Sarah: I don’t go out looking for grim tales
As Sarah Lancashire stars in harrowing four-parter The Accident, the actress insists she doesn’t go looking for gritty drama
You can count on Sarah Lancashire for quality drama. And while her latest series, The Accident, is stunning, it’s not an easy watch.
Set in a small South Wales community, it’s the story of a shocking accident at a half-built factory that leaves the whole town mourning and reeling. Sarah plays Polly Bevan, whose daughter Leona (newcomer Jade Croot) is at the centre of the tragedy.
Meanwhile, her husband Iwan (Mark Lewis Jones) is head of the council and the driving force behind the project locals hope will revitalise the area.
But who’s to blame for the disaster? Is it Harriet (Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen), whose company owns the factory? Or will the finger be pointed at someone closer to home?
Polly’s from the Valleys and Sarah, who says she struggles with accents, spent months honing her Welsh lilt.
“I did a lot of work on that, a lot. It was really challenging. We started filming in April or May and to give you an indication of how long it took me, I had my Christmas dinner speaking in a Welsh accent.”
Sarah also stayed in the accent throughout filming. “Yeah, it’s much easier to,” said the 54-year-old. However, she is self-deprecating about what her Welsh co-stars, such as Keeping Faith’s Mark Lewis Jones, might have made of her attempt.
“I mean, it sounds Welsh to me but to a Welshman like Mark it may not,” she added.
While the Bevans try to process what has happened to their daughter and her friends, viewers are hit with the twist that the jovial council leader isn’t all he seems, and that he and hairdresser Polly have a dark, complicated and
sometimes violent relationship. “I’ve never ever seen anything on a page like this before that is prepared to explore the co-dependancy this couple have,” Sarah said.
“‘Just to describe it as an abusive relationship is incredibly reductive because we don’t yet understand what binds these two people together, and ‘perpetrator and victim’ is a very, very simplistic way of viewing it.”
When writer Jack Thorne reveals that he wrote the part of Polly with Sarah in mind, she says that she doesn’t go looking for dark productions.
“I don’t search it out – I really want to be clear, I don’t search out the misery. I’m not sitting at home going, ‘I can’t wait to do another harrowing piece of work.’ I literally choose the best of what comes along.”
During a long career that’s mixed a lot of television with occasional film and theatre roles, Sarah has had great success with the work of both Jack and Sally Wainwright, who wrote Happy Valley and Last Tango In Halifax, but she still wants to read scripts before signing on to any project. “I’m not always right for the role,” she said. “And, to be honest, I think part of your job as an actor is knowing when you’re not right for the role. It’s just instinct – you just know.”
‘I’m not sitting at home going, I can’t wait to do another harrowing piece of work. I literally choose the best of what comes along’
Sarah Lancashire