‘I got £12 an hour and kept my clothes on’
Katherine Parkinson tells Dominic Cavendish about ‘sitting’ as a student, playing a housewife in the West End and writing her first play
Katherine Parkinson smiles sweetly and winces in pain as she greets me at the National Theatre, where she’s starring in Laura Wade’s Home, I’m
Darling. It turns out she has blisters on her feet. Because of the hot weather, she decided to go through rehearsals in dance shoes without wearing socks. “It was my own fault,” she grimacegrins as she hobbles along, before removing her shoes altogether.
If one hadn’t fallen in love with Parkinson, 41, prior to that comical, klutzy entrance, I think anyone would have done so on the spot. It feels like any year now, one or two projects more, and this exceptional comedy actress will join the ranks of our “national treasures”, those without whom our cultural life – even our collective sense of self – would seem impoverished. Some actors offer “star quality”, something ineffable to do with looks, chemistry, aura. Others, like Parkinson, have an essential “adorability”. Not cute, puppyish or Hollywood brattish but a capacity to express something tender, truthful, relatable. Allied to a British diffidence that’s close cousins with entertaining gaucheness and you’ve got a very human touchstone.
Inspired in her suburban London youth by Alison Steadman, who definitely has reached that status, the redhead got her big break playing ditsy, hopeless in love and clueless with technology Jen, the female linchpin of
The IT Crowd. Graham Linehan’s mid-noughties sitcom introduced the world to Parkinson’s winning ability to blend an air of outward resolve with inner disarray (and vice versa) and a voice that combined warmth, distinctive nasality and a slight throatiness. At the same time, she endeared herself to even more viewers as the likeably out-of-kilter GP’S receptionist Pauline, in three series of the ITV Cornish-set sitcom Doc Martin.
Since then she hasn’t put a foot wrong on stage or screen – her forte the offbeat, sidelined, the quietly wretched: slighted spouses in Ayckbourn, an overworked lawyer whose children are minded by an anthropomorphic robot in the Channel 4 series Humans. With heaps more credits besides, it adds up to a career well-spent – has she reached a tipping point in terms of recognition, and levels of affection?
“I’m feeling really fulfilled at the moment by the work I’m getting to do,” she observes. “But I’d be nervous about thinking of myself as being at a turning point, because I’m very aware that things can suddenly change.”
In Home, I’m Darling, she plays Judy, a 21st-century suburbanite who has boldly opted to quit work and spend her days as a Fifties-style housewife. The basic kernel of the idea immediately appealed: “First off, I love vintage clothes. I slightly fetishise the past. I think a lot of actresses do. Every few months I choose a decade to live in terms of clothes. A friend of mine once said, ‘Katherine, you wore a different century or decade every day in sixth form’.”
Wade, author of stage hit Posh, wrote the part especially for her, confessing: “I’d be giggling at my desk writing a line and knowing how she might say it – she has an ability to be heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time.” For Parkinson, that’s what drives her: “As a person, I’m as close to laughter as I am to the opposite. I take myself quite seriously while also wanting to laugh, and make others laugh. And I like doing things that are funny and sad at the same time. It makes the funny bit funnier and the sad bit sadder.”
A good instance occurs when Judy’s disapproving, feminist mother Sylvia tells her that being stuck at home is sending Judy nuts. “I’m not remotely going crackers. I’m very happy,” she replies. The over-insistence of Parkinson’s denial brings a smile to your lips, a lump to your throat.
She says that audiences react to different lines in different ways every time: “They were incredibly vocal in Mold [where the play first opened],” she offers genially. “When Johnny [Judy’s husband] complains, ‘How can you be tired, you don’t do anything?’ one night we had an extended reaction that began with a kind of loud gasp, then there was a sound I’d never heard before, like they were kissing their teeth; it was a bit Hannibal Lecter!”
Now, as the play transfers to the National’s Dorfman Theatre, Parkinson says she’s looking forward to seeing if the audience reactions are any different. Her main anxiety, though, is how Harry Peacock, her actor husband (and father to her two young daughters), will react. “I’m worried Harry will be cross when he sees it. He thinks I’m literally incapable of doing cleaning and domestic things.”
Unfortunately, her latest triumph clashes with the August run of her first play. Sitting was commissioned as part of a special showcase – Debut – aiming to encourage creative talents to take the theatrical plunge, with a quartet of premieres at this year’s Edinburgh festival. “I was so grateful to be asked,” she says. “I’m one of those people who don’t do things unless asked.”
Sitting consists of three interwoven monologues, each delivered by someone (one male, two female) sitting for the same (unseen) artist. As the piece progresses, you realise their stories are linked. On the page, it’s funny, with sudden shards of pain. Parkinson excavated her own life for the scenario. “I sat for my next-door neighbour when I was a student at Oxford [reading classics]. There was this hour of calm on a Sunday morning, when I would sit and he would play Bach cello concertos. He asked me to wear clothes that were tight because they reflected light better.” She laughs. “No painting came out of it but I got £12 an hour, which was very welcome, and I didn’t take my clothes off despite later requests to do so.”
She says this lightly – self-describing as a feminist but not militant in tone. One of the minor provocations thrown into the script is a quote from Molière: “La grande ambition des femmes est d’inspirer de l’amour.” Is that a regressive, pre-feminist sentiment? “Is it pre-feminist or is it the truth? I know for me, as a young woman, less so now, I wanted people to like being around me. I think a lot of young women want to be admired physically. That doesn’t mean they’re unfeminist or want to be groped.” She admires nuance, complexity, honesty – shuns social media and its hashtags. “I think feminism for my generation has been good for all of us. With #Metoo and the phrase “toxic masculinity” it feels like we will end up with a schism between men and women – which is exactly what we don’t want.”
Sitting was written in an inspired rush while she was on location in Georgia earlier this year for the satirical film How to Sell a War, directed by Rudolph Herzog (son of Werner); she plays a pop star’s PR, required to engineer a war in eastern Europe to justify her client’s peace concert. “I had this mad experience of being in the Georgian hills, blood over my face, chatting to tons of soldiers. It was terrific.”
In the works, too, is a major BBC comedy drama series Defending the Guilty, in which she plays a worldlywise barrister tasked with supervising an idealistic newcomer to the Inns of Court. But she’s itching to do some Shakespeare. “I’m slightly appalled I haven’t done any in my career. Beatrice is something I need to do. And I’d love to be Cleopatra, if anyone will let me.” Katherine Parkinson as the comicaltragical Egyptian queen? As her next step, it sounds simply darling.
Home, I’m Darling is at the National’s Dorfman Theatre until Sept 5 (020 7452 3000); Sitting is at the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh (0131 622 6552), Wed-aug 26