Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
LOSING 12st has opened so many doors
Lisa Riley, who dropped from a size 30 to a size 12, is adamant she wouldn’t have landed her latest role in a harrowing new drama if she were still fat
Lisa Riley’s way of saying hello is to stick her (surprisingly petite) bottom out and say, ‘Go on, have a feel.’ Seriously? ‘Yeah, go on. Everyone wants to. Isn’t it brilliant?’ Her derriere, I can report, is firm and peachy, and quite tiny, considering. Last time we met, during her stint on Strictly Come Dancing, Lisa was more than twice the woman she is today. In the past few years, though, she’s lost a jaw-dropping 12st 4lb, going from a size 30 to a size 12. ‘I’ve lost a person,’ she confirms, her smile as wide as her waist used to be. ‘I really want to meet someone who weighs exactly 12st 4lb and try to pick them up. It’s mind-blowing to think I’ve lost that much.’
Nice mind-blowing, though? ‘The best,’ she beams. ‘I’m a different person.’ She takes out her phone to show me pictures of her at her heaviest. She’s 40 now, but looks 50 in the picture taken ten years ago. ‘I don’t recognise that person,’ she says.
While it’s lovely to share in her delight, she could be accused of oversharing as she describes the operation she underwent to remove excess skin after she lost the fat beneath it. ‘They took over a stone of skin away, and when they do that the fluid that builds up doesn’t know where to go,’ she explains, before merrily pulling up her skirt to show she’s still bandaged to the hilt. ‘I needed the op, though,’ she explains. ‘The loose skin was getting in the way when I did yoga. I was actually able to get in positions easier when I was bigger. Isn’t that odd?’
So much does Lisa wear her heart on her sleeve that she nearly has me in tears when she talks about her elation on landing what could prove to be the pivotal role of her career. Previously best known for playing Mandy Dingle on Emmerdale, her performance in Three Girls, a hard-hitting drama based on the Rochdale sex scandal that came to court five years ago, is up there with the best. She plays the mother of one of the victims groomed and abused by a group of men who targeted vulnerable under-age girls at locations where youngsters congregated, such as takeaway food shops. One victim, a 15-
year-old, helped procure girls as young as 13 for the gang. The victims were bribed into keeping quiet with alcohol, drugs and money. It was one of the worst abuse cases uncovered in Britain in recent years, largely because of the many opportunities the authorities had to bring prosecutions – yet did not. Justice was finally served when nine men were jailed for up to 19 years each.
Scores of victims were involved and now the story is being told in dramatic form, making for devastating viewing. The cast is stellar. Maxine Peake plays a social worker who was the first to take the girls’ claims seriously, while Lesley Sharpe shines as the detective on the case. Jill Halfpenny and Lisa play mums of the victims. Lisa is the first to admit it’s the most serious part she’s played, the sort of role that made her want to be an actress – but she’s convinced she would never have even been considered for it had she still been ‘fat, funny Lisa Riley’. ‘That was my casting bracket. It was me, Dawn French, Caroline Quentin or Jo Brand. But now Dawn’s lost the weight and Caroline is losing hers. For me it means I can finally go for really meaty roles.’
It’s a crazy world if an actress feels she has to be less meaty herself to get meaty roles, but for most of her work- ing life Lisa just accepted this. ‘When I was at drama school my dream was to play Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. Helen Mirren’s role was my dream, but I was never going to get it because policewomen can’t be that fat. But now I could get that sort of role. It’s opened so many doors.’
Three Girls is written by Nicole Taylor, who was responsible for The C Word with Sheridan Smith playing a woman with terminal cancer, another real-life- story-turned-drama. There will doubtless be much controversy about this one, particularly because the events happened so recently. The role has particular resonance for Lisa, who hails from ‘just round the corner’ in Bury. When the scale of the scandal started to emerge she recalls being horrified to discover what was happening so close to home.
‘It happened on my doorstep and we all remember TV news vans everywhere. Everyone knew someone who’d been involved. My hairdresser knew, as did people from my brother’s cricket team – there was always a link .’ She admits she struggled over whether she was equipped to take on the part, but sat down with the real-life victims and their mums before filming. Their composure floored her. ‘Talk about strong,’ she says. ‘Afterwards one of them thanked me for helping tell their story. I wanted to get down on my knees and thank them for letting me do it.’
Lisa’s character Lorna heads what many (including the original Rochdale CID investigators, who emerge from this programme with their reputation in tatters) would describe as ‘the wrong sort of family’. Her daughters are almost feral, live on the streets and end up getting their basic needs (food, comfort, vodka) met by a group of Asian men they meet at a local kebab house. They think they’re being wooed but actually they’re being groomed and abused and used as ‘pimps’ to get other girls involved in the sordid saga. While Lorna eventually emerges as one of the show’s heroines – a vital liaison between her daughters (played by Ria Zmitrowicz and Liv Hill) and the detectives they mistrust – she is a pitiful character, older than her years, downtrodden. ‘My grandad saw some of the photographs. He’s really northern, from Bury. He took one look at me and said, “Jesus, you look rough”. I was in my dressing gown for three of the scenes, at four in the afternoon. But hurrah for that. I’m not one of those actresses who thinks, “Oh, I’ve got to look perfect, even when I’m playing someone who’s got it a bit rough.”
‘Anyway, where this happened, life’s like that. People are in their dressing gowns. Kids are having kids themselves. It’s reality. That Lorna’s children were failed by everyone, not just their abusers, is what the series is about,’ she says. ‘It makes it even more sinister. They weren’t preying on the kids that were being cuddled and having dinner made for them, they preyed on the vulnerable. They knew their targets.’
What did she make of the girls she met – young women now. Were they still damaged? Her face contorts. ‘They’re not damaged. They’re numb. They have a wound that will never heal. It’s a blister that’s rubbing and there’s no plaster that’s going to cover it.’
Lisa has a knack of being able to make you laugh out loud one minute and cry the next. Last time we met she told me she didn’t ever want to be a mum because she worried she’d be the sort of mother who leaves her kids in Asda. She was only half joking too, because her life did seem a bit chaotic. Now she’s been in a relationship for nearly three years with an old friend, who she won’t name. ‘I fell in love with my best friend, and he’s my rock. He’s the only person on this planet who says no to me. He doesn’t pander to me, and I need that. I get enough pandering in my job.’ So she’d have been at her biggest when they met? ‘He’s seen me at all stages and he doesn’t care, which is lovely. I always say he’s had four girls in one.’
There are still no plans for motherhood. While she clearly loves children (‘my nephews are my world’), she says she’d never want to inflict the pain she felt at losing her own mum Cath (who died just before she did Strictly) onto a child. ‘I just couldn’t warrant a child going through what I went through, what I’m going through, still.’
Even today she can’t talk about her mother without becoming upset. ‘I owe her everything. She was the reason I went to drama school. She was the one who made me feel I could take on the world.’
She also convinced Lisa she was beautiful whatever her size. ‘Yes, but I think she’d be thrilled to see me today. She’d be beaming. I think she was always aware I wasn’t meant to be that big. Like when people say they’re bigboned. No you are not! There’s no such thing as a fat skeleton.’
‘Big-boned? There’s no such thing as a fat skeleton’