Anna Friel has, like the rest of us, been stewing away at home in the past year. The star of ITV’s Marcella, which returns for its third series this week has been pretty relaxed though, unlike the character she plays on the dark ITV drama.
In lockdown she’s been focusing on walking, her garden and her kitchen.
“I’ve learned how to make my own stocks, so I don’t like waste,” she said, smiling. “I try not to eat too much meat but when I do I use every single part of it. So I’ve turned my Aga into a kind of cauldron centrepiece, boiling away.”
Marcella ended its last series by bubbling over into a broiling mess, one which will leave some viewers wondering how its main character has returned. The small matter of how her face survived an encounter with a pair of scissors, for instance, will be one of the first matters to be cleared up.
“It was very important that the audience didn’t get frustrated knowing what happened from when she was in the tunnel at the end of last series,” she added, “and thinking that the pair of scissors would have caused a lot of damage to her face, so how come it’s so healed? You’ll see why, and what happened.
“Getting to have a season three of Marcella means you are doing something right. It means you’ve already got an audience and a following behind you.
“And you can never get bored of playing Marcella, she’s such a multifaceted and three-dimensional character. I know that I’m really, really lucky to get to play her. This is one that I like revisiting, otherwise I simply wouldn’t have.”
Anna is joined by Amanda Burton for this new series, and the pair went to the latter’s home turf to film. Scenes were shot in Belfast, in areas which used to be no-go zones back in the ’90s.
“We were filming in places where it just wouldn’t have been possible to film back then,” she said. “It was quite extraordinary and evoked a lot of emotional memories for me being there.”
As for Covid, Anna is choosing to be careful to protect her family – and envisages a difficult journey back to normality.
“Right now we’re not even allowed to say that we’re fed up a bit,” said Anna. Thank God we’re healthy and all OK but I’m longing to see people.
“I’m just very reluctant to see my grandmother because I could be a carrier but not show any symptoms. But will normal life, will it ever get back to how it once was? It’s is a very difficult concept to imagine now.”
Marcella, ITV, Tuesday, 9pm
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe