I bubbled with DS Healy.. very nice for me, not so nice for him
Filming TV shows can be hard work – long hours, awkward locations, Covid restrictions.But there can be the odd perk. For Vera star Brenda Blethyn that was bubbling up close and personal with her heartthrob co-star Kenny Doughty while filming the new series.
Kenny plays her character’s sidekick DS Aiden Healy in the much-loved ITV detective drama. “As Kenny and I have a lot of scenes together, and especially in the Land Rover, it was decided we should be in a bubble,” says Brenda, 75.
“Very nice for me – not so for him! Our apartments were next door to one another. “We weren’t allowed visitors – even my husband wasn’t allowed to visit unless he’d been tested or quarantined .” This came after Brenda had been apart from art director spouse Michael Mayhew for 12 weeks during the first lockdown in March last year.
She was preparing to work on four new feature-length episodes when the pandemic halted production and left her stranded. Brenda says: “Apart from living in London I also have a home in Ramsgate. I was there gathering my last bits and pieces to take up to Newcastle with me for filming when the lockdown happened, so I couldn’t go home. My husband was in London and he couldn’t come down, so we were apart.”
Luckily Brenda had company with Jack the dog who became a “celebrity” after a chaotic appearance on This Morning in 2018, in which Jack left Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes in stitches when he tried to inappropriately mount his embarrassed owner.
“He so delighted them when he was on there, disgracing me,” says Brenda. “They later called up and said, ‘Can you bring him on again?’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be doing that. Not after last time. Anyway, I’m working. I’m afraid I can’t come’.
“And they said, ‘Well we can send somebody to pick him up and bring him in? He’ll get a fee!’ I said, ‘So you only want him, you don’t actually want me?’ Cheek!”
Brenda has played DCI Vera Stanhope in the North East-set show since 2011.
The character, a nearly retired detective is obsessive about her work and known for her messy ways. But filming restrictions during the pandemic meant she almost had to clean up her act.
“When we shot the first scene in the Land Rover, I was horrified to notice that all the rubbish that Vera has accumulated had been removed and the whole vehicle sanitised,” she says. “I cried, ‘I want all
Vera’s rubbish back please’. So they sanitised all the rubbish and put it back in. All the empty crisp bags and apple cores. They all came back.”
Brenda also says she couldn’t even have Vera’s hat and coat handed to her. “They are put in a special bag,” she adds. “When I turn up on set Vera’s clothes will have been delivered to my trailer having been sprayed.
“The trailer will then also have been fogged after somebody else had been inside it, so that I will be safe to go back in. And as I arrive on set as with the rest of the cast and crew,
we had our temperature checked. Kenny and I were also Covid tested several times a week.”
Witness is the first new Vera episode from series 11, and Brenda says the filming took them to Holy Island’s causeway and seaside town Tynemouth in Northumberland.
The story includes plenty of the gritty action which the drama is well known for, after a man due to give evidence in a trial is found dead on the steps of a monument.
“We also have a very impressive location – the Collingwood Monument at Tynemouth,” she says. “A body is found on the steps. He’s a builder who appears to be an upstanding member of the community and who was due to be giving evidence in a trial that morning. We also see him earlier on board the Shields Ferry.” Another character in Witness is a young footballer on the verge of stardom and Vera visits him at his training ground.
And Brenda admits she is a football fan herself. “How could I not be after England’s wonderful performance in the Euros?” she says. “The only match I’ve been to is Newcastle United at St James’ Park a couple of years ago. I loved it. I’d be there every week if I didn’t have so much work to do on Vera.”
The episode will also include a showdown between Vera and colleague Aiden. “Vera notices that Aiden has been a bit off recently and wonders what’s going on with him,” she explains.
She soon discovers what it’s all about and tells him to sort it out.”
Brenda is full of praise for co-star Kenny, 46, who was recently linked to Extras actress Ashley Jensen, 51. “Kenny is terrific,” says Brenda. “He should have his own show. He’s the most wonderful mimic. If you shut your eyes when he’s impersonating someone his voice is pitch perfect. A very funny fella. He can probably imitate me but it would be at his peril. We have such a laugh.”
Brenda was born in Ramsgate, Kent, and worked for British Rail, then as a bookkeeper for a bank. After the breakdown of her first marriage to graphic designer Alan James Blethyn, she turned her amateur dramatics hobby into a career in her late 20s, studying at the Guildford School of Acting.
Her career began on stage and she was nominated for an Olivier Award in 1984 for her performance in Benefactors at London’s Royal National Theatre.
Her TV debut was in Mike Leigh’s Grown-Ups, but her breakthrough came as Cynthia in the director’s 1996 film Secrets & Lies which led to a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Brenda earned a second Academy Award nomination in 1999 for her part as Mari in Little Voice.
Viewers have continued to see her as Vera in repeats during lockdown. “People like Vera because she lives on the same planet as them,” adds Brenda, who has no plans to hang up her character’s hat just yet.
“At the end of filming every season I think, ‘thank the Lord
I’m going home – never again’,” she says. “But it’s like having a lovely slap-up meal. You couldn’t eat another morsel. And you’re shown the menu again. ‘Take it away, take it away!’
“But a week later you get hungry again. So by the time I go back to Newcastle again I’m always very much looking forward to it.”
Vera returns to ITV with two new feature-length episodes, starting on Sunday, August 29 at 8pm.
He so delighted them by disgracing me on This Morning
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