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KEEPING MUM
Respectable mothers, dark secrets, grave mistakes. Sound familiar? Anna Friel takes us behind closed doors on her compelling new Lake District drama Deep Water
Anna Friel tells how her new drama about mothers with dark secrets made her question her own parenting
Complexwo men juggling busy lives , hiding dark secrets while trying to be perfect mothers, and making mistakes that will have serious repercussions. No, it’s not Nicole Kidman’s Big Little Lies, but ITV’s new six- par t drama Deep Water, set in the stunningly imposing Lake District and starring Emmy-winning Marcella actress Anna Friel.
Based on two of the books in author Paula Daly’s Windermere set of novels, the series explores the intertwining lives of three mothers with children around the same age, and for Anna – who has a 14-year- old daughter Gracie by Harry Potter actor David Thewlis – the drama hit close to home. ‘ The last line of episode one is, “Just what kind of mother are you?”, and of course I found myself asking myself that very question,’ says Anna, who is cast as harassed mother- of-three Lisa Kallisto.
‘The answer is that, like most mums, I do my best but it’s not easy. Life, for most of us, is not tied up with a bow. While making Deep Water I thought I’d be getting back to Gracie at home in Windsor every other weekend – a six- and- ahalf-hour commute from the Lake District – but during the entire four and a half months of the shoot I only got back there for a single week. Life goes so quickly and you run the risk of missing out on so much if you’re not around your children.’
In Deep Water Lisa lives in a cluttered farmhouse with taxi driver husband Joe, 15-year- old daughter Sally and two young sons, James and Sam. There’s controlled chaos elsewhere in her life too, as she runs a dog kennels business and the animals have to be fed, watered and taken for walks. ‘She has around 20 of them and spends her whole working day doing school runs and dropping the dogs off with their owners. She ra rely has a spa re moment,’ says Anna.
Ironically, it’s when Lisa does finally have some downtime that things start to unra
vel. At a dinner party at the home of Lisa’s posh friend Kate Riverty ( Rosalind Eleazar, who appeared in ITV period drama Harlots), attended by Kate’s handsome plastic surgeon brother- in-law, things take a remarkable and unexpected turn. And as the show progresses we gradually learn more about rich Kate, whose seemingly ideal life hides some uncomfortable secrets. ‘On the surface, she and her husband Guy appear to be the perfect couple but they’re not. They put on a performance in front of other people because Kate doesn’t want to reveal what’s really going on,’ explains Rosalind.
Completing the trio is physiotherapist Roz, played by Sinead Keenan, who appeared as murdered schoolboy Rhys Jones’s mother Mel in ITV’s awardwinning real-life drama Little Boy Blue. While Lisa’s problems are largely self-inflicted, Roz’s are not of her own making. ‘She’s in a relationship with a man named Winston, who she loves but who has a gambling problem and has lost all their money,’ explains Sinead. ‘She had to give up her private practice and they had to move into a much smaller cottage, and now she has to work for a generic physiotherapy practice. A lot of her private clients followed her, though, because she’s that good, but she’s under an awful lot of financial strain.’ One client then offers Roz a way out of her nightmare, but is it too high a price to pay for solvency?
If the lives of the women in Deep Water are stormy and unpredictable, so too was the weather during filming. ‘We would experience all four seasons in one day,’ says Rosalind. ‘There’s a scene on a yacht on a lake in the opening episode, and we filmed half of it early on in the
‘Life, for most of us, is not tied up with a bow’
shoot, and then had to wait seven weeks before the conditions were the same to film the other half!’
‘ There was a lot of rain,’ adds Anna. ‘The heavens would open as soon as we stepped outside. There was one scene on the side of a mountain in a Force 9 gale which was extremely challenging. We had this tent with no sides to protect us from the elements, but that didn’t do the job because the rain was horizontal. I think the sun came out for five minutes that day, and we had to cram in as much as we could during that time. It was one million per cent proof that our jobs aren’t always glamorous!’
Despite the atrocious weather, Deep Water did provide some much- needed fresh air for Anna after a string of city-based dramas including crime thriller Marcella and Jimmy McGovern’s gritty Broken, and while in the Lake District she embraced the great outdoors. ‘I did yoga classes in the woods,’ she smiles. ‘I’m not very good at it but I’d had a tight shoulder and neck Deep Water’s Roz, Lisa and Kate
and it helped them both. I needed it too, as I was going to be pulling 20 different dogs on the show, some of them pretty large.’
A self- confessed dog fan, Anna herself has two pomapoos (a mix of Pomeranian and toy poodle), Maggie May and Eunice, who she says looks like a fruit bat and was acquired with her daughter in mind. ‘ With a sibling lacking it was lovely for Gracie to have a puppy,’ she says. Maggie May was with her in the Lake District, and she even managed to get her in front of the camera. ‘I told the producer she’d be very good and wouldn’t expect a fee, so she joined the group of dogs that Lisa looks after. Although I’m not sure yet whether she made the final cut and will actually be seen on screen. I’m hoping she does. She had to witness a fight scene and her reactions were the same on every single take,
‘We filmed one scene on a mountain in a Force 9 gale’ ‘Like most mothers I do my best. It’s not easy’
which was perfect from a continuity point of view. She’s a natural!’
Anna’s canine exper iences weren’t wholly enjoyable during filming, though. ‘ Not to put too fine a point on it, there were some issues with odour. For the first two weeks of filming, I was driving around in Lisa’s van with a cameraman, three children and two Dalmatians with all the windows rolled up because we couldn’t have any noise coming in from outside.
‘ I’d be driving for hours at a time between Windermere and Ambleside, and the aromas were spectacular and not particularly pleasant. I was quite pleased when we wrapped for the day and the Dalmatians went home.’
Anna hopes that women will identify with the pressures faced by the women in Deep Water. ‘I hope the series will appeal to people’s curiosity too,’ she says. ‘One of the attractions when it was first offered to me was the setting, not just because it’s beautiful but because it’s such a fascinating place in which to set a drama. People will see these beautiful properties, the kind our characters live in, but what’s going on behind those closed doors? We’re about to find out...’
Deep Water starts on ITV later this month.