Sophie Willan says having a BAFTA is like having a penis: 'It gets you treated like an average male'
The Alma's Not Normal writer and star chats to Radio Times magazine about her BAFTA recognition.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
"Having a BAFTA is like having a penis,” says Sophie Willan. “It gets you treated like most average males.” She pauses for a moment, employing the comic timing that she wields like a weapon in Alma’s Not Normal. Then, deadpan, she declares, “So that’s nice.”
Willan is already well endowed. If she converts this year’s nomination into a win, it’ll be her third Bafta, to add to best comedy writer (2021) for the show’s pilot, and 2022’s best female comedy performance. The second series is also nominated for best scripted comedy, so Willan could be waking up on Monday with quite the package. “I’ll be too powerful,” she says. “They’ll have to kill me. A woman with four knobs? Too dangerous.”
A woman like Willan is certainly rare in television – but not, as she herself points out, that rare. “I’m an exec producer, writer and actress and, actually, in that respect, I’m no different from Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I just have bigger boobs and a northern accent.” Willan again pauses for effect. “Have you noticed that posh women always have tiny breasts?” It’s the accent more than the boobs that mark Willan out in an industry where less than 10 per cent of workers are working class.
Much is made of the semi-autobiographical nature of Alma’s Not Normal – Willan’s mother’s heroin addiction meant she spent some of her childhood in care, some in the care of her grandma – so was writing it cathartic? Nope. In fact, there was “many-a-time when I cried on the kitchen floor going ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t do this.’”
She says she loves editing a script once she’s actually got it written; it’s the writing that she finds challenging. “It’s horrific… like six months of staring into the abyss. When I was writing Alma, I was in Prestwich, smoking 20 fags and going for a chippy tea. The amount I smoked writing the second series, I’m sure I gave myself pulmonary disease.”
As a cup of hot water and fresh ginger arrives for the 37-year-old, she tells me that she’s signed a book deal, “a short-story-manifesto-memoir-y thing”, and she’s actually, almost content. Success suits her. “When you’ve had childhood trauma, you spend a lot of your 20s and into your 30s trying to make sense of it. Now I feel like I’ve got to a point where I’ve worked through most of it. I’m really happy with where my life is at. I’ve bought a house, I’ve moved to London, I’m securely attached, financially secure and things are going well. I’ve written a show about it, but I don’t feel I’m carrying a bag of trauma with me.”
Just as well. How else would she carry all her BAFTAs?
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