Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Women at war
What happens when two female colleagues hate each other – and one thinks the other’s after her job? New thriller The Replacement is laced with Hitchcockian tension
We all know women can be the closest of friends. They can look after each other’s children, mentor each other at work and sympathise with each other’s romantic problems. But that doesn’t always happen. Women can be competitive and nasty to each other too. And there are few places where that happens more explosively than in the workplace.
The surprise is that there hasn’t been a thriller about the tinderbox scenario of having two women who hate each other in a confined office space – until now. Throw in a pregnancy, a murder and an underlying Hitchcockian tension and you’ve got BBC1’s new edge- of-the-seat drama The Replacement.
‘ People seem to like it when women don’t get on,’ says Morven Christie, the Grantchester actress who plays architect Ellen Rooney in the show. ‘People like to p it wom e n against each other. I don’t think women argue any more than men do but there’s a lot of passive aggression in this s h ow which will be instantly recognisable to everyone.’
The three- part drama begins with Ellen winning a major new client which will transform the fortunes of the practice for her bosses. She’s achieved what she’s always wanted and can’t wait to get stuck in. But shortly after a celebratory party she realises she’s pregnant. Although she’s determined to take just three months’ maternity leave, a replacement who can shadow her and then take over the role temporarily needs to be found.
Enter Paula Reece, played by Line Of Duty’s Vicky McClure. At first Ellen approves of Paula, a promising young architect who took time out to bring up her daughter, who’s now ten. But within days of Paula being hired, Ellen has misgivings. Paula starts to arrange meetings with the client without involving Ellen. She sucks up to the bosses and goes out for lunch with Ellen’s friends. She irritates Ellen by suggesting she won’t be ready to return to work after three months. Ellen seems to see an underhand side to Paula that others don’t. When we learn that Ellen suffered from depression after the death of her mother and ended up marrying her therapist, questions start being asked about Ellen’s mental state.
Soon there are stand-up rows in front of clients, and her bosses – David, played by Dougray Scott, and Kay, played by Neve McIntosh – suggest she start her maternity leave early because she’s no longer herself. By the end of episode one there appears to have been a murder and the war between the women really hots up.
At first it’s hard to see who the genuine baddie is. ‘Ellen has been defined by her career for a long time,’ says Morven, 35. ‘It’s seven years of training so anyone who does that job has really put the hours in. She’s finally hit a point where she thinks she’s made it and then that’s whipped away when she discovers she’s pregnant.
‘She tries to make light of it, and insists she’ll hardly be off work at all. There’s a paranoia building in her because she instinctively sees things in this woman and she can’t understand why no one else is seeing it. I quite like the fact that there’s no clear antagonist. This is much more truthful of the relationships we have with each other. There aren’t goodies and baddies because life doesn’t work like that.’
A lt h o ug h the sympathy initially is with Ellen, there are also question marks over her behaviour. Even her husband Ian, played by Richard Rankin, worries whether she’s having some sort of breakdown. ‘The relationship with her husband is an interesting one as he was her shrink,’ says Morven. ‘On the surface they have a healthy relationship but there’s an underlying theme. Because he’s a mental health professional and she was his patient he thinks he knows better than her about what she’s thinking and feeling, which is probably quite destructive. She’s outwardly strong and forthright and says what she thinks, but she’s probably a bit offcentre because of that dynamic.’
While outwardly the more confident of the pair, Paula also deserves some sympathy says Vicky. ‘There’s always a reason why a person acts in an erratic way. I hope people will feel sorry for her. Don’t get me wrong, she does some messed-up stuff. But then so does Ellen. The viewers will be pulled around, not knowing whose side they should be on. It’s not obvious. The more you learn about Paula, the more you wonder who you should back.’
Writer and director Joe Ahearne, who also wrote and directed spooky 2012 thriller The Secret Of Crickley Hall, came up with the idea while talking to producer Nicole Cauverien, who was herself about to cover
‘Ellen sees things in Paula that others don’t’ MORVEN CHRISTIE
someone’s maternity leave. He was also inspired to use the Hitchcock-style device where the protagonist is not sure if something sinister is going on, or if they’re being paranoid.
‘Everyone can identify with the anxiety of seeing someone do their job as well as or better than they can, or the pang when a colleague invites another colleague for lunch and doesn’t tell you,’ he says. ‘Most of us have the secret fear that we’re not good enough and feel envy when we see others navigating professional and social situations more suavely than we think we can manage.’
The drama showcases two of TV’s hottest female talents. Vicky won a BAFTA for her role in Shane Meadows’ gritty drama This Is England and has also appeared as DS Kate Fleming in all three series of Line Of Duty. Morven first found fame in Grantchester and took a leading role in The A Word, last year’s hit drama about a family dealing with an autistic child.
Although their scenes involve plen- ty of arguments and catty looks, off screen the two say they became good friends while they were filming in Glasgow. Bonding on the set took place over Tunnock’s Teacakes and the odd night out. They also teased each other about their characters’ appearances. Tomboyish Vicky had to adopt a glamorous style and says she struggled with what she calls Paula’s ‘Apprentice’ look – named after the wannabe entrepreneurs on Alan Sugar’s reality show.
‘It felt like a challenge to have false nails and a spray tan,’ she laughs. ‘Paula looks l i ke she’s trying to be sophisticated and really proper but not quite getting it right. She’s gone too far w it h some things and she looks a bit odd. There was one awful pink skirt! She’s like an Apprentice character in the way she looks but also in the way she appears really sure of herself.’ Morven, meanwhile, had a variety of prosthetic bumps to play Ellen at various stages of her pregnancy. ‘As soon as I put this weird thing on it changed my mental state,’ she says. ‘We’d be chatting and my hands would be swaying over the bump. You realise that when pregnant women rub their bumps it’s not affection, it’s an instinctive feeling. It was also uncomfortable but that was helpful because I felt impaired. That’s a big thing for Ellen, she feels impaired all the time by her changing body.’ Both women left school at 16 to pursue acting careers and jokingly say it was nice to find a fellow ‘chav’, slang for a young lout. ‘Many of us can recognise that imposter syndrome thing that you see in the show,’ says Nottingham-born Vicky, who took her first acting job at 15. ‘I feel emotionally intelligent but I didn’t have a fierce education; I wasn’t good at history or geography or IT. I didn’t go to university. Some things don’t come naturally to me. There’s a fear that will always be in me because I don’t have the education but I won’t let it hold me back. What’s the point when you have to find a way of getting through it?’
Glasgow-born Morven nods vigorously. ‘I left school at 16 but then went to drama school and into classical theatre. It was a different world; an intellectual world. I remember doing one show with Sam Mendes and we spent a week talking about Shakespeare and the text and iambic pentameter. It made me angry because I couldn’t contribute to the conversation. I thought it was irrelevant.
‘Our job is to tell human stories, create human emotions and relationships. This is something I come up against a lot. People want to intellectualise things and I just want to say, “But how does it feel?” There’s a class thing in our industry. I’ve definitely felt like the chavviest person in the room...’ Vicky interjects, ‘...and then I came along!’
Both start giggling before Morven adds, ‘For me that was one of the most amazing things to do with this role. Neither of us came from privilege. There was no one saying, “When I was at Eton...” We were in it for the same objectives; no inherent privileges got in the way.’
The pair had a week of rehearsals before filming started so they could th r a sh things out. ‘There was a scene we disagreed over,’ recalls Vicky. ‘I felt my character was in the right and Morven thought her character was in the right and we both wanted to play it as if we were in the right, but that didn’t work. Some of the conversations got intense but because we weren’t in a rush we were able to play with things, so by the time we started filming we knew where we were. There were some awkward complicated moments but we had fun with it.’
‘ We had a good laugh doing it together,’ agrees Morven. ‘One of the greatest things for me about this job was I walked away with a great mate who happens to do the same job as me. It’s pretty awesome.’
While the show is thrilling and intense, it’s rooted in a reality everyone can identify with. ‘In life there are some people you have a personality clash with,’ says Vicky. ‘Whatever happens, you know you won’t be friends. It happens to everyone. But maybe not quite in this way.’
‘Viewers won’t know whose side to be on’ VICKY McCLURE
The Replacement starts on BBC1 later this month.