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Jessie Wallace and Nathaniel Parker: A Class Apart |
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Jessie Wallace joins Nathaniel Parker for her first major drama since leaving EastEnders as they star on opposite sides of BBC1's A Class
Apart (starts Friday 23 March).
In a Radio Times exclusive, Jessie explains why the role is a departure yet close to her heart - and Nathaniel reveals why he always has to play posh.
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Last time we saw Jessie Wallace - or rather her EastEnders character Kat Slater - she was leaving Albert Square in a Ford Capri Ghia, furry dice dangling from the windscreen.
Today, though, the setting couldn't be more different. Instead of pounding the pavements of Walford, Jessie finds herself in the palatial grounds of £23,000-a-year Haileybury School in Hertfordshire (ex-alumni include Clement Attlee and Sir Alan Ayckbourn).
She's playing the part of hard-up, council-estate single mum Candy Jerome, whose 11-year-old son Kyle (dad's in prison) has won a scholarship at exclusive Haltham (ie Haileybury) College, instead of having to go to the local, low-achieving comprehensive.
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Sounds like the girl got a result. However, what Candy and her grandad George (played by TV legend George Cole) don't know is that Haltham's headmaster Anthony Troth (Nathaniel Parker) has an opinion of himself that's as every bit as high as his fees - and he has bet a colleague the sum of one walnut whip that he can transform young Kyle from chav to cherub in a single term.
Echoes not just of My Fair Lady, then, but also of the real-life Channel 4 documentary made in 2002 by Trevor Phillips, in which inner-city tearaway Ryan Bell was sent to Downside Public School.
"For Anthony, it all starts out very much as an academic, Pygmalion-type challenge", says Nathaniel Parker. "He's only interested in the boy as an experiment."
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Meanwhile, mum Candy may not be overburdened with O-levels, but she does sense that the whole thing could blow up in their faces (in real life, Ryan Bell ended up being expelled from Downside). "She's worried about whether Kyle is going to fit in at Haltham", says Jessie. "At the same time, though, she wants him to have the benefit of the education she never had.
"She's already chained herself to some railings to try to get him into a decent comprehensive rather than the lousy one down the road. As a mum myself, I understand that feeling of being ready to fight tooth and nail to get your child the best."
Question is, would Jessie be prepared to send her own daughter Tallulah, when old enough (she's only two at present) to somewhere like Haileybury?
"Ooh, yeah, I'm definitely thinking of it", she smiles, waving an approving arm towards all the quads, cloisters and playing fields as far as the eye can see. "As for myself, I was always bunking off school (in Enfield); got kicked out of a few, too. Only thing about coming to a place like this, though, is you'd be worried your kids wouldn't turn out streetwise."
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More than likely, says Nathaniel Parker, who went to private school himself (Leighton Park, near Reading), and whose two daughters attend similar, fee-paying establishments.
"When I was a boy, my parents used to pack me off on the train on my own at weekends to go and visit my sister in Cambridge", he recalls. "But no way would I do the same to my two girls. They're not streetwise at all."
According to the Inspector Lynley star, being posh has its definite disadvantages, particularly in acting.
"At drama school, we were taught the correct way for an actor to speak was RP [received pronunciation]", he complains. "The minute I left, though, all that changed, and now it actually counts against you to talk the way I do. Look at Sean Bean, for example; he's from the north, but he gets cast as Scots, Irish, all sorts. I'd love to shave my head, have a real number-one crop and get some of the parts that Ray Winstone and Mark Strong get. But people think I'm too posh."
"It's the floppy hair, love", laughs Jessie.
"It's the TV executives", comes the reply. "If you're a known quantity, they hate to mess around with a winning formula."
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Speaking of which, how does Jessie now look back on her decision to leave EastEnders?
"Well, after 11 months, I'm missing the regular income, that's for sure", she replies. "At the same time, though, it was something I felt I had to do. I'd like to show people I can play other parts, too.
"When I was at drama school (the Poor School, in London), I did lots of Tennessee Williams plays: I was Esmeralda in Camino Real, I played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. And I'd love to play Rose in The Rose Tattoo. Maybe I'll have to do some theatre to convince people."
Meanwhile, Nathaniel Parker's biggest branchings-out of late have been as waste-of-space Horace Skimpole in Bleak House, and as a gay Italian film producer in a film about Orson Welles, called Fade to Black (in which he swaps his floppy fop hair for a bob).
"I've known Tony Grounds (writer of A Class Apart) for years, and have always been on at him to write me a different part from the kind of public school characters I normally play", says Parker. "His response has always been 'I'll write you a part when you stop dyeing your hair', which, by the way, I absolutely don't do (close inspection from Jessie and others confirms this to be true).
"Anyway, I met Tony at a party, gave him a good look at my hair roots, and few weeks later, he wrote me a part - as a public school headmaster!"
Oh, well, if the cap fits…
Christopher Middleton
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