AUDIENCES WILL BE SEEING A LOT LESS OF STAR
ELAINE C Smith is giving her wardrobe mistresses a nervous breakdown.
The 63-year-old has lost three-anda-half stones during lockdown and all her Fairy Godmother costumes – for Cinderella at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre – are far too big.
The new slinky Elaine was drowned by the velour joggers and fleece housecoats her character Christine wears in Two Doors Down. She has just finished filming the new series in a fat suit.
The abrasive neighbour, who appears whenever a fridge door opens or a cork is pulled from a bottle, would not be the same if she was skinny.
“Christine would have eaten her way through lockdown,” Elaine said. “She would have had JustEat on speed dial. She would actually be bigger.”
The star herself spent the pandemic doing yoga and zumba, eating salad and doing jigsaws in the garden with her granddaughter.
She recalled: “I started with 30 days of yoga online, that gave me a wee bit of discipline every day. My friend Nicole is a great Zumba teacher. She started a class on Zoom. I did 120 classes – I’ve got a certificate to prove it.”
And while she acknowledges that the past years have been horrendous for so many of her showbiz friends and colleagues, Elaine thrived on having an empty diary and a silent phone.
“I was able to shed Elaine C Smith, the weight of that,” she said. “I just felt relief. All the politics, all the charity, all the corporate gigs. People think I just do that thing on television, but I’m the patron of 15 charities, I do half a dozen corporate gigs and at least half a dozen charity gigs a year.”
With a lot of time to think, she has analysed why she became a Scottish Slimmers regular over the year.
“For 20 years, sugar kept me upright. I worked out that if I’d gained a pound for every year I’d toured, I’d gained 35lbs, and that was about right.” It was, she said, “gradual”.
“I’d do panto, lose a stone, put it back on. I
had kids,” she added.
Panto godmother Elaine C Smith much weight lost so during lockdown wear a fat suit she had to to record Two Doors Down
“And it was about protection, being taken seriously in comedy. It was about being in a room full of men, as I was for many years in the BBC Comedy Unit making Naked Video then Rab C Nesbitt.
“I didn’t want to be the pretty one. I didn’t want to be the sexy nurse, I wanted to be funny. And being bigger was funny.”
Her new look is upsetting her younger daughter, Hannah.
Elaine explained: “She says, ‘I don’t like this wee mum.’ For her, me being out on the stage and bigger was stronger. She worries about me.”
Elaine’s position as one of Scottish theatre’s treasured elders is not under threat. When lockdown hit, she was appearing in a Brecht play, Mrs Puntila and Her Man Mati, at Edinburgh’s Lyceum theatre.
The rest of the run was cancelled. “Two Doors Down was shelved. I was meant to be doing an American movie with Andie MacDowell. That was shelved. Panto was gone,” she said.
“I was able to do the Christmas special of Two Doors Down. There were a couple of National Theatre of Scotland online shows, one with Janey Godley and one with Val McDermid, filmed on my iPhone. I did two awards ceremonies and that was it.”
She got a hint that panto might be a goer when she took the First Minister for a night out at the Edinburgh Fringe last month. Elaine recalled: “At one point I said, ‘Enough of that, am I doing panto this year?’ And she said, very quietly, ‘With mitigations, I think’. They were aware of what was coming.”
These mitigations include strict rules for the cast and crew of the show, which was postponed last year. “The cast won’t be able to mix with the band, they will be in a separate bubble. The crew will be limited and we won’t mix with them,” Elaine said.
“Nobody will be able to come backstage. When I do a charity thing I invite everyone to come backstage. That’s all gone. Even the director is not allowed backstage. He has to text the cast their notes, or talk to them from the auditorium while they sit on the stage. We’re not allowed in the auditorium.”
She’s used to the regular testing – she reckons she has had 40 swabs so far – while filming Two Doors Down and CBBC show Princess Mirror-Belle. All negative... “Then my husband went to the football,” she said.
Despite the couple being double jagged, both caught Covid.
“He didn’t get it bad. I was floored. It gave me a real fright, I wouldn’t like to have this without a vaccine.”
Holding court in a hotel room, surrounded by feather-trimmed costumes, sparkly shoes and industrial grade stage makeup, Elaine looks every bit the panto legend.
But she has reservations about stepping back out in front of an audience. “Throughout this I had no desire to perform and it’s not come back,” she admitted. “I have no desire to be on a stage.”
She’s sure that when the time comes, her muscle memory will kick in. Working with co-star Johnny Mac will keep her going. She said: “He is like the son I’ve never had. I could be his mother – Gerard Kelly was older than me and I used to play his mum. He is one of the kindest, most talented people I’ve ever worked with.
“It’s a relationship I never thought I’d get again. When the panto was cancelled last year I was more disappointed for Johnny than for myself. His dream has been to play Buttons at the Glasgow King’s then it was taken away from him.”
The pair hope to deliver the feelgood night out that everyone needs right now.
“People need a bit of connection and joy,” she said. “We don’t need a three-hour play about Covid and how terrible the pandemic was. We know.”
Cinderella at the King’s Theatre Glasgow, November 27-January 2. www.atgtickets.com
I wanted to be funny. Being bigger was funny ELAINE C SMITH ON HER EARLY DAYS IN COMEDY