An interview with Annabel Scholey
Why Lauren Bell puzzled Annabel Scholey
interview + written MONICA DE LUNA
Annabel Scholey asked to repeat a couple of takes on Winter after watching herself back and questioning what she was doing with her body. Playing DI Lauren Bell meant looking as though she knew how to raid a house, right down to what she did with her arms. She has already smashed a car window for the role and would happily take on more stunts.
Annabel wears a total look by BELLA FREUD
In the ITV drama, Lauren works alongside Richard Armitage’s forensic pathologist Ethan Winter while grieving a father she idolised. Scholey imagined the child who followed him everywhere, then the police officer still trying to make him proud. Much of their relationship remains unwritten, so she supplied a history herself. The difficulty was letting the audience recognise Lauren’s hurt in a woman who would rarely volunteer it. Nina Defoe, the divorce lawyer she played in The Split, had been much easier to read. As Scholey puts it, Nina “vomited up emotion everywhere”. Beattie Johnson, her journalist in Disney+’s Rivals, gives her another kind of licence. Even Tony Baddingham can be shocked by Beattie, and Scholey suspects she is capable of going further still.
At twenty-one, Scholey had absorbed the warning that an actress needed to make it by thirty. Her more interesting work began arriving when she reached that age. She wishes she had questioned some other advice, particularly letting her Yorkshire accent go while learning RP. People sometimes fail to place where she is from, and she is still waiting for Yorkshire to claim her.
Annabel wears a silk top by VIOLANTE NESSI
Monica de Luna
How quickly did you understand Lauren Bell in Winter?
Annabel Scholey
This was a character that perplexed me the first time I read the scripts because she isn’t outwardly emotional. She’s very closed and can be perceived as quite cold. It took me a while to work out how to play her with some warmth and find her hidden depths. She communicates differently to the characters I’ve played before. Usually I play characters who wear their heart on their sleeve and explode emotion everywhere, but actually she was the first character I’ve played who’s very reserved and holds everything close to her chest. Now and again there’s a crack and you see that she’s not okay and she is off-centre, but she is very mysterious. But I did enjoy finding those tiny cracks and it was one of the main reasons I wanted to play the role.
Do you think Lauren is still trying to make her father proud?
Absolutely, I think it’s at the heart of everything. It’s the reason she became a police officer. She’s been in his shadow but we haven’t heard much about that relationship but I’m hoping that will be explored some more if we get another series. I think they were extremely close. She was his shadow growing up, she would have gone to work experience with him. I think she absolutely worshipped and idolised him, but he also came with this formidable reputation and she is a woman in a still largely male workforce, which is still very sensitive to nepotism. So she has had to work very hard to get to where she is. And having a powerful, impressive dad like that has possibly been a hindrance to her because there are people who don’t like her - we hint at it in episode one - she didn’t get on with her supervisor. I filled in the blanks in my head that maybe that was to do with the fact that she had a famous dad and it annoyed somebody. But she’s still trying to make him proud. She’s lost him recently so there is an enormous amount of pressure she feels.
In a police procedural like Winter, what was hardest to make feel real?
For me, I wanted to physically look right. So, when we were raiding the houses, I wanted to know how to move because there’s nothing worse than somebody pretending to be a police officer but they’re tiptoeing around or their arms are flapping about. I actually did re-do a couple of takes because I watched myself back and thought ‘my god, what am I doing?’. The physicality was definitely something I wanted and needed to work on.
Was smashing the car window enough, or do you want more stunts next time?
I would like so many more stunts please! I want to match winter, he got some cracking stunts. It would be realistic! She’s all hands on deck, she’s a vital person and she doesn’t hold back.
After playing Nina in The Split for so long, did Lauren’s restraint feel strange?
Yes it did, but it was a very welcome new challenge. Nina just vomited up emotion everywhere, most of the time inappropriately, which is fantastic to play. When she was drinking in series one and trying to give up in series two, that was brilliant to delve into. With Lauren, I felt there was less obvious emotions on the surface to go on. This is a woman who doesn’t share, who actually draws strength from stillness and being quiet. You don’t really know what’s going on inside her head. Even though there is a lot going on and she’s hurt and vulnerable and afraid but she doesn’t show it. So I had to find another way of bringing that to the screen so that the audience could see it and not just see her as two-dimensional and cold. I wanted audiences to warm to her, so it was a completely different challenge and it did feel strange.
Annabel wears a blazer dress by NADINE MURABI
At 29, you described yourself as “not the woman and not the girl.” Did turning 40 make the roles more interesting?
The roles I get to play now usually have a couple of teenagers, which is actually something I haven’t experienced yet. I’m often handed roles that are professionally impressive, often quite powerful women which is great! I get given quite a lot of baddies actually, which has always been a lot of fun. I think there’s room for improvement. Yes, there are still good roles. I see a lot of articles about women over 45 saying that the roles aren’t coming and I do sometimes feel frustrated because you have to fill in a lot of blanks with scripts and find nuance. But that’s probably the same for both sexes. I think there’s always room for improvement. There are definitely still roles coming for me at the moment, thank goodness. Actually, when I graduated at 21, people were still selling the notion that if you haven’t made it by 30 you’re washed up, and there was a real fear of that for me, so I’m delighted to have had it the opposite way around. When I turned 30 I started getting the more interesting roles and I have been very lucky. I’ve played very complicated, very brilliant women in different periods, different classes, different parts of the country, so I feel very blessed. But there is always room for improvement.
You were trained to lose your Yorkshire accent. Do you ever wish you hadn’t been?
I do wish I hadn’t just dropped it. I think it started before drama school. I had verse speaking lessons. I’m not entirely sure why, I think I had a drama tutor who was very good at RP and she taught me how to speak with an RP accent which was actually really useful because I’ve done a lot of that in my career. So, it wasn’t just lost at drama school but I do remember them saying at that point, 2002 - 2005, that RP was what people were looking for and I definitely didn’t fight that. I went with their advice. But really I should have nailed the RP as well as keeping my authentic accent. I was all over the shop! I was only just 18 when I started drama school. I was the youngest in my year and did what I was told. And that isn’t a reflection on the school, I just didn’t really know who I was. I’ve worked with Jodie Whittaker who grew up just up the road from me and she never lost her accent. She’s always worked in her accent and it’s glorious. Sometimes people don’t realise I’m from Yorkshire and I’m waiting to be claimed!
Jilly Cooper came to set to meet the cast. Did that make you nervous?
She did say to me over the lunch table ‘oh I wanted to see who was playing Beattie’. She really wanted to know who I was, but it didn’t make me nervous, it absolutely thrilled me! She was an iconic powerhouse of a woman and I was just delighted to get to know her a little bit. I wish I could have got to know her better before we sadly lost her.
Who makes the other worse in Rivals, Beattie or Tony?
I would say they rival each other in evil. I definitely think they encourage each other in the wrong direction. But even Tony is shocked by Beattie. He calls her a cockroach. His moral compass is dubious at the best of times. I don’t think we’ve seen Beattie’s darkest hour just yet, and so I would bet on Beattie being the one who would push things the furthest, but let’s see!
Annabel wears a denim shirt by With Nothing Underneath
photo DAVID REISS
styling ROSIE ARKELL-PALMER
make up BROOKE SIMONS
hair SVEN BAYERBACH