Joanna Scanlan: “There’s a powerful force inside of me that’s ready to be unleashed” | culture

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When actress Joanna Scanlan was four years old, she had an epiphany. She remembers standing on a stage at a convent school in North Wales reciting a poem and “in that moment you feel transported into another realm of being. I remember thinking: ‘I prefer it here.’ The truth is I still feel that way. As much as I like My life, I prefer to be in the realm of fantasy. It’s where I am true to myself.”

Scanlan, 61, pinned up in a boardroom at her publicist’s office in Soho, London. It’s been a long morning of interviewing, but if you’re tired of talking, it’s very nice to show it; Its default setting is sunny and self-erasing. She’s here to discuss The Light in the Hall, a psychological thriller set in Carmarthenshire that was shot in both English and Welsh (Scanlan learned her lines with the help of her Welsh-speaking niece). She plays Sharon, whose teenage daughter, Ella, was murdered 18 years ago. A local gardener, Joe Pritchard (Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rayon), was convicted of the crime, but never revealed why he did it or what he did with the body. When he is released on parole, Sharon decides to find out what happened to her baby.

While researching the role, Scanlan read a series of victim’s personal statements in murder cases, in which relatives of the dead explain how the crime affected them. “It’s the most amazing piece of writing I think I’ve ever read,” she says. “This is not dialogue from a TV drama or a novel. This is people’s lives. They are there as a voice for lost lives, the ongoing loss of life that occurs within a family when someone is killed.”

In playing Sharon, the question of how we judge perpetrators of crimes was strong in my mind

The series delves into the concept of truth and how it can be distorted when a crime is committed. Scanlan has firsthand experience of this, having witnessed the assault of a male friend in a bar when she was a student. A man passing their table dumps his pint on the floor, apparently on purpose, and a fight ensues. Her friend was beaten so badly that he had to go to the hospital, and Scanlan gave a statement to the police. A few months later, she was called to testify in court.

“I was sitting outside waiting to be called and there was a guy sitting next to me who was the most weedy-looking guy imaginable,” she says. “I thought it was one of the lawyers. But then our representative came out and asked if I wanted to re-read the statement I made the night of the murder. So I read it and there was, in my own words, a perfect description of the man sitting next to me.” Scanlan let out a horrified laugh. “So, in the gap between the guy punching my friend and taking me to court to testify, I had reimagined this guy as fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger!”

Joanna Scanlan in The Light In the Hall. Photography: Alistair Heap

In court, Scanlan learned more about the perpetrator and found herself sympathetic to him: he had a young family and had recently lost his job. “I mean, the accident should not have happened,” she says, “but I made many internal judgments about the perpetrators of the crimes, and I mapped out the reality that we’re looking at now. So, in playing Sharon, this question was how we judge the perpetrators, and what The contexts and the mitigation that might be there, are strong in my mind.”

The Light in the Hall is Scanlan’s first major role since winning a BAFTA for Best Leading Actress in After Love, Alim Khan’s film that cast her as a widow from Dover who discovers that her late husband, a ferry captain, had a secret family in Calais. Film critic Mark Kermode called her performance “a masterclass in the dramatic power of understatement”.

Upon receiving her award, Scanlan said, “Some stories have surprising endings, don’t they?” “Well, I really surprised myself,” she says now. “In the beginning, I never envisioned playing a leading role. But I also started acting very late—I didn’t perform professionally until I was 35—so I always had this sense of running to catch up. If someone tells me now that they’re thinking that become actors in their mid-30s, I’ll probably say, “That boat may have sailed.”

I’m in the fancy position of being a leading actor, and it’s very exciting

Since her breakout role as Terry, a civil servant in The Thick of It, Scanlan has rarely wanted to work: She played a ward sister in the hospital sitcom Getting On (which she also co-wrote); a grumpy detective in Paul Abbott’s No Offense; an overachiever in Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s Dracula; and a cheerful farmer’s wife in The Larkins. However, she lost count of the projects she was involved in that never took off or simply failed to catch the attention of viewers. “There’s a lot of snakes and ladders in this game. You do something great and then — bam! — it gets cancelled. In that sense, the surprise of getting a Bafta was real. Here I was standing on stage as a leading lady being honored by my peers. I keep thinking To myself: “Did it really happen?”

It is known that he is a doctor who convinced Scanlan to pursue acting. Prior to that, she worked at Leicester de Montfort University, and later the Arts Council. At 29, she was signed off from work after a bout of depression and extreme fatigue. The doctor in question asked her if she wanted to do anything else with her life. When she said she wanted to act, he told her, “If you don’t, you’ll be sick for the rest of your life.” His words were “like an arrow going straight into my sternum. I didn’t doubt him at all.”

Scanlan describes her early childhood as “idyllic”: she grew up in rural Cheshire “surrounded by animals and no people” and spent most of her time outdoors. “This time I spent finding fairy loops, jumping over rivers, and being stung by nettles 100 times a day; I think my inner self was shaped in that landscape.”

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When she was 13 years old, her parents bought a hotel in Ruthin, North Wales. Throughout adolescence, I worked every job: maid, waitress, bartender, receptionist. “Hotels are a lot like theaters in that everyone plays a role,” she says. “I was standing behind the bar polishing glass and eavesdropping on people’s lives. I found them quite interesting and I learned a lot about people, which obviously fueled what I’m doing now.” And what about her career now as a BAFTA award-winning actress? No Finance writer Abbott said recently that Scanlan is “about to go ballistic. We’re going to see it disappear into Netflix and Hollywood now.” Sounds thoughtful when I mention this. “It’s a strangely stratified world, and our industry and the awards mean you get new lists. I’ve always put excellence and creativity first, and I’ve been lucky enough that about 80% of what I’ve done has been really good. But now I’m in that fancy position where I’m considered a leading actor, and that’s something Very exciting “.

It’s different, she adds, when you have a supportive part, which means “you just go in and out [on set]. What comes with the leadership role is that sense of responsibility for the whole. You’re there with the crew from start to finish, and there’s just something about that that works for me.”

Sitting in a taxi early this morning, Scanlan found herself idly thinking about what kind of roles she hadn’t yet had, but would like. “I’ve always played people who are under the radar,” she muses. “I get packed normally. So I’d really like to use my strength. I don’t think I’ve played many characters with real quality. I feel like there’s this clumsy strength.” [in me] It may be completely disguised as it has not been launched. But now I think I’m ready.”

The Light In the Hall is on Channel 4 from January 4 at 9pm and broadcast on All 4.

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