I’ve always loved doing accents, but a cockney one was daunting, because it is so easy to get it wrong
I’ve always loved doing accents since I was a child, but a cockney one was daunting because, as Dick Van Dyke showed, it’s very easy to get it wrong.
Am I right in thinking your partner, actor Calvin Demba, helped you out with it? He did – he’s from east London and at the time I auditioned for it, it was during Covid, when I had been living with him and his auntie and uncle in Limehouse.
And I think that’s the real reason
I got the job – I don’t think I would have had the authenticity without it.
You’re also performing in the West End right now, in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. How are you finding it?
I’m loving it, it’s such an incredible company of actors to be a part of. I love theatre, so I feel very blessed. The only downside is I have to miss the Renegade Nell premiere tonight, because I have to go give Brian Cox his whisky.
Brian Cox is a bit of an acting legend has he given you any good advice?
Yes, last night, actually. He said ‘never apologise for yourself’, because I think he feels like sometimes when I come on to do
I got stopped recently and the person came over to me and said ‘are you…’ and I said ‘in Derry Girls? Yes’. And they said ‘No, did you used to work in The Jugged Hare?’, which was the London pub I used to work in.
They hadn’t seen Derry Girls at all, I’d just served them their pint of Bulmers! It really keeps you humble.
The show ended brilliantly with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement but do you ever wonder what your character, Orla, would be up to in 2024?
I imagine it all the time, but I don’t think we’ll probably ever get to see it. I think we will just leave the story there.
It’s in the hands of [Derry Girls creator] Lisa McGee and I trust her implicitly, so if she wanted to revisit the story at any time, I would do anything for her. But I do think that chapter’s closed.
I miss playing Orla so, so much, though, and I do wonder what she went on to do – Lisa always says she probably became an astronaut or something like that.