“All these characters you create become like people you really know and when they are taken out of your hands, I just don’t want to see what’s being done to them.”
So says actress-turned legendary TV writer Lynda La Plante in the new issue of The Stage. She talks to Mary Comerford at length about her early days as a jobbing actress, through her first big break into TV writing with Widows and, of course, her feelings on the demise of Jane Tennison, La Plante’s most famous creation.
“It’s hard being an actress in this country. If you haven’t made it name-wise when you reach 30-odd, every script you get has been well thumbed,”
she believes, having struggled the make a breakthrough in every show going from The Gentle Touch to Rentaghost. And then came Widows, her first foray into writing – initially conceived to further her acting career…
“In all truthfulness I created one of the parts in Widows for myself,”
La Plante happily admits. But with Widows, and later Prime Suspect, acting became secondary to a writing career that spans numerous TV dramas and over 20 novels. She is a stickler for research, something evolved from her experiences as an actor:
“As a writer I wanted to know all about her, yet as an actress I’d played innumerable prostitutes and I’d never bothered to delve deep. As an actress I cheated and I knew I could not cheat as a writer.”
and is happy giving advice to actors who come before her for casting sessions:
“If you come in and you’re looking down at the page, I can’t see your eyes and I don’t know if you can do anything.”
The revealing piece also covers La Plante’s thoughts on working with dyslexia, being a single mother at 60 and, naturally, what she really thinks about the end of Jane Tennison. With Trial and Retribution back for a new series, and more to follow, the writer feels she has much more to offer than gritty crime capers…
“People say I’m fixated on crime. I’m not, but the public is.”
Find out what Lynda La Plante would pen given half the chance in the new issue of The Stage, on sale 11th January.
Also in The Stage this week:
- Veteran TV producer Michael Hurll celebrates 50 years in television
- Liz Thomas on the rise of light entertainment on the box
- Doctor Who make-up designer Sheelagh Wells on how advances in technology have changed her job
- …and much more!
best female writer love her work just got the new book red dahlia cant wait 2 read it ,keep up the good work thank god there's something good on sundays and mondays night 2 watch trial and reRetribution great thanks lynda ........