When all of this is properly over, I’m looking forward to just being joyful
Creativity is flowing for Andi Osho, as she chats to MARION MCMULLEN about her debut novel, a new podcast and Line Of Duty
We’re soon going to be seeing you in the new series of Line Of Duty. Was filming hit by Covid restrictions?
I DID my filming on the show just before lockdown came in. Covid was just some rumour then, that was happening on the far reaches of the internet. It was just a thing.
Then lockdown shut everything down. The cast and production crew formed a bubble so they could keep everyone safe while doing the show.
You’ve been doing a lot of acting, from Sky One drama Curfew alongside Sean Bean and Adrian Lester, to BBC’S Death in Paradise and Shazam! with Mark Strong. Has drama now taken over from stand-up comedy? ACTING actually came first. I came out the gate and was appearing in Eastenders and it theatre.
Then I started getting stage fright going to auditions and I thought this is wasting everyone’s time, so I started doing stand up. It gave me an opportunity to perform that I could control. It was something positive and I feel that bit more confident having done my time on the circuit and a lot of high-profile TV shows.
Stand up is the most terrifying thing you can do. Now I’m concentrating on writing and acting.
What inspired your debut book Asking For A Friend?
A FEW years back I was discussing my disastrous love life with a friend and she recommended I read a self help book. She recommended a few but I read them all.
Afterwards I wanted to write a book sharing what I had learned and it grew into Asking For A Friend, part dating advice, part love letter to fabulous female friends. For a while I was balancing it with all the other things I was doing like Curfew and the West End. I sat down and wrote when I could.
(Laughs) I was learning how to write a book. I have a naive arrogance that gets me in all sorts of situations. I was thinking ‘how hard can it be?’ And then you find out it can be really difficult.
My editor read the first three chapters and said ‘It’s great, but there’s too much dialogue’ and that’s because I’m used to writing screenplays. I think I wrote the last two thirds of the book in the same amount of time if took me to write the first.
I like to think it’s a great book for lockdown reading.
It’s a funny novel about three friends who come up with a plan to solve their relationship woes, once and for all. Are any of the situations you write about true? SOME things have inspired moments in the book. Things that have really happened in my life, the ones that you wouldn’t believe are true, like ending a relationship after a tarot reading.
That really happened and I used it in the book. Not that I did a whole Mystic Meg thing, but I was told in a tarot reading that he did not want kids so I confronted him and it was ‘end of the road, babe’.
How would you describe your new podcast, Creative Sauce?
(LAUGHS) I can say what I like and it all about creativity. It’s a really interesting subject and it’s for the creative in everyone – comedians, actors, writers, painters, poets and everything else beginning with P.
It’s not just for people who are established and are in the industry, but for people who have a hobby, or who are a bit stuck for inspiration and ideas.
I used to get bogged down in the mundane aspects of finding work and getting a job, and each episode looks at different aspects of working in the arts, from wealth to wellbeing, fear to freedom, legacy, failure, rejection, success and more, with some tips from people like Roisin Conaty and Richard Osman.
Richard had some good advice on rejection, saying you should try and be gracious when it comes to rejection because it could come back around and you could be working with the same people in the future.
How have you been coping with lockdown?
I’VE been sent a lot of books now I’m in that circle and I’m going to start reading, instead of watching Scandal... again.
I’ve done the token banana bread, it would be rude not to, and I’ve been in the kitchen a lot. It’s been quite relaxing.
People have called me a workaholic and they are probably right. I like to keep busy.
I think my last holiday was in 2018. I don’t do an annual trip, but I do like city break.
I’m looking forward to more socialising when all this is properly over and just being joyful.
■ Asking For A Friend is out now (Harper Collins, £8.99). Go to andiosho.co.uk for details of the Creative Sauce podcast.