ITV Drama: Black Work Preview and Sheridan Smith Interview

ITVs BLACK WORK 3 PART DRAMA PREVIEW AND WE TALK TO ITS STAR SHERIDAN SMITH

Sheridan Smith, Matthew McNulty, Douglas Henshall, Geraldine James and Phil Davis star in ITV’s new riveting three-part thriller Black Work starting 21st June. Black Work is written by Matt Charman (Our Zoo, Suite Francaise), produced by Mammoth Screen, makers of Endeavour for ITV and is backed by Screen Yorkshire through the Yorkshire Content Fund. 

Following her critically acclaimed roles in Cilla and Mrs Biggs, Sheridan plays police woman Jo Gillespie whose world is thrown into turmoil when husband Ryan (Kenny Doughty), an undercover policeman, is shot dead in mysterious circumstances. She resolutely sets out to discover who murdered him and has to confront difficult truths about her family life and her marriage to Ryan. Police officer Jo is mother to 7-years-old Melly (Honor Kneafsey) and stepson Hal (Oliver Woolford). Understandably Jo is emotionally distraught and heavily conflicted as she unravels the last six months of her husband’s life. She’s grieving and wracked with guilt following an attachment to Ryan’s colleague and fellow police officer DC Jack Clark (Matthew McNulty), which puts further strain on her grieving family. 

Writer Matt Charman shed light on his inspiration for the drama: “Sheridan Smith is a dream to write for because as an actress there’s really nothing she can’t do. And Black Work is a story that pushes her to the limit – it makes her character, Jo Gillespie, doubt herself, her family, her friends, everything she’s always taken for granted in her search for her husband's killer.”

Thanks to ITV, Sheridan tells about filming in Leeds and her character.

What appealed to you about Black Work?

“The writer Matt Charman got in touch with me, explained the premise of Black Work and why he wanted me to play Jo Gillespie. She has two worlds: Her family life and then her police family. Jo is strong and tough but goes through so much turmoil and mental torment. It was different to anything I’ve done before. I like trying different things and challenging myself and Matt is a really clever writer, so I said yes.”

Who is Jo Gillespie?

“Jo is a police constable married to Ryan, played by Kenny Doughty, who is a police detective. They have a young daughter Melly (Honor Kneafsey) and Ryan has a 16-year-old son called Hal (Oliver Woollford) from a previous marriage who also lives with them. It’s a modern family.”

Ryan has regularly spent time away from home?

“There’s a strain on their relationship evident right from the start. Ryan has been working away three days a week training CID officers. At least that’s what Jo thinks. In fact he has been working undercover on a secret special investigation. Jo and Ryan haven’t been spending a lot of time together and hardly talk anymore. He’s a closed book and she’s become guarded and conflicted. But they both adore the children.”

Jo’s relationship with Jack Clark, played by Matthew McNulty?

“Jack is also in the force and is best friends with Ryan. Jo and Jack have become close. His son and her daughter Melly both go to swimming together. So Jo and Jack would see each other there every week and would sit and talk. And it was just talking. It never developed into anything more. But because Jo’s relationship was so strained, and so was his with his wife, they felt they had no-one to talk to and they’ve just become close. It was something they needed.”

Sharon Duce plays your mother-in-law Barbara?

“Sharon was also my mother in The Royle Family. It was lovely to see her again all these years later. I was 19 when I was in The Royle Family as Emma and Sharon played my mum Valerie who came around to the Royle’s house and they all admired her lovely coat. It was great to work with her again. She’s so much fun.”

Jo’s world is turned upside down when her husband Ryan is shot dead in mysterious circumstances and she discovers he had a separate life working undercover?

“It must be a horrible feeling to trust someone and then find out they weren’t who they said they were. Jo thinks she knows Ryan and then her world falls apart. She trusted the police force to look after its own family and now she’s not sure of anything. Jo is finding out all this information about somebody she thought she knew everything
about. And it turns out she doesn’t know him. I can’t imagine the state of mind you would then be in. To have to take all that in. She doesn’t know who to trust or turn to and fears for her family.

“Jo is figuring it all out as she goes along in the same way as the audience are. It’s a psychological thriller and a whodunit. There are so many twists and turns and you really don’t know what’s going to happen.”

We have seen a preview and the funeral scenes are very moving?

“We were in a beautiful cathedral and holding Honor’s hand as Melly and having to walk behind the officers carrying the coffin was really powerful to film. There’s a speech at the funeral about the risks police officers take every day. I have so much respect for people who do these jobs. I’m simply playing a role and acting it out. They have to do it for real.

“I remember being asked once by some paramedics if they could have a photo taken with me. And I said, ‘I’m embarrassed. You save lives. I just say lines.’ Police, firefighters, the emergency services, they go out every day and do a dangerous job. It must be scary if you’re the wife, husband or partner of someone who does that. It’s really commendable. I am in awe of people who do that.”

You filmed Black Work close to your family roots in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire?

“Yes. We filmed in Leeds, Lincolnshire and all around my home area. I was able to use my own accent. Black Work started just after I had played Lisa Lynch in The C Word and my hair hadn’t really grown back that much at all at that stage. We spoke about maybe wearing wigs but then we thought, ‘Why not just go with how I am at the minute?’ So Jo has short black hair, which also fits in with her being a police officer. It made me feel very different to other roles.

“I feel so close to me when I’m doing my own accent so it’s quite tricky to turn off my own emotions. When you’re playing someone like Cilla and you’ve got a different accent you still bring a lot of yourself to it but it just removes you slightly.

“It was lovely to be back home and hear my accent all around me. Although no-one really recognised me with my hair like that. I had to stay in Leeds during filming and even when we filmed in Goole, just down the road from my mum and dad’s, you’re on tight 12-hour days and 6am pick-ups or whatever. But I did manage to get home on my day off.”

Have you played a police officer before?

“No, I’ve never played a police officer. I played a character called Janey Giles in The Bill but she was on the wrong side of the law. Black Work is not like your usual police drama. A lot of the time Jo is in her normal clothes, although I did get to wear the uniform sometimes. I found the police uniform very empowering.

“Jo is a PC in the force, only just starting out, and she doesn’t realise how clever she is. And that’s the journey she goes on as she tries to figure things out. That’s why it’s nice that you sometimes see her in uniform but mostly in her own clothes.

“Filming out on location was interesting. Usually when people see a film crew they might come over and ask what’s going on. But seeing all the police cars and me in uniform, that’s probably why no-one came over to me. They probably thought they’d get into trouble.

“When you’re playing someone like Cilla or Mrs Biggs you get all these research packs. I watched all the interviews of Cilla from the 1960s and so on. Of course with this you can’t just go into a police station and say, ‘Can I watch what you’re doing?’ But I got enough information to know where to pitch my performance as far as what it’s like being in the force.

“I have a cousin in the police force. I’m hoping she thinks I’ve done a good enough job. Or she’ll be on the phone straight away!”

Filming in and around a cottage in the countryside?

“We were really out in the moors. It was very muddy and wet. All the camera trucks
were getting stuck in the mud. Not glamorous at all. In one scene Jo has to run
through some woods and that was exhausting. I was slip-sliding about trying to run.
How I didn’t slip up in the air and land in a big muddy puddle, I don’t know. We were
jumping over logs and tree stumps. I’ve never done that type of thing before so it was
nice to do something different and a real challenge.”

You did your own driving for a sequence where off duty Jo is chasing a
suspect?

“I love driving. Every time they had a double there I was like, ‘No, please, I want to do
all the driving myself.’ I full throttled it and loved it. The back end of the car would spin
out as I drove away so the crew would all stand back. I was thrilled to play a police officer speeding off and chasing people.”

How about a scene where Jo immerses herself under the water in a bath?

“I’m not a great swimmer although I’ve had to do loads of water scenes in the past. In
Jonathan Creek I was dropped into a 20-foot tank of water. But there were divers down there to grab me. They bought me a T-shirt which said, ‘I do all my own stunts,’ because they knew how terrifying it was for me.

“On every take for the Black Work scene, the water would go up my nose and come down the back of my throat. So I’d shoot up out of the water coughing and choking. Then I’d sort myself out and we’d go for the take. But I made sure each time I managed to get all the way under before I panicked. I love how they shot it. The director Michael Samuels has a really good eye for interesting shots. It’s done in slow motion and looks like a mask over Jo’s face.

“Jo’s daughter Melly is a swimmer and takes part in competitions. Honor, who plays her, was amazing. She just jumped in the swimming pool. I was thinking, ‘Wow, I wish I could do that.’ I’m not a swimmer.”

Melly pushes her mum Jo around and around on a children’s playground roundabout?

“That was the very last scene we shot for Black Work on the final day in a little play park. I wasn’t too dizzy. It must have been worse for the guys sat on the roundabout with us - the cameras and the sound. They had someone helping Honor to push because there were so many people on the roundabout trying to film it. They were much dizzier than I was. But it does discombobulate you a bit. And because it’s a 360 degree shot the rest of the crew had to hide so they weren’t in vision.”

Black Work also features a scene shot across a the Trinity shopping centre in Leeds?

“We filmed in a shopping mall when it was open to the public. It’s hit and miss when you do those scenes. We did one massive long shot where we go down some escalators, across the shopping centre and then down another set of escalators. I felt guilty because it’s a scene where Jo is paranoid and she’s looking at people in a strange way. So some of the shoppers would recognise me and smile while I’d have to stay in character because I was being filmed. I wanted to find them afterwards and say, ‘Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t smile back because I was in the middle of a scene.’

“After we’d filmed the close-ups of that scene they hid the camera up high and we’d do the scene again for a wider angle. It looks great on screen but people then don’t see the camera at all as we mingle with the crowds.

“On one take this lovely girl wearing headphones stepped on the final escalator just before us. It was really intense and we’re thinking, ‘Yes, we’re nearly through it.’ Then she turned around, pulled her headphones out and said, ‘Were you just filming up there?’ Of course she didn’t realise we were still filming and we had to carry on talking. She looked a bit freaked out, wondering why we were ignoring her and put her headphones back in. Then as we got to the bottom of the escalator and they said, ‘cut,’ we chased after her and went, ‘We’re so sorry. We were still filming and weren’t ignoring you.’ It must be strange for the public walking around thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’”

You went to Buckingham Palace in May to receive your OBE from Prince William?

“I was very surprised and honoured to be awarded the OBE. I still can’t believe it. I went with my mum and dad and my brother and it was a wonderful day. It’s just surreal when you’re there. Another world for me and so exciting.

“I had been at the Palace before and met the Queen. That was for the National Youth Music Theatre. Prince Edward is their President and that’s where I started. So I was
asked to go along with the NYMT as one of their patrons and got to meet the Queen then.

“Prince William was lovely. He said he had seen some of my roles and that he likes Gavin and Stacey. He asked what I was doing at the moment and I explained I was filming The Huntsman movie, which is a sequel from Snow White and The Huntsman and that I was playing a dwarf. He asked how it was done and I explained some things. It was just a short chat. I said what an honour it was and thank you.

“There were the most incredible people there getting honours and I met so many of them that day. Lovely people from all different walks of life who had done so much work for charity and other things. That was, to me, really inspiring. To be sat among people like that and be the actor among them. 

“Afterwards we has lots of photos taken in the Buckingham Palace courtyard and you also get to keep a video of the day. It was all really special and I felt so honoured. Then we stayed at the Mondrian Hotel in London where the staff were wonderful. When we arrived they had spelled out ‘OBE’ on a table in red, white and blue Smarties along with a marzipan depiction of the actual medal. My relatives from Wales also came over and so we were all celebrating together.

“An unforgettable day. Absolutely magical, like a dream. I will never, ever, forget it.”