‘I’m driven By equality… people like me should Be good allies’

Ahead of her new drama Ridley starting tonight, actress Bronagh Waugh reveals that she won’t be heading for Hollywood and explains why LGBTQ+ representation is so important to her

It’s the height of summer when we meet Bronagh Waugh at an east London studio for her stunning cover shoot. But a sense of cool breezes through the door when the 39-year-old arrives at the location, apologising for being ever so slightly late in her unmistakable Northern Irish accent.

Explaining that she had waited 55 minutes for an Uber to pick her up, she says her husband, Richard Peacock, offered to give her a lift.

“I said, ‘You’ve got a child-free day, you’re not wasting it on me!” she laughs as she greets every member of the crew before sitting down for our chat.

Bronagh – who is starring as DI Carol Farman in ITV’S Ridley alongside Line Of Duty actor Adrian Dunbar – and Richard welcomed their first child, son Oisín, together in May 2021. She returned to work on another ITV drama, Our House, just three weeks after giving birth.

“It was quite full on and I’d had a C-section as well, so I probably maybe shouldn’t have gone back quite so soon,” she reflects. “It was a real juggle. Weirdly, it’s easier to juggle a newborn baby with filming than it is a toddler because I could just snuffle his cot into my trailer. Every time they changed the camera lens, I could nip back in and feed him or my husband would stay and look after him. And he was very quiet, he would just sleep.”

However, the juggle wasn’t as simple while filming Ridley – which was shot in locations including Lancashire and Yorkshire – with Bronagh revealing, “He’s one now, running around breaking things and throwing himself into tantrums, so it’s less easy to hide him because you can hear him before you see him!”