When someone stands up and says, “This isn’t OK”, the onus is on you to learn why, and do better.īut I got more than just an apology. Fisher was upset that he’d caused me offence, I have no doubt this is true, but in and of itself that’s a huge part of the problem. I didn’t feel like it was my responsibility to explain to him what he did wrong. The apology was relayed to me by the Donmar he offered to do so in person but I declined. I sent a tweet to the BTG hoping for acknowledgement and apology from them, which to the BTG’s credit I did receive.
#Hannah dalton in harlots professional
Fisher is a professional he was meant to review my work. I am not someone who cannot handle criticism, but if I wanted to read cruel things about myself I’d head to YouTube’s comments section under a Derry Girls video and fill my boots (it truly is the armpit of the internet). Nicola Coughlan in a scene from Derry Girls. The “offending word” was removed from the review but no apology issued. That time, I didn’t complain but the play’s writer, Zoe Cooper, contacted the BTG. Those were the only words he could think of to describe the work I’d done. That was hurtful, and not only in the obvious way. His description of my performance that night amounted to him describing me as “a fat girl”. I might have ignored it, but the same reviewer, Philip Fisher of the British Theatre Guide, had also come to see me in Jess and Joe Forever, a play I did last August in Edinburgh. It’s worth noting that at no point in Spark’s novel, or David Harrower’s adaptation is Joyce Emily’s weight referenced, not one place. The first review I saw had just this to say of my performance: “Nicola Coughlan as Joyce Emily, the kind of overweight little girl who will always become the butt of her fellows’ immature humour.” Everything I’d done to create my character had been reduced to a hurtful word and casual comment on my appearance. By the time we opened the show I was so proud of all the work we’d done and was excited to share it with an audience. I spent seven weeks creating her world in rehearsals I researched the Spanish civil war in depth, I spent hours working on my Edinburgh accent, creating her changing physicality from age 11 to 15. David Harrower’s adaptation has brought the character of Joyce Emily into the foreground, making her a fascinating, three-dimensional character. In the novel, Muriel Spark describes Joyce Emily as “an outsider … the very rich girl, their delinquent, who had been recently sent to Blaine as a last hope, because no other school, no governess, could manage her”. When I first auditioned for the play I’m currently in, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I researched the character thoroughly. These women were goddesses – I could not believe anyone would dare to criticise their bodies when it was so irrelevant to their talent. I had read autobiographies by brilliant actors who I idolised how a film director had told Judi Dench she had “every single thing wrong with her face” watched the infamous 1975 Helen Mirren interview, when Michael Parkinson asked if her figure undermined her credibility as “a serious actress” (to which she brilliantly retorted: “Serious actresses can’t have big bosoms, is that what you mean?”). But I also accepted it as fact: actresses have to be a certain size to be legitimate – those are the rules. Anything in between has no place in television.” I laughed, I loved it. When she came back on set, Alec Baldwin’s studio exec, Jack Donaghy, said: “She needs to lose 30 pounds or gain 60. One of the characters had gained weight over the summer break while starring in a pizza-themed musical. I remember watching an episode of 30 Rock while I was at drama school.
But the prism through which my body is viewed is inescapable. I’m very lucky to get to use my body to become all these fascinating women.
I can use mine to play neurotic Clare Devlin in Channel 4’s Derry Girls, or a tough-edged courtesan in 18th-century London in Harlots, or the tragic, misunderstood Joyce Emily Hammond, who I’m currently playing every night at the Donmar.
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