Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor who found fame as a singer before becoming sci-fi icon Rose Tyler in Doctor Who and winning all six Best Actress awards for Yerma.
On the island
Eight records
I spent a lot of my youth watching musicals and theatre and it really inspires me, this this particular piece of music, and I listen to it a lot when I'm sort of at the beginning of a creative process. It has a lot of curiosity and there's something quite creepy about it, and those two things in combination are like a big hit for me.
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
I am always very moved by this song, lyrically and also melodically. But strangely, wherever I am, however remote I am, this song comes on. It's it follows me and I find that quite freaky and quite exciting.
It's one of those songs that remind me of my mum and dad when they were together because they separated in my early 20s. But Fleetwood Mac reminds me so much of their relationship. I moved to America for three months when I decided I didn't want to sing anymore and I started going to acting classes again and singing classes, movement classes, all that stuff. And I listened to a lot of Fleetwood Mac out there that just felt right, sort of rolling around the hills trying to drive. And it's got that sort of dreamy Californian feeling that sort of enhanced the experience.
Although a lot of things have happened in my life, I feel like my life is divided into two parts. Some people think it might be divided into more, but for me, it's like pre-fame and post-fame. And out of space reminds me of a time before I became famous. And I reflect back really fondly where I felt like a normal kid and I was able to do normal things. And I was obsessed with rave music as a kid.
Champagne SupernovaFavourite
It's the sound of my childhood, and I am such a huge Oasis fan. It's really hard to choose a song, but again, it's got that sort of prefame memory for me, although then I started to appear in the charts with them like a year later or something, which is so surreal. Massive fan. Wish they'd come back together. It means a lot to me, especially the song I Love This.
It's one of my favourite streets songs. And I saw them play at the first festival I'd ever been to and it just feels so brit and so of its time, and I just think it's an absolute banger. I'm obsessed by Mike Skinner.
I fell in love with this song particularly when I had my first son, and it felt like it was singing to that experience of my first child. And it resonated with my second and my third, yeah, I feel uh very moved and emotionally drawn to this.
I am a massive Biggie Smalls fan. It reminds me of my life in Swindon. I absolutely love hip-hop. It's something that people don't really know about me. And also it's just something people always think slightly like weird. But I always listen to Biggie before I go into any new experience. Before I go on stage or before I go and audition for a new job or before I go and do parent-teacher, whatever it is that I need to sort of build me up, I listen to Biggie. This is one of my favourite tracks, but this is also a slightly more radio friendly one and it's juicy.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:17Is it liberating to play someone who is unravelling so spectacularly?
It's massively satisfying and feels very familiar. … It's obviously quite heightened, but there are moments in the show that perfectly depict things that are happening inside my mind a lot. … We wanted to explore those things with real transparency, in a way that fully lifts the lid on what it means and what it costs to be female. … Like early thirties, that has been my quest professionally. And actually, it's the most satisfying period of my professional life. … I do want to pull apart and unpack the uglier sides of being alive, being female, being a mother, being a sexual being, being a lover, a wife, all of those things. But it has to feel real to me.
Presenter asks
8:10How would you describe family life?
I think my parents always supported me and everything I wanted to do, which was a lot. Like I had a lot of fire in my belly as a kid about things I wanted to do and things I loved and things I wanted to pursue. My mum, I feel like she was always amazed by that. My dad would champion it all the way. So he would find money 'cause we didn't have loads of money to make these things happen. So I think I was in and out of clubs, not nightclubs, drama club, dance club. Extracurricular activities all week long.
Presenter asks
18:39The keepsakes
The book
Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living. I read this last year in Lockdown One and I just haven't stopped reading it. It's really short, which I like, but it talks so beautifully about being a woman. It's one of those books like The Belgiard that I just go over it and come back to a number of times. I sort of urge people to read that.
The scrutiny that you were under brought that kind of awareness of your appearance with it and you did develop an eating disorder, didn't you?
Yeah, probably when I was like 17 is when it got really, really bad. I think it was a reaction to the chaos around me and it's a way of controlling things. I didn't stop reading things about me until I was like 19 and Chris Evans taught me to do that. … I really began to hate it and hate myself and hate my existence. I think fame is my least favourite thing about what I do. I really just find it quite repellent.
Presenter asks
23:53What was that time [the Doctor Who fame] like for you?
It was great in many ways because I was doing what I felt like I was born to do on some level. That was a very exciting and satisfying time because it was hard to get an acting job with my history as a first pop star and then this sort of burnt out child star, which is how I think I was painted, certainly through the years I was with Chris. And actually, I've had to do that until quite recently to sort of shift people's perception, which is really annoying and completely unhelpful. … We also didn't know that it would be successful, but it made me really famous again in that sort of mainstream fame way that I find really uncomfortable.
Presenter asks
27:00What do you think about the traditional portrayal of thirty-something women on TV? What did you want to explore that wasn't being covered?
I just don't think it was being covered authentically at all. Like your 20s are dramatised. You see that all the time. Even your teens, that sort of coming of age stuff. I don't know that there was something that spoke to the 30-year-old woman. So we jumped in there. And it's such a shame because it feels like such a rude awakening and like something that needs to be really, really pulled apart, good and bad.
“It's massively satisfying and feels very familiar.”
“I didn't want to just leave all my ambitions and desires at the door to sort of raise kids and serve men.”
“Now, when I look back at it, now that I have my own children, it seems unbelievably unsafe and plays in probably unhealthily to my parenting.”
“I really began to hate it and hate myself and hate my existence. I think fame is my least favourite thing about what I do. I really just find it quite repellent.”
“I just don't think it was being covered authentically at all. … I don't know that there was something that spoke to the 30-year-old woman.”