Hermione Norris
Hermione Norris discusses her family, her luck with acting roles and her age with Gerard Gilbert
‘Being in Cold Feet is like being at a school reunion that just didn’t end’
Hermione Norris is telling me about her latest play. Produced by her husband Simon Wheeler, it’s a staging of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the couple’s home in Somerset. The cast are all children – family and friends of their 13-year-old son, Wilf, and daughter, Hero, 10. ‘My son’s playing Romeo,’ she says a little sheepishly, as if the casting showed favouritism.
Hermione, who plays Karen in ITV’s Cold Feet, and Simon met when she was starring in the Robson Green drama
Wire in the Blood, which Simon was producing. They moved from London to Somerset five years ago – a big change for Hermione, who was born and bred in the capital.
‘It’s a really different way of life and it’s taken me a while to get used to it,’ she admits.
Happily for home-loving Hermione, having finished filming the latest series of Cold Feet in the summer she doesn’t have to go anywhere for the next few months. In the new episodes of the successfully revived show, Karen has rid herself of the troublesome men in her life – ex-husband David (Robert Bathurst) and entrepreneur boyfriend Eddie (Art Malik) – and is concentrating on her start-up publishing business.
‘Karen’s storylines have really moved on,’ says Hermione.
‘It starts with her publishers struggling to get her second book out, but it’s also about balancing work and home and problems with teenagers.’
Hermione says that the cast was relieved at the success of the first new series of Cold Feet following a gap of 13 years.
‘The odds were that it wouldn’t work, or that it wouldn’t live up to people’s memories,’ she says. ‘For something that had been so successful and so loved... I was nervous about undoing all that, which would have been awful. And we’d have been told in no uncertain terms by the old fans!
‘Going round where I live and hearing people saying, “Oh, we loved having it back on TV... we loved those characters,” was humbling. But then I think Cold Feet is more about the audience than it is about us, because I think people who watched it the first time remember who they were and where they were at in their own lives at that time. They’ve been on a journey with us and to see those characters is comforting.’
That could equally describe Hermione's experience of getting back together with fellow cast members Fay Ripley, John Thomson, James Nesbitt and Robert Bathurst. ‘It’s like being at a school reunion that just didn’t ever end,’ she smiles. ‘As Robert said yesterday, it’s a huge privilege. It’s rare in this career that you work together for 20 years with the same actors.’
Does she have a lifelong group of friends, like the characters in Cold Feet? ‘Not on a day-to-day basis,’ she says. ‘A lot of them are actors and never in the same place. But I have old friends who I click back in with, even if I haven’t seen them for five years.’
Hermione is one of four siblings brought up alone by their mother, Helen, after she and their father, Michael, divorced when Hermione was a child. ‘We loved them equally, so it was confusing,’ she has said of this traumatic split. ‘Daddy had gone and Mum was sad. She didn’t have much choice but to work full-time.’
Having failed her eleven-plus, Hermione won a scholarship to dance school – going onto study drama in London. Cold Feet was her big break, followed by leading roles in Wire in the Blood, the spy drama Spooks and Kay Mellor’s pregnancy drama In the Club. ‘I wanted to work with Kay because I think she’s a fabulous ambassador for ordinary women of all ages living their lives,’ she says. ‘That’s what I believe we want to see. Not women who look all neat and tidy and perfect.’
Her next role is in the ITV psychological thriller Innocent, in which Hermione plays Alice, the childless sister of a murder victim. When her brother-inlaw David (Lee Ingleby from Inspector George Gently) is convicted of her sibling’s killing, she becomes the legal guardian of her nieces and nephews and also inherits David’s estate.
But when David’s conviction is quashed after seven years in prison, he sets out to gain custody of the children.
‘I loved the character of
Alice,’ says Hermione. ‘She’s complicated, quite emotionally fractured, and I thought she was a great antidote to Karen in Cold Feet. Alice is threatened by losing the children because she’s tried having children herself – she’s been through rounds and rounds of IVF and they are her life and all that she lives for.
‘I’ve been very fortunate in my career. I’ve played some fantastic women in some fantastic dramas.’
How long could Cold Feet carry on? I wonder. In 20 years’ time, might we enjoy Cold Feet: the Retirement Years? ‘It would be an interesting thing to see them in their 70s,’ she grins. ‘But, honestly, we never know from one series to the next whether it will go again.’
Earlier this year, Hermione celebrated her 50th birthday. ‘How did that happen?’ she says of this milestone birthday. ‘It goes in a blink of an eye. Actually, I’ve always looked forward to being in my 50s... You’re more comfortable in your own skin, I think, and you can’t change what’s been. It is what it is. You’ve married who you’ve married, you’ve had the career that you’ve had, you are where you are – and that’s rather nice.’
Cold Feet is on Fridays at 9pm on ITV. Innocent begins on ITV next year