Emmerdale star reveals how “gory” scenes primed her for visceral debut novel
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
"My mum did check in with me after reading it. She wanted to know my childhood had been OK!” Ex-Emmerdale star Jessie Elland is explaining her mum’s reaction to her rowdy debut novel The Ladie Upstairs. A delirious, ultra-visceral body horror, the book is not for the faint of heart.
“I reassured her that it was all in my imagination and she had nothing to worry about,” laughs Elland. “And she loved it. She was my first reader, in fact: I wrote it in secret because I didn’t know if I could write a full book, but very near the end of writing it, I had an operation, and I was on all sorts of stuff. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going, and in this kind of haze I told Mum about it so I then had to give it to her. It’s pretty dark and intense, but she’s been my biggest champion.”
The Ladie Upstairs takes a simple premise – lowly “scullery drudge” Ann toils away in the guts of a grand manor house, longing to ascend to her adored mistress Lady Charlotte’s side – and twists it into a savage helter-skelter descent into violence and sickly excess.
In Elland’s macabre midsummer’s nightmare, the house itself becomes a many-eyed villain occupied by gorgeous grotesques. Even the furniture is alive with malignant intent. A lesson in being careful what you wish for, the cloying secrets of the gentry are revealed in rich, queasy detail.
“I really wanted to build a dense, soupy, intense prose that makes the reader feel claustrophobic,” explains Elland, "because that’s the situation that the protagonists are in, this really confined space that seems to close in and in".
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As Chloe Harris in Emmerdale from 2021 to 2023, the Darlington-born actor/author played out some pretty harrowing plots, including being stalked and surviving a spectacular car crash. Did this help with her writing?
“It was high-octane stuff. I was coming home covered in fake blood – what’s known in the industry as pig’s blood, but is actually a kind of syrupy liquid. It was really disgusting. The first day was fun, but by day five you’re still covered and it’s awful. So I was primed, I was already at that pitch to get into writing the gory stuff after a day filming these kinds of things.”
The novel taps into the surging popularity of “femgore”, a genre fuelled by body horror films such as The Substance and Nightbitch and BookTok favourites like Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, which have become wildly popular with a younger generation of women. Revelling in violence and disgust, femgore clearly taps into something profound.
So why has it hit such a raw and bloody nerve? “To be honest, I didn’t know that much about it until I got published. I was a big fan of Gothic literature and horror, so that heavily influenced the book. I think it’s a reflection of what we’re seeing in society: the intense scrutiny of women’s bodies. These stories express a kind of female rage that comes up a lot in horror. It’s also something to do with how fast things are moving now, different experiences women have had growing up, and how that’s influenced their relationship with their bodies, their food, with periods.”
The story is a period piece in every sense. Ann’s revulsion at her own carnal nature is expressed through graphic purging and her vivid obsession with purity and cleanliness. She perceives her periods as evidence of sin escaping her body, and much of the book’s violence is turned inwards by Ann against herself.
“There is this violent underbelly of womanhood that is glossed over or not seen as part of being a woman,” says Elland. “It’s there in all the blood and everything physical that women have to deal with – and it’s important to talk about.
“There’s a scene I really like, that I wrote early on, where Ann and Lady Charlotte are talking about periods. And it’s just not something we see much in art – but in life, I talk about it with my friends all the time. It’s so bizarre to me that 50 per cent of the population experience this and it’s just not discussed. This is why horror and femgore are so important. It seems shocking but it rips everything open so then the conversation can be had more freely. In reality, it’s quite normal and natural. I’m lucky that I’ve grown up in this time that’s a lot more open. Nowadays we see blood instead of blue liquid in tampon ads.”
So has she had different responses from different age groups? “Yes, older women seem to pick up on different things, like the class theme. I’ve just recorded the audiobook, and my nan keeps saying she can’t wait to listen to it.” Elland smiles and her eyes go wide at the prospect. “She’s absolutely determined.” It must run in the family.
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