Julia Sawalha: Life isn’t always Absolutely Fabulous
As her first TV hit PressGang gets a fresh airing, Julia Sawalha tells us why her romances with co-stars didn’t work out – and how close she came to losing out on the role of Saffy…
Julia Sawalha’s first big acting role came in 1989 in the series Press Gang, playing Lynda, the fearless editor of the JuniorGazette. Every female teenage wannabe writer wanted to be Lynda – driven, with a sharp tongue, wild hair and dubious dress sense.
At the time Julia, now 51, was in her early 20s, but she’d become famous for playing younger than she is. Her other iconic role was as teenager Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous.
Press Gang fans will cheer that the original series is back, part of a lockdown revival of feel-good programmes. Julia’s memory of that series is how young she was. She may have ended up in a relationship with the show’s heartthrob Dexter Fletcher in real-life, but this was a professional operation.
‘The characters were 15 or 16, but we were in our early
20s. In a way, it didn’t matter – the storylines weren’t childish. On re-watching, what dates Press Gang is that there are no smartphones, no social media. It’ll be nice to watch a programme where people are actually talking, fighting and loving – without technology.’
She’s ambivalent about the tech that defines our age. ‘I hate the pressure it puts on teenagers. It breaks my heart. I know teenagers who’ve been bullied. My niece has.’
As Julia concedes though, we’d be lost without it. Earlier, she was in a makeshift recording studio (a cupboard at home, with blankets draped over her) trying to record a voiceover. Due to move from London to Bath, her plans were halted by Covid-19.
‘Now I’m just down the road from my parents, yet I can’t see them. We rely on Zoom. Mum said the other day, “What would we do without it?” Yet she grew up in the war. She spent the first years of her life in a garden bomb shelter.’
No mention of presenter sister, Nadia, who lives next to their parents. Their relationship has always been tricky. Competitive as children (their father Nadim was an actor and they both followed him into the industry), the two have always clashed, but things reportedly soured when Julia and her then-boyfriend (and Jonathan Creek co-star) Alan Davies attended Nadia’s wedding in 2002.
It was said Alan took offence at images of them in a glossy mag. Nadia’s response was to call him a ‘miserable git’. The sisters didn’t speak for two years.
Periods of estrangement have followed. While both are close to eldest sister Dina, they clearly aren’t as tight with each other. But on to her on-screen family in Absolutely Fabulous, which offered Julia’s defining role. She nearly didn’t get it, because others involved, including Jennifer Saunders, didn’t see her in the part. ‘Jennifer and Jon [Plowman, the show’s producer], admitted, ‘ We thought you were too old.’
She got the part, of course, and made it her own.
Since then, she’s played ‘older’ parts. She’s been in Jonathan Creek, Pride and Prejudice,
and Lark Rise to Candleford.
Yet roles are not now as plentiful as she’d like. Do people still think of her as a teenager? ‘ Yes. I think it’s quite hard for people to think that I’m growing old!
‘There’s a tendency to think women our age aren’t very interesting. They are! I look forward to playing mothers, grandmothers, all sorts.’
One of the few mother roles she has played brought an interesting on-screen daughter – a young Jodie Comer, now wowing viewers as Villanelle in Killing Eve – they were cast in BBC drama Remember Me
in 2014. ‘It’s amazing to see a career take off like that,’ says Julia. ‘She’s such a good actor, but also a grafter.’
Julia’s own ambition hasn’t dimmed, nor her tendency to be tough on herself. She’s a complex character who lurches from deliriously happy to despair and back. Her mum calls her ‘sunshine and showers’.
Such a personality does make relationships difficult, perhaps. She has a history of dating co-stars (as well as Dexter Fletcher and Alan Davies, she was with Keith Allen in the early Nineties), but once said she’d never date an actor again. She backtracks today. ‘I got the lines blurred. It’s not about the profession, it’s about personality. I know actors with other actors, in wonderful relationships.’
She’s seeing someone at the moment, sort of. ‘There is someone in my life, on and off. We’re in each other’s lives. Then out…’ But she no longer sounds bothered about finding the happy-ever-after.
‘ You think you’re going to be like your parents, and mine fall in love more as the years go on. Then you have your own relationships and they turn out not to be like that.’
For seven or eight years, Julia was single through choice. ‘I’m quite good at it. You miss having someone to give you a hug, but I like my own company. People used to say, “I don’t know how you can be on your own”, which I found enormously offensive!’
She refers to her father’s advice when it comes to a relationship: ‘As Dad always says, a family should be like a central heating system. You shouldn’t have to sit on the radiator to keep warm. We’re there when we need each other.’
Series One of Press Gang is now available on Britbox.