Articles - Suranne Jones

Sexy Suranne hits downtown Dewsbury

Dewsbury in West Yorkshire isn’t much used to glamour, so the arrival of Suranne Jones and her co-stars to film scenes for returning BBC1 police thriller Five Days causes quite a stir with passers-by.

The small market town is just seven miles from the bright lights and big stores of Leeds, but Suranne and friends are filming by a deserted market square and, like any market place on a day with no market, it’s bleak as well as chilly.

 

Until Suranne lights up the surroundings that is. Perky in a ponytail, willowy and strikingly beautiful, those huge brown eyes under her dark fringe setting off a flawless complexion, she’s dressed for warmth yet still looks stunning: dark grey cardigan over tartan lumberjack shirt over black t-shirt, and skinny dark blue jeans tucked into calf-length light brown boots.

 

Her favourite travelling companion is in her arms – her black and tan Jack Russell, Baxter: “This is his first big BBC job. He was cast before me!” she jokes.

 

A brisk walk to the warmer surroundings of her trailer and we settle down to talking about her demanding new role as a careerwoman cop in a drama set over five key days in the investigation of a woman’s sudden death and its possible link to an abandoned baby being fostered by a young widower, played by Scottish star Derek Riddell.

 

Writer Gwyneth Hughes retains the same format and title as her 2007 BBC1 drama which won BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations and wowed audiences and critics alike. And as before, it will be screened over five consecutive nights.

 

But cast and case are quite different this time. Suranne plays detective turned uniformed cop Laurie Franklin:

“She was a divorced Detective Constable with a good life and a great career in London, but her mum (Anne Reid) is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, so Laurie decides to take a demotion and come back to her roots and live with her mum in Yorkshire.

 

“She’s worked her way up but now she’s back in uniform, which she hates, living in a single bed in her mum’s bungalow, and she’s 36 turning 37, so it’s not the best arrangement.”

 

Hang on a minute – Laurie is how old? “Laurie turns 37 in the show,” says Suranne, who turned a mere 32 in January, after filming finished. Did they have to add wrinkles?

 

“No – maybe the Botox didn’t work!” she jokes. “I do look older in the role but I think it’s just a more sophisticated look, kind of sleek, and more professional-looking outfits. And being a career policewoman she probably goes to the gym and looks after herself, so it’s not too far-fetched.

 

“My first reaction was a bit of an ‘Oh! OK… Gosh!’ but all the characters I’ve played lately have been in their mid-30s, and I asked my best friends and they say I’ve always looked a lot older, even when I was 10.”

Hmm, I do quietly wonder just how friendly these friends are. Looking older than your true age might seem an advantage at 10, less so after you’ve hit your 30s, but we move on.

 

Laurie is travelling with her mum on a Trans-Pennine train when it screeches to a halt following the suicidal swallow dive of a jumper from a bridge onto the tracks below.

 

“They ask for any competent person on the train to come forward and she reluctantly puts her hand up and says ‘Yes, I’m a police officer’, so that even though she is going back to work as a uniformed officer she gets involved in the death and is seconded to the inquiry.

 

“And she falls for her DI – played by David Morrissey – because he’s so unattractive, obviously,” smiles Suranne, laying on the irony.

 

“Their banter is really nice, because he doesn’t really want this woman that’s appeared; they know she’s come from London where they do things differently and she’s got these detective skills, so there’s a lot of friction.

 

“Hugo Speer and Shaun Dooley play the other male detectives she has to deal with and she p****s them off constantly, but she’s very focussed and she’s on the right track with every idea she comes up with so eventually they go ‘Oh Christ, she knows what she’s talking about.’”

 

Suranne clearly knows what she’s doing too; while other former soap stars sometimes struggle in the outside world, her career has flourished since leaving Coronation Street in 2004, after four years as larger-than-life Corrie siren Karen McDonald.

 

She lays a lot of that success at the door of TV producer Sita Williams, whose own successes include casting Suranne opposite Ray Winstone in ITV private eye drama Vincent:

 

“Karen was a really big character, and there’s a tendency to be pantomime-like in soaps because you can play it big and you can have fun with a character – and you can go to your depths.

 

“But she says she saw something in me as Karen McDonald, and she thought ‘Well, maybe she could be a drama actress’, and I think it’s thanks to her putting me in Vincent that I’ve been able to do the work on TV.”

 

Not that every series has been a triumph. While Karen’s role as a newly-released cop-killer in Sally Wainwright’s bleak but brilliant Unforgiven last year won universal acclaim, upper-crust medical drama Harley Street in the previous year got an almighty kicking:

 

“It was fantastic to get this role after Unforgiven because there aren’t that many leading roles for women – usually it’s the sidekick – and I didn’t think I was going to get something so absorbing again so soon.

 

“But yes, I did get a kicking with Harley Street and it just goes to show that you don’t always make the right decisions. When I decided to do it I wanted to do something so different to who I am that perhaps it was too different… You’ve always got to have a part of you that you can find in a character.

 

“It was unfortunate, because Harley Street had a great cast with Paul Nicholls and we had some brilliant guest players like James Fox and Leslie Phillips. But not everything works, and maybe viewers didn’t want to see posh people treating other posh people in a posh surgery.”

 

One thing I remember noting when watching episode one (and I confess I wasn’t tempted to watch again) was how gaunt Suranne seemed under her severe professional bob as Dr. Martha Elliott. Had she been on a crash diet back then?

 

“No, it was just the look I think. And maybe I was training a lot at the time.”

 

By the time you read this she will be training hard again: “I haven’t been running for a while but after this job I will start to get fit. I’m about to start training to run the London Marathon.”

 

During filming her exercise regime was largely limited to walking Baxter, and it seems her dog is the nearest thing she has to a significant other at the moment, following the break-up of her long-term relationship with Anglo-Italian plumber Lorenzo Giove.

 

“We split up over Christmas 2008, then tried to make it work again, then we split up for good, so I’ve been single for quite a while.”

 

So she’s waiting for the right man to come along? “Yeah, I don’t really go out so I don’t meet many people, but it’ll happen when it happens.”

 

Downtime is spent relaxing with Baxter, cooking and sorting out the 150-year-old cottage she bought in a village outside Manchester after finishing Harley Street:

 

“I started to do the house up, then more work came in so the hallway is full of pictures that haven’t been put up and stuff like that. It’s just a little courtyard cottage but it’s big enough for me.”

 

“And I love cooking. That came with being with a partner, I think. We used to go through cookbooks and I love to try new things and have that as a skill. Then if I ever get a chance to get away I love health spas. I usually do the Champneys thing and take friends, get up, swim, have a massage and read a book – there’s nothing better for me.”

 

Nothing better, that is, until the right man comes along and persuades her that she’s been single long enough. Applicants can start forming an orderly line now.

 

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