‘It’s hard not to get affected by Broadchurch’
Broadchurch’s gritty new plotline is a major talking point. Eleanor Steafel meets one of the actresses at its heart
Before meeting Jodie Whittaker – star of Broadchurch, which aired the second episode of its final series this week – I read countless interviews in which she describes herself as annoying, hyper and, in one, “quite Marmite – I’m sure I rub people up the wrong way”.
Before I even arrive, I’ve been warned by her publicist that I am not to ask her anything about her private life. It makes for an anxious start, but the woman I meet couldn’t be more different from the one I was expecting.
She is certainly energetic, possibly due to the amount of coffee she drinks – as soon as we sit down she orders a large, extra hot latte with sugar and proceeds to cradle it like it’s the last drop of coffee left in the world – but she is also immensely friendly and bubbly, with a wonderfully foul mouth and a thick Huddersfield accent.
“I exist on caffeine level 10. I talk a lot and that is probably exhausting,” she tells me. She certainly is a force of nature – that much is apparent within five minutes, when she chastises me about accidentally giving her a spoiler for BBC One thriller Apple Tree Yard – a show she still has to catch up on. “You’ve just ruined that for me, haven’t you?!” she shrieks. I’ve brought it up because the psychological drama featured a pretty graphic (and highly controversial) rape scene. And in its third series, Broadchurch is exploring similar territory.
Nominated for seven Baftas when it arrived on our screens in 2013 – it has historically followed the murder of a young boy (Whittaker’s character’s son) whose body washed up on a West Country beach one day, bringing together the community of a sleepy coastal town. But, the story has moved on. DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman’s character) and DI Alec Hardy (played by David Tennant) have a new case: the brutal rape of a middle-aged woman.
With the new storyline, the creators have avoided the growing trend for graphic representations of rape on screen – or, as some have put it, this isn’t “just another pretty woman being raped on television”.
It seems that there has been a litany of recent TV series using rape as little more than a titillating plot device – yet this is not an accusation that has been made against Broadchurch. Instead, the drama, which takes a horrific crime and presents it sensitively and realistically through the eyes of a traumatised and ashamed middleaged woman, has been universally praised by police and rape counsellors who have said they hope the storyline will encourage victims to come forward.
So, how did they succeed where so many others failed? Whittaker believes realism is fundamental to the telling of this kind of story on television. “It isn’t about the anatomy of the person, it’s the psychological damage,” she says. “This was never going to be gratuitous. I’d never feel there would be a risk of that with [writer] Chris Chibnall.”
This series we see that Whittaker’s character, Beth Latimer, has channelled the pain of losing her son into a new job as a support worker for rape victims. The part has been challenging for many reasons and, she admits, made her think about what kind of contribution to society she is making in her own life. “This job has meant you get to enter certain worlds which you wouldn’t necessarily go into. It’s really difficult not to be affected by it, and it also reminds you of how little you contribute.
“You want to be a citizen of the world, and then life happens, and you forget to be a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of your own existence. That is frustrating.
“I think in 10 years, if the things that have affected me, if I haven’t contributed in some way to them, I’ll be a bit f----- off with myself.”
But to say she isn’t doing her bit is to do herself a disservice. Whittaker, 34, who is married to American actor Christian Contreras (with whom she has one child, who turns two next month), has had her fair share of heartache in recent years. Her nephew Harry, who had Down’s syndrome and was himself a child actor in television soap Emmerdale, died suddenly in 2014, and his condition inspired Whittaker to become an ambassador for Mencap, about which she is hugely passionate. She won’t be drawn on her feelings surrounding the death of her nephew, but she does admit that one of the only benefits of being recognised is that she can put her name to causes she cares deeply about. “I think when you get older and things happen and you realise that, kind of up until that point, you’ve had it really sweet.
“I’m not famous, which generally is an absolute plus point, but if you’re on TV or someone knows who you are it can be quite helpful to a certain charity or cause.”
She seems as determined to make a difference in her work as she is outside of it. She is passionate about putting a stop to the brutal tailing off which so many actresses experience, when they are deemed too old to play certain parts. “I’m not going to be naive and say, ‘I’m going to be this busy all my life’, because to say work doesn’t dry up for women at a certain point is an under-researched statement. Just look and you’ll see.
“But I don’t want to sit on my arse and do nothing about that.”
How does she propose to counteract what she sees as the inevitable? By finding or creating the roles for herself. It’s what she did last year, when she made critically acclaimed comedy film Adult Life Skills with her best friend from school, Rachael Deering, and another pal, Bafta-winning director and writer Rachel Tunnard. “It’s about making the right relationships, like myself and Rachel did, so you go off and do stuff. If it does go quiet, I’m not going to be OK with that.”
She pauses, grimacing, “Preachy Whittaker!” she exclaims, throwing her hands up. It’s clear she’s not particularly comfortable having a moan, as she knows exactly how good she has it in this industry. She is lucky enough never to have been out of work in the 15 years since she got her first break – starring opposite Peter O’Toole in Venus, a formative experience which, she says, taught her so much. And her family back in Yorkshire loved it – so much so, that her dad sent O’Toole a set of official Huddersfield Cricket Club balls. “And he sent Viggo Mortensen a Huddersfield Town football shirt when I did Good. He’s spreading the Yorkshire word.”
She is a proud northerner, from Skelmanthorpe in west Yorkshire, and regularly goes back home to visit family and friends she has had since school. “I schlep my family up and down that motorway as often as I can, to stay at people’s houses. I’m like, ‘I’ve got 48 hours off, but we’re going there, there and there’.”
If she had it her way, her next big project would be to create the northern version of the cult Netflix sci-fi hit Stranger Things. It would be called Strange North. “The roles I want to play often, are the guys, I just want to play that energy, just like the character in Stranger Things called Eleven – I want to play that.
“All those people, their age is irrelevant, their sex is irrelevant, their accent. It’s just about storytelling and it’s not restricted to what we think you can play.”
Talking to Whittaker, it’s clear she marches to her own drum. If anyone can get Strange North made, it’s her.
‘This was never going to be gratuitous. I’d never feel there would be a risk of that with our writer’