You Ask… Anna Nightingale (who plays Andrea)
They ANSWER!
“What was your fave job before the Dales?”
ANNA NIGHTINGALE Emmerdale’s Andrea Tate ...faces your questions!
Andrea has been left bitter and brokenhearted by husband Jamie’s cheating ways. But will Anna be in a better mood as we ask her your reader questions?
“Do you enjoy playing the darker side of Andrea that’s been unveiled since Jamie’s affair?”
I do – it’s been really refreshing. It’s nice to play things a different way. It’s like when you find yourself in certain situations in real life, and you do act differently – you question where your morals lie and how far you’ll go. Would I like to see Andrea go full villainess? Do you
know what? I wouldn’t mind! But I’d like it if Andrea kept some sort of a conscience, and she didn’t burn all of her bridges along
the way!
“You’re fighting on screen at the moment, but how do you get on with Alex Lincoln and Eden Taylordraper [Jamie and Belle] off screen?”
Alex is like everybody’s brother – to me especially, because I’m a bit older than him in real life. He comes to me for advice on all sorts, and I’ll always try to help him out. And Eden is an old soul, she’s so intelligent and worldly. I don’t need to offer her advice on anything!
man, who would you choose and why?”
I think Andrea needs a bit of comedy in her life, and someone who would make a big impact in the village – maybe Will Smith. I think he’d come in, turn heads and be very funny. I reckon that everybody would warm to him and Andrea as a couple.
“Where did you meet your real-life partner, Daren? Was it love at first sight?”
It’s almost been 10 years since we first met, and that was through work. He used to work in music, and we kind of just met through some mutual friends. We worked together for a year or so, and then one evening I think I probably had too many glasses of wine, and I declared my undying love for him
– I think he would recount the story differently. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my gosh, what have I done? I’ve ruined our friendship!’ But fortunately the feelings were reciprocated, and the rest is history.
“You played Princess Margaret on TV in
Snowdon And Margaret
– were you daunted?”
That was my first ever TV job out of drama school.
I went for the audition, and it was very confidential – the people making it couldn’t tell us who the programme was about at that stage. They just sent out a brief that said, ‘This person is very upper class,’ and then wrote down all these character traits. They eventually told us who it was about, though, as they were releasing a book to go with it.
“What was your favourite job before Emmerdale?”
I did a BBC comedy called Mouth To
Mouth – we started as a pilot, and it was a real team effort. I’m still friends with some of the cast to this day. We were playing a fictional girl band that had auditioned for a reality show, and it was about them at home and the real side to reality shows. We had six episodes and it was all straight to camera, so I had to unlearn everything from drama school!
“Would you like them to bring Andrea’s family into Emmerdale?
Do you think she has a troubled relationship with them?”
I would love that, and I regularly have this conversation with anybody who will listen! I feel as if Andrea’s had problems with her parents growing up, and perhaps she has siblings she’s close to, but they’re a bit wayward.
I’d love a brother who is some kind of gangster! I think it would be really cool, because you’d see a different dynamic. And obviously the minute you bring people’s past into their present, there’s all kinds of fireworks that go off.
“Do you have a phobia?”
I don’t like spiders – it’s an obvious one! My nanny lived in the countryside in Yorkshire, in a little cottage where the nearest house was at least two miles away, and growing up we were regularly woken up by voles and mice and spiders. You’d think I would have gotten used to it, but I was a proper city kid, I grew up in Manchester. I’ve gotten better with age, although that has been my big one. It’s the spiders high up in particular, as I’m very short!
“Where do you most want to travel to next on holiday?”
Isn’t it weird now? We feel so hyperaware about the idea of going on holiday, and how lucky we were just to go anywhere at the drop of a hat. My partner’s family are from the Caribbean, and I’ve been to Barbados. His family are from Guyana, and his mum currently lives there – it’s just beautiful. So we would like to go and visit her as soon as we’re allowed – maybe towards the end of the year, that would be really nice.
“How do you get on with your Emmerdale co-stars?”