Filming Good Karma Was A Real Treat
Veteran actor Sue Johnston has tales of iguanas, tuk-tuks and parties – as well as the character she’d most like to be
Sue Johnston should be a poster gal for septuagenarians everywhere. She’s starred in some of Britain’s best-loved comedies, like The Royle Family, and dramas such as Down ton Abbey, Coronation Street and Brookside.
And the intrepid actress shows no signs of slowing down. Sue recently jetted out to Sri Lanka to film a major role in the finale of ITV’s medical drama The Good Karma Hospital, and this summer stars in a new BBC1 drama, Age Before Beauty.
Retirement, says Sue, is not a word in her vocabulary.
“Acting is my life and it defines me, I suppose,” muses the 74-year-old actress when we meet to chat about her latest role. “I’m choosier about what I do, but I still love working. At the end of a job I’ll be happy for a few weeks, but then I’ll be getting restless and wondering what’s next – I’m a bit of a gypsy.”
Typically, Sue embraced her first experience of working in Sri Lanka, where GoodKarma is filmed (it doubles for southern India).
While there, Sue tells us, she went for rides in ramshackle tuk-tuks [threewheeled motorised taxis], fed iguanas on the beach outside her hotel and wandered around the ancient town of Galle soaking up the atmosphere.
“Don’t I have a terrible job!” she laughs. “I wouldn’t have taken the part if I thought it was naff, but it was beautifully written. And I’d never been to Sri Lanka and just wanted to go. It was a huge treat and something I’ll never forget.”
Sue plays Dr Virginia Mileham, the woman who founded The Good Karma Hospital and who mentored Dr Lydia Fonseca (Amanda Redman) when she was a young doctor newly arrived in India. “But there was a falling-out after Lydia got Virginia ousted from the hospital, and now Virginia’s quite bitter – but there’s an awful lot of love there between the women as well.”
Now Virginia is seriously ill and has a big favour to ask.
“I won’t tell you what,” says Sue. “But Amanda and I had some really emotional scenes together that I really enjoyed.”
Not only that, but Sue fell into a bit of a party scene out in Sri Lanka, because she knew so many of the cast: Phyllis Logan is Sue’s great friend from DowntonAbbey (Sue played Miss Denker and Phyllis, Mrs Hughes) and she is mates with Phillip Jackson, who plays GoodKarma’s Paul Smart. “And I knew Amanda Redman socially, too, so we all had lovely dinners together at my hotel, which was right on the beach.”
Sue has been a familiar face since she burst onto our screens as Sheila Grant in Brookside in 1982. She says fans still remember her fondly from Brookside, Corrie and particularly from TheRoyleFamily (19982012), which was written by and starred her great friend Caroline Aherne, who died in 2016 and whom Sue says she misses terribly.
Surprisingly, Sue says of all the characters she’s played, she’d most like to be like Barbara. Yet the two women seem light years apart – Sue is sophisticated and worldly, Barbara a frumpy small-town mum. “She was just a simple soul, happy in her own skin, and who loved her family to devotional levels. She just wanted to plop around without any care for what she looked
like. How wonderful to be that free. I just loved her. Of course I’m not at all like her.”
Yet Sue is also a devoted grandma – she moved from London to Manchester five years ago in order to be closer to her grandchildren. She is granny to four boys – two are her son Joel’s, and two are the children of her goddaughter.
“I love being a granny,” she says, explaining that her grandsons are aged six, five, three and six months. “The eldest, Rory, he’s a little performer – he’s definitely got my genes. It’s lovely to see that extension of yourself in these little children. And to see their imaginations at work, it’s a joy.
“Having said that,” chuckles Sue, “I still really look forward to going off to work again. Hopefully, as long as I can walk and remember the lines, people will give me a job.”