CELIA SHOWS HER TRUE COLOURS!
Anne Reid explains why she wouldn’t want LastTangoIn Halifax’s Celia to soften up…
LastTangoinHalifax has been rightly lauded for flouting one of the cardinal rules of drama – that lovebirds have to be young and free of wrinkles. The drama’s tale of late-life love between pensioners Celia and Alan (Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi) has enchanted audiences, despite the couple’s ageing bodies and decades of emotional baggage.
“As you get older, you never get parts where you fall in love with anybody – and I loved falling in love,” says Anne (84), a widow since her husband, Peter Eckersley, died in 1981.
LastTango was revived this year, four years after its last episode, to much cheering from fans. But as the four-part drama draws to a close this week, we see that the course of true love has become rocky for Celia and Alan.
The stark differences in their politics and moral stances continue to blight their love, while Alan’s job in a supermarket proves an ongoing source of mortification for snobbish Celia. Her acid comments to Alan’s daughter Gillian (Nicola Walker) and her own daughter, Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) cause further ructions.
Anne admits that the honeymoon period is over and
Alan is waking up to Celia’s
“IF CELIA SUDDENLY D L TTURNEDD TTERRIBLY IBL SWEET, I WOULDN’T LIKE THAT”
true nature. “I’m worried for our relationship,” confesses Anne. “I think the clever thing about this series is the fact that Alan fell in love with this pretty girl at 16 and they didn’t get together and he has had fantasises about her.
“Maybe we have all got somebody we met when we were young, and we think, WhatwouldithavebeenlikeifI hadmarriedthem?
“Then he meets her and marries her and he finds out what she is really like.”
Despite Celia’s spiky character being the major cause of family friction, Anne says she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“She is a right grumpy b*gger,” laughs the actress. “I think, Pleasedon’tever makehernice. If she suddenly turned terribly sweet, I wouldn’t like that. Usually I have found that you get more laughs if you’re unpleasant!”
For Derek Jacobi, playing softhearted Yorkshire farmer Alan has been a refreshing change of pace after a career packed with classical roles.
“I’m surprised and delighted that I was actually cast,” says the 81-year-old actor. “Because I have a reputation as a classical costume actor and wellspoken actor, for somebody to actually see that underneath all of that – that I am a good East London boy and common as muck – and to cast me as an ordinary Joe, I related to that 250 per cent.”
Both lead actors, still vibrant octogenarians, hope that Wainwright will pen another series depicting the adventures of Celia and Alan.
It’s a show that’s garnered a global fan base, as Anne has discovered while on holiday in Tasmania.
“We didn’t know it was going to go so universal,” says Anne. “It is kind of weird and wonderful when people run after you in the street in Port Hobart and shout, ‘It’s Celia!’”