I’m in The Last Jedi long enough for people to go ‘Was that Shauna?’ Though my dad went to the toilet and missed me

BAFTA WINNER SHAUNA MACDONALD ON HER LONG HARD ROAD TO MAINSTREAM SUCCESS

WHEN Shauna Macdonald saw an email from her agent congratulating her on her Scottish Bafta nomination her first thought was that it must have been for her performance in The Cry, the recently screened big budget BBC drama about a Scottish couple whose baby disappears on a visit to Australia.

Macdonald had been cast as a psychologist treating the distraught mother, played by Doctor Who star Jenna Coleman. “Then I Googled it and I was shocked,” she laughs. “I didn’t expect to get nominated for a genre film, especially one which was micro-budget and was shot in 12-and-a-half days.” So, not The Cry then. Instead the Bafta nod was for White Chamber, a horror-thriller set in a dystopian near-future and bearing the wince-inducing tagline “Post-Brexit, Post-Trump, Post-Mortem”. Due for release on March 29 – date ring any bells? – the film won plaudits at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival and has featured at several other festivals, including London’s FrightFest.

Macdonald plays Elle Chrysler, leader of a team of scientists developing a drug which the government hopes will let its soldiers prevail in the civil war that has broken out. The action takes place over four days and for much of the time the 37-year-old Scot is locked in the white chamber of the title,