Well Behaved: How Leslie Ash is helping fellow actors in lockdown
Leslie Ash tells MARION McMULLEN about her new books project and how she’s helping fellow actors affected by ongoing lockdowns
What has life been like for you during the pandemic?
I HAVE, at the grand age of 60, joined Instagram. I used to just shy away from that completely but now I find it very interesting.
I actually got back in contact with some very old friends that I haven’t spoke to in years. It’s been quite nice. My husband and I have a bar in Clapham and, after the first lockdown, they said we could do takeaways and we sort of jumped right on that and we had amazing weather and footfall going past. We were selling pints of mojitos and beer for people to take onto the Common.
It was actually quite a nice feeling of community. People really using the space where they lived. It was really nice to see. Then we had to be closed and all done and dusted by 10pm and now....
Your new BookStreamz project sees actors like Russell Brand and Ross Kemp reading stories from every genre. How did it all come about?
I MET (author) Elaine (Sturgess) a couple of years ago when I auditioned for a trailer she was making for a book she had written called Gin And It.
It was a comedy and I thought ‘Oh, that sounds interesting’ I though ‘Yes, I can do that’. I love comedy and I miss it completely.
Elaine said ‘Yeah, absolutely fantastic’ and we spent a few days filming and she was telling me about this idea, this wacky idea, she had.
She was saying there are so many great stories out there that no-one would ever get to hear and I thought that was a bit of a shame. TV companies say “we need content, we want content” and some of these amazing stories could easily be made into fantastic programmes.
How does it all work?
WE have the books and then get actors, a narrator, to read them. Everything is acted out by actors.
First of all, to try it out, we sold tickets with the money going to the NHS. We were actually amazed when we did our first BookStreamz how interesting and how enjoyable it was. You haven’t got the pressure of learning the lines and we’ve all come up with a way of acting on Zoom now.
What was also amazing was how much the authors enjoyed hearing their book, their story, told by actors. It was really lovely.
We are going to do Wuthering Heights this month and when Elaine was actually breaking down the book into script form she realised how far past adaptations have drifted away from the original story. We are keeping it true to the book. Everyone thinks Heathcliff was this romantic hero but he was really awful.
In a way, we are trying to make a sort of repertory company. We’ve got the authors, a couple of people working on the production side, then we’ve got about 70 actors on board. We’ve called it The Collective and anything we make will be split
equally among us all and some of it will go to charity as well.
You brought out your own book a few years back didn’t you...
IT was called My Life Behaving Badly and I wanted it to be an account of my recovery from (the superbug) MRSA and what happened to me. I was told I could be in a wheelchair by the time I was 60. I had a lot of numbness and I do a lot of work now to keep the muscles working.
My husband Lee (Chapman) used to be a footballer and he has been really good helping me with exercises. I work out about four times a week and my little dog has been great during lockdown. She thinks all these humans around are just for her.
How hard has the pandemic hit the entertainment industry?
THE theatre and the actors – my heart just goes out to them. There are a lot of people just coming out into the industry... can you imagine getting your first part and then being told that it’s not going to happen now?
We are trying just to keep things simple really and give people a chance, because at the moment there are a lot of actors that are in trouble. To lose your career very suddenly and find that income cut off, you find your whole life changes from being really, really busy juggling kids, career, marriage and life to just nothing. You just think ‘What am I going to do?’ You worry and wonder ‘when am I going to get paid again?’
It must be horrible because you’ve still got to pay your rent, you’ve still got to eat, so we hope this is going to support the actors as well.
What do you enjoy reading?
I DO like a bit of crime, comedy as well, and a lot of women authors. I’m not really into the classics, I’m not sure why, but I do like new work and Line Of Duty-type stories.
I love audio books as well and I love reading. This project takes gives it a different dimension because there’s just something really lovely watching actors act out a story right in front of you. It actually feels like it is just for you. It sort of fills the gap between audio books and actually sitting down watching TV.
■ To see previously filmed BookStreamz projects and find out more, go to booksoffice.com/ bookstreamz-online-readings/