5 MINUTES WITH...
Sheridan Smith, 40, starring in ITV’s chilling new drama about an “unassuming family” on the holiday from hell…
Tell us about No Return.
It was one of those scripts you can’t put down. I love watching things that transport the audience to a different place – but this ends up as the holiday from hell. I think many will say, “Thank God I’m not in their shoes…”
You play Kathy, the mum…
Kathy and her husband Martin [Michael Jibson] have been together for years and years and they’ve got two teenage kids – which was amazing for me to play when my own son, Billy, isn’t even two yet! They are just a proper, normal family, and they fly off on a typical package holiday – which goes wrong.
In what way?
It turns into a disaster, and suddenly they’re plunged into a completely different legal system in Turkey. Kathy and Martin try everything to save their son and get him out of prison, but you really don’t know what’s going to happen. There was a lot of angst during filming – crying, screaming and constant tension. Was that quite challenging? Towards the end I was mentally exhausted. A lot of the scenes were quite harrowing to play – and you start to really live it, especially being away from home. If I was at home watching it, I’d be thinking, “Don’t let that ever happen to my family!”
And does being a mum yourself make a difference in this role? Absolutely. This is the first time I’ve played a mum as an actual mother myself, and all I kept thinking of was Billy – and that would just set me off. I didn’t have to act too much in the crying scenes because you just imagine this mother going through this hell and thinking,
“If it was my little boy...”, I could totally relate to this.