Coming back to Glasgow is fantastic... I know all the secret places

might have filmed all of her scenes for new drama The Cry in Glasgow – but Sophie Kennedy Clark started on it halfway round the world.

The much-anticipated series was partly filmed here and partly in Australia. And by sheer coincidence, Sophie happened to be Down Under at just the right time.

“I was in Australia over Christmas and New Year when I found I’d got the job,” Sophie, 28, daughter of singer Fiona Kennedy.

“Then I was told the read-through was in Melbourne, which is where I happened to be. Normally they’d just have got someone else to stand in and read my lines, so they must have thought I was incredibly enthusiastic having pitched up on the other side of the world in person.” Sophie plays Kirsty, best friend to Jenna Coleman’s central character Joanna in the four-part series the BBC are pushing straight into the prime Sunday night slot occupied by Bodyguard.

“I think Kirsty’s part is really important, because like the audience she doesn’t know what’s going on. She’s out of the loop and the viewers are going along with them, learning as she does.

“It’s so gripping. When I was reading the first couple of episodes there were moments when I shut my computer and thought; ‘No, they can’t have done that!’

“The way they’ve managed to build tension and the twists in it are so incredible.”

Also starring big Aussie names Ewen Leslie and Asher Keddie as well as Scots Kate Dickie and Stella Gonet, The Cry is based on the bestselling novel by Helen Fitzgerald. Jenna and Ewen play the couple whose lives are shattered when they travel from Scotland to Australia only to have their newborn baby abducted in a small coastal town. The Glasgow shoot took place in May and it brought Sophie back to the city where she filmed Single Father with David Tennant. “That was my first-ever job,” said Sophie. “That was seven years ago and filming there again was such a joy. Mum grew up in Glasgow and if someone asked me if I was Glasgow or Edinburgh, I’m Glasgow every time. I love the people and the banter.

“I was able to give the cast from Australia tips on where to go. I liked being able to tell them all the secret wee spots I knew.”

Sophie’s career has gone from strength to strength since Single Father including Philomena, alongside Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. She played the young Philomena, portrayed by Dench in her later years.

“I learned so much on set from her about it not mattering who you are or how much you’d done,” explains Sophie. “It’s about having complete respect for everyone there who’s doing their job.

“You see some big actors who are divas but Judi Dench was such a treat to be around.”

Sophie went to New York at a very early age to follow her acting dream and she says she did so with the full support of her parents.

“I was 17 years old and I was living in a loft with a conceptual artist and another girl who was in film school,” says Sophie, who has just produced her first short film for which KT Tunstall has written the theme tune to.

“New York doesn’t suffer fools gladly and it was certainly a comingof-age time. It makes your skin a bit thicker and you develop a quick wit,” she says. “Any parent who has grown up in the spotlight is bound to be hesitant because this industry comes with a lot of pitfalls, but my parents were always so supportive.

“I don’t think there was anything else they could ever see me doing. I was totally unemployable in any other way. After the hundreds of kitchen performances they had to sit through in my childhood, they were probably quite happy to see the back of me.”

But Sophie admits there was one project, a film called Nymphomaniac, that caused a few anxious moments.

She said: “I was really excited to land the role but when I called to tell them you could almost hear the phone hit the floor at the other end.”

The Cry, BBC1, tonight 9pm.

n▼ Sophie Kennedy Clark as Kirsty in The Cry, above, and in Stephen Frears’ Philomena.