SCARBOROUGH
the 70s – will star with husband Jim Carter, Dame Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville, in the hotly anticipated Downton Abbey film.
“It was great because I got to do stuff with Maggie (Smith) and Penelope (Wilton),” the Rada alumni says of Julian Fellowes’ epic. “(Our characters) have a little attitude, which is so nice to do. But people aren’t interested in seeing me and Geraldine James – they want the whole gang back on the screen!
“I can’t tell because I am a sort of outsider, but you just want it to go down well and it not to be a huge disappointment.”
After the emotional toll of A Confession – “There were no easy scenes” – did she long for something lighter?
“Not particularly,” says Imelda. “I was grateful for it because having done quite a long stretch of theatre, with quite a lot of heavy stuff, I thought, ‘I’ll never get parts ever, on film, like I get in theatre. I just won’t.’
“But last year I did a bit on Downton Abbey and then (actress and film-maker) Romola Garai sent me a script about two years ago... and it was a horror film!” she yelps. “So I’m doing a little bit in that. “Downton, a bit of horror, I’m shaking it up a bit. I’m trying to be brave enough – because I don’t want to do any theatre for a while – to go, ‘Right. If you’re going to do some film and telly, don’t just do the next job that comes along’. Hopefully we’re in a good climate at the moment, (with) ladies in the television programmes, ladies that aren’t 20. So it’s not a bad time!
“But there’s no point just saying, ‘I want to do a part’,” she adds. “Someone’s got to write it – and I don’t write!”
Imelda won’t rule out working alongside husband Jim and their 25-year-old actress daughter Bessie (last seen in ITV’s Beecham House), either.
“The three of us, that would be hilarious!” she says, smiling. “We were all in Cranford, which was something that we did years ago. But oh no, I’d love that.
“But maybe (Bessie) needs to tread her own path,” she ponders.
“Give her a few years and I’ll be begging her to work: ‘Please let me be in something that you’re in’,” she mimics.
Of her own career path, Imelda says: “You just have to be patient and wait for something that will hopefully be interesting – like Romola’s film.
“I have no idea what it will be like, I don’t know if I understand it, but I loved doing the horror thing!
“I suppose I’ve almost outstayed my welcome in the theatre because I just went on and on and on,” she finishes.
“So it’s quite good now to just b **** r off for a bit and let someone else do the schlepping.”
■ on the migratory trail of the Scots through America.
It’s a journey that begins in New York, where Billy opens the tartan day parade in front of a 3,000-strong crowd. From there, he travels to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the pilgrims first landed. Then it’s on to meet a group of naughty nuns in Boston before a visit to the HAVING enjoyed 11 years of success with Benidorm, it’s time for its creator, Derren Litten, to try something different. His new project is not too far removed from the ITV sitcom, however.
Scarborough is a six-part comedy about the lives and loves of a handful of the seaside town’s residents. They meet most nights in the local karaoke bar where they swap gossip in between singing pop songs.
Jason Manford, Catherine Tyldesley, Claire Sweeney and Stephanie Cole are among the cast.
ancestry. Recalling her less-than idyllic childhood and her remote relationship with her mother, Sharon delves into her maternal family history and uncovers the difficult circumstances of her mother’s and grandmother’s lives.
She later discovers that she had a great-grandmother who was born in the US and that her great-great-grandparents’ hope of living the American-Dream did not go according to plan.
A Confession airs on ITV on Monday at 9pm.
Billy Connolly
graveside of what would be the most famous man you never knew was Scottish.