how you come through it with humility. But at the time, you humiliate yourself so much, don't you? You really do. You make an absolute donkey of yourself. And did you? Oh, God, I did. Yeah, I've been heartbroken a couple of times. And I think. Yeah, a completely Humiliating, prostrating yourself in desperation. I mean, an absolute dork. And so I really wanted to include a song about heartbreak because it really shapes you, doesn't it? And so a song I loved, and I really loved the album, but a song that reminded me of a particularly difficult heartbreak in my 20s was Dry Your Eyes by the Streets.
Oh, this is a hymn. This is my favourite hymn. We have to play quite a slow version of this hymn, because it's a hymn, and so they do sing them quite slowly, don't they, in churches? Which is a shame, because I would sing this song at triple speed. Because I think it's a very jolly hymn. It's called When a Knight Won His Spurs, and it reminds me of a really, really joyful times with Roger. I used to sing this hymn to him a lot. I don't think he was hugely pleased about that. I think he found it quite grating. But we we had some really wonderful times and we were in a second hand bookshop in Suffolk, which was a really happy place for us. And I found this hymn book with my favorite hymn in. And so I sang it to Roger over and over again in the car.
Oh, it's Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye because my kids play this in the car a lot. This wasn't a song I played, this is a song that girls play. So they obviously find it really uplifting. And the song Michelle O'Barma said to her children, she said, I always say to my children. Just come home. We like you here. Not even love, we like you here. Just come home, come to me. And I'm telling you now, and the years I've had in the wilderness with grief and loneliness, I will never allow my children to feel like that. Never, ever, ever. And this song says, you know, wherever you are, wherever I am, Mind you, I'm about to go on a desert island, so I will be cut off from so actually this song doesn't Just realize the irony. They won't be able to get a swim back. But but yeah, I I want them to know. Anything, anything, anything happens, anywhere, whatever, it's me. Just come to me, I will be here for you always.
We're going to hear Tell Him by Lauren Hill, and it's for my boyfriend, Dickie. He's been brought up by a really exceptional mum, Diane. She's a single mum, and I think it's shaped so much of why he is an extra special, kind, caring, and wonderful person. And he came into our lives before Roger died. He really wanted a song for him, and I did think long and hard about whether you include a song that's about. your partner because you know partners can come and go, even though we have been together years, I don't think he's going to go. But Eve I was thinking, even if he left now or it fell apart, The things he's taught me are so important I have to include him and talk about him. Sorry. I think what it is is that I think for a l a long for a big chunk of my life I had sort of Normalize this concept where you are loved, but sometimes love is withdrawn from you. It's quite difficult and it's quite difficult to deal with. And it feels unsafe, and lots of things about grief feel unsafe. And I think what Dickie has done, and he does this by sort of he shows up every single day unequivocally with love and kindness and safety. I lost my Cheerleader when I was twenty-four and I feel in Dickie, I've got it back.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:53Twenty five years in the game, how have you managed to avoid being typecast?
I think uh you have to say no a lot because what happens is you do get offered the same thing over and over. And and so you have to be willing to sit at home and just say no and say, Oh, I've done that, I don't want to do it again. But it's not I don't think it's about boredom. It's also partly to do with ambition and also um the people I looked up to and the type of actor I want to be and my interest in the profession. I just want to do all the things. Julie Walter's big heroine of yours. Massive. She is my apex predator.
Presenter asks
12:23You have described yourself as a drama queen. How did that play out?
I was feeling things very intensely. I was pretty anxious, but at the same time, very driven. You know, I really loved doing what I was doing, and I just wanted to do all the things. You know, like, well, my dad made me play the cello, but I did want to. So I played the cellos in all the orchestras, the choirs, I was doing my drama. It's all I thought about. I didn't. That's just all I wanted. It was all performing and you know the artist. I don't know if it was performing. I don't think of it as performing because I think I'm quite shy. I think it was sort of. Escaping a bit, or I think I felt um. And then this went through my 20s, and then after my dad died, really chronically. But I think, even as a young kid, we left this cul-de-sac I grew up in, and it was. Like Nirvana, you know, I'm pretty sure that song, all Nirvana songs were written about Mike Oldessac because it was heaven. And when we moved, I f I remember feeling quite lonely quite a lot of the time.
The keepsakes
The book
Kate Atkinson
I've cheated a bit and I've crammed a series of books within the covers of one book. They are Kate Atkinson's books, so the Jackson Brodie books. So I'll trot around the island, read all of the Kate Atkinson books and then The coconut. And then if in doubt coconut.
The luxury
Well as I said I wanted to be a weapon but that was disallowed so I have instead chosen my lucky conquer. I absolutely love a conker, and I also love conker collecting. And the joy I get when you open a conker and it's a double. Do you know what when you open a double conker? One of my best friends, Kate Rayfield, gave me that conker twenty odd years ago, nudging 30. And I've had it ever since in my office drawer, my desk drawer. And I do think it has brought me an inordinate amount of luck. um love and life and luck. And so I'm going to take it with me to the island. And if it doesn't bring me any more luck, then yet again I can swallow it, choke on it and die.
Presenter asks
18:03He died the night after your final show of the run. He was staying with you and your brother? What happened?
I hadn't fully engaged with that. Maybe I couldn't or I didn't want to. But we'd had a really nice day the day before. I was rehearsing another play in the day, actually, whilst I was doing the Don Mar thing in the evening, and he was testing on my lines and he'd really put his shoulder to the wheel on that, you know, like he'd do all the parts and do all the voices. Um oh, he was just lovely, my dad. And then um Yeah, then and then the and then he i it just all went wrong. So you'd heard him ill in the night and then was it went into the bathroom and he was there? Yeah, I went to say goodbye. I'd been up a couple of times. Um He wasn't very well and I I I thought I knew all about that. I thought I I knew all about how to help him'cause I'd had food poisoning for the first time on on the job and someone had given me you know, you don't know anything when you're young, do you? Someone had given me pepto this thing called Peptobismol. um miracle worker and I I tried to offer daddy some of that and that w that wasn't gonna cut the mustard'cause he was having a really big brain bleed by then. And then, yeah, it just all unfolded. It was like a horror, really. And um I didn't process that I wasn't allowed to and I didn't process that for a long, long time, years and years and years.
Presenter asks
23:41While you were experiencing that private grief, your professional life was taking off. How did you navigate that professional success while also coming to terms with what you were going through?
Uh well, I you know, the overriding feeling was like, Yes, I've got here. I used to stand on the bridge outside the National and think I want to be in there one day. But yeah, it was difficult. I was dealing with like a bit of I wouldn't it's quite extreme to say agorphobia, but a little bit of that. And some anxiety, but I felt lucky to be there. And then the National was very good to me. They are, you know, they're very loyal to you if you work hard for them. And I stayed there and I did, I think, four productions there. Met Roger there. I did his dark materials there with Nick Heitner, which was an incredible production to be part of. So all of these things are absolutely supercharging your career and changing your life.
Presenter asks
32:24You and Roger separated in 2020, and the following year he died suddenly. What was that awful period like for you and your family?
You know, there was a lot that was difficult and there's a there's a lot now that springs up that's difficult. I can do well as a mum. I think I'm I think I do okay as a mum. There's just things that Roger did better than me. There's things that he did that I can't do. The things that girl the girls need from him and he's not here. And grief is really exhausting and taxing and difficult. Well, and it's it's multi-dimensional, isn't it? Because there's the emotional aspect of it, but then there's practical, financial concerns. It's like all of these things. Yeah, and I think so often for the adult, not for my children, but as the adult, in the initial stages, the practical dominates because you are only thinking, well, they're gone, so you've got to make a living, pay the bills, support your family. I'm not going to over-egg that because we were in a very fortunate position, and my children and I are very privileged in the position we're in. But that's something, of course, it's incredibly difficult for my children. Nobody has their lived experience that they know. And so that's really hard for me to watch, but even harder for them to live. But saying that, their ability to find joy and silliness in life is off the chain. Really. Even when they're low and sad, you know, they're laughing or making up a joke or they're d dead daft, the girls. You know, they have a laugh at themselves, at me, at our familial situation. They are amazing.
Presenter asks
36:17Over the past few years, you've been a very vocal advocate for children and families navigating the Send system. What's made you so passionate about those issues?
Um, I think because um after Roger, trying to get the girls' needs met in the education system was especially for my younger one, really for my younger one, was exceptionally difficult. Um head banging, mental making. Exhausting, soul-destroying. I don't use those terms lightly. It just, that is what it is. And it's no one's fault. And we came across wonderful caregivers in the school setting. I mean, my older daughter had that covered. She had exceptional people around her. But for my younger daughter, it was a different story and terribly degrading meetings where only one that my youngest attended, which was exceptionally heartbreaking and humiliating for her. And I thought. Why was it humiliating? Because there was a suggestion made of exclusion, which means leaving the school. And exclusion is something I will battle against forever, and it is something I want banned from schools, because it affects our most vulnerable children in the worst ways. There must be a a a different mode or keeping them involved, just in a safe setting. And I accept always that it's so difficult. I'm not a teacher or a TA. They are the most difficult jobs, undervalued, underpaid. I wish we had more TAs. They are exceptional. Teaching assistance. And I'm in a really privileged position. So if you're not, wow, the struggle is extra difficult. I mean, for me, it's not about send, which is special educational needs. It is about meeting all children's needs at the point of need. This is my dream and I know people sort of, you know, I get trolled a lot for being ignorant about these things and I don't work in an education setting and it is so difficult. But of course the idea would be that all our children feel valued and feel seen and that we don't have our thousands of children othered and excluded from school and written off.
“A man comes to the house early in the morning and picks her up in a car and then takes her to a car park and then she goes into a caravan and takes all her clothes off.”
“Just filled up the tank and then I and I and it sustained me throughout my life.”
“I looked at that in that moment with the bag of compost floating over perilously over her head, and I thought, I love you so much. I do. I just thought, I love you so much. Everything you stand for, everything you've been through, and you're still flinging compost around.”
“I felt chronically alone. Processing grief and death and trauma is very, very difficult. And it is just a road you sort of have to trudge down.”
“I lost my cheerleader when I was twenty-four and I feel in Dickie, I've got it back.”
“And if it doesn't bring me any more luck, then yet again I can swallow it, choke on it and die.”