Julie Hesmondhalgh: serious on-screen and stealing shoes from theatre audiences

Virgin Radio

16 May 2021, 14:02

This weekend Graham caught up with Julie Hesmondhalgh on the Graham Norton Radio Show with Waitrose, finding out about her roles on both screen and stage. 

"I'm having one of those whirwind times" she admits.

Julie stars as Nancy in brand new six-part BBC One series, The Pact, following a group of friends that work in a brewery together who discover that their boss is dead after a prank that's gone horribly, horribly wrong. The group find themselves bound into a pact of silence, bound by a secret that will change their lives forever...

"It's so good to see a drama that has women at the centre of it just making mistakes and messing things up and trying to get things right, it's just a really lovely thing" she says of the premise.

She'll also be taking the stage this year in one-woman show The Greatest Play In The World, running between the 18th May and 3rd of July this year including revised and new dates.

"Suddenly it's gone from this tiny, intimate little sort of studio play where I was borrowing people's shoes to play the different characters in it to be doing in the Nottingham Playhouse and in Liverpool, you know these huge 700-seat auditoriums so it's become a very, very different thing to make it a bit more epic"

"I can't go near them, it's a nightmare" she laughs, joking about social distancing taking away her shoe-borrowing from the audience.

"But it's kept it fresh, which is absolutely great, but it's terrifying."

BBC One Drama 'The Pact' starts on Monday 17th May at 9pm

For more great interviews listen to The Graham Norton Radio Show with Waitrose, Saturdays AND Sundays from 09:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.