by Gill Pringle
Both of your parents were actors [Judy Loe and Richard Beckinsale], so was acting for you just a natural path?
I think when your parents are actors – I noticed this in my childhood – is that as soon as you learn to speak, someone asks you ‘Do you want to be an actor as well?’ You’ve not toilet trained yet, but someone’s asked you that. And I think your instinct, if you have any gumption at all, is to say ‘absolutely not. I don’t want to join my parents’.
Did you ever work with your Mum?
I did a really odd car commercial once with her. She was in one of the Underworld films briefly. She just happened to be there, so we just threw her in. I did a film with Terry Jones [Absolutely Anything] and she played a dinner lady in that. But that was again, she just happened to be there.
What do you personally think of the character that you portray in Farming?
Obviously, it was Adawale’s actual life story and this is a real person and I think he had a very conflicted experience with her. I think she was very conflicted in the sense that she couldn’t have her own children. She had this incredible desire to have children, like a lot of us want children but not all of us want 10, in a very small house. But there was something quite compulsive about that.
It’s almost like if you’re on a diet and you suddenly have to eat everything. There was something compulsive that I don’t think she was on terms with and therefore her own resentments of particularly Enitan’s [Damson Idris] character in the movie. She’s illiterate, she couldn’t read or write. That to me is very frightening, to go through the world and not be able to read your letters or read anything. And so, I think she’s somebody who was very fearful but also very tough but also cruel and so that was what was so fascinating; she was all of those things.
Because she was a real person, you really wanted to honour that properly and not make her just a villain, because that wasn’t Adawale’s experience and he did stay in touch with her until she died.
Can you talk more about the resentment towards Enitan, who is essentially Adawale in the film?
He bothered her. He really bothered her. I mean, the fact that Adewale has turned into Adewale, they don’t grow on trees those people. This is real renaissance man. He’s an actor, a director, a singer. He’s got several degrees, I mean this is a fairly serious person and I think for a woman who’s not able to read or write and is from that environment, I think she was probably threatened by his potential on some unconscious level. But she’s not somebody who’s thinking about things in that way.
I was really touched that he’d asked me because, it’s not necessarily a part that every single person would go ‘That’s Kate Beckinsale’. He wrote me this lovely letter and said that I’d relate. And when somebody asks you to play their mother, their first pick, it’s quite a big responsibility. It’s quite a touching thing to be asked.
How was it to deal with the skinhead themes in the film?
I would apologise profusely to Damson after every take. And Ade would go, ‘don’t. Stop doing that’. They’d be saying all these terrible things, I had quite little kids around me.
In real life, what is it like for you to be the mother of a 19-year-old?
My god. I thought having a baby was quite difficult but it’s much worse having an adult! It’s so frightening. Driving around in cars and, oh, awful.
Of course, she’s dating. I think every single stage of parenthood, you think, this is the hardest bit and then it changes up again. My friends have all got six-year-olds, so I’m kind of an outlier with stuff because they come to me with, ‘when did you stop the night time feed?’ I don’t know, I’m trying to keep up with all this new shit.
Were you ever bullied in school?
Everybody who’s become an actress has some sort of experience like that. I just think growing up, it’s really difficult for everybody and people will find the thing that you’re sensitive about and poke it.
There is a certain amount of hard times build resilience, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m glad. I did have a teacher who said, ‘I hope you get raped because your skirt is so short’. I was only about 13. A female teacher. And she said it to two of us. It was just one of those things that I think if you said it today, you’d be immediately fired and rightly so.
Finally, your Instagram is so funny, can you tell us anyone in particular that you follow yourself?
I follow all my friends and stuff, but I don’t know… Funny people. I think Celeste Barber is one of my favourite follows. Oh my gosh she’s hilarious.
Farming is playing at the 2019 British Film Festival, and is in cinemas November 21, 2019
