Angel Griffin in Cutting It
Angela Griffin may have become a household name with her roles in Coronation Street and Holby City, but it was Cutting It that really saw her stretch her acting wings.
With Cutting It back on TV screen on CBS Drama, we talked to the actress about her memories of starring role on the show, if we might ever see a return of the hairdresser drama and her new tasty project Pigs And Dogs.
Cutting It's back on the air, so what are your favourite memories from the show?
My best memories from being on the show are probably quite blurred. Cutting It remains one of the best jobs I've ever done. It was one of the first jobs I ever did that was away from home, so I was spending the week away and then commuting back to my flat in London on the weekends. We were all around the same age and all became single halfway through the series and because we had such a laugh in terms of our social life, a lot of that I think ended up coming out on screen.
We all bonded straight away and we'd all been put up in flats in the same building so it was like camping or being away at university. It was just a whole load of fun. As soon as we'd done the first series too, we realised we were a part of something really special, something that really captured peoples imagination. People really wanted to see it and we really buzzed off that.
We did some cracking scenes, there was this one where we spent a day filming under a bed. It was me, Sarah Parish, Sian Reeves under a bed in a flat in Manchester and it was just hilarious. How many jobs do you get to do that on!
So is it good to hear that people are enjoying it again now it's back on?
Yeah! And also that it seems to have stood the test of time. I'm getting so many tweets from fans saying that they'd started watching Cutting It again, and they love the show, those characters and want to see it come back. It's still relevant! I know it's not a big, hard hitting drama where everyone's getting stabbed and sent to prison, but this story and set of character are so full and interesting that it has stood the test.
Would you be up for a reunion then if that was possible?
Oh we all would, we talk about it all the time. Unfortunately, the people that originally commissioned it no longer work at the BBC, they're now at ITV and I can promise you, we're constantly mention it too them. They say there's no way we could transfer it over. I think at one point I even wrote a treatment for what I thought the next series should be. It involved Allie coming back as a ghost and all sorts of things.
Honestly, we've got such a fondness for it, me, Amanda, Sarah, Sian and Lucy and we would love to see it come back, but in reality, I don't think it's going to happen.
We've seen you most recently on Mount Pleasant, what's your character Shelley there like?
You know what, Shelley's one of the nearest characters I've had to play to Darcy. My characters have tended to be quite warm, salt of the Earth Norther girls, whereas Darcy and Shelly are quite selfish individuals really, who only cared about themselves and what people thought of them. There's quite a lot of comparisons to be drawn. Obviously, someone who's nothing like yourself, here's hoping anyway, is really interesting to play. She's so much fun.
The difference is though that while Mount Pleasant's a comedy, which Cutting It, while it had it's funny moments, was a drama. So that was lovely, and it was a really nice cast.
Things have changed though since the Cutting It days. I was single and childless until the final series when I had my first daughter whereas filming Mount Pleasant, even though I'm commuting up to Manchester, I've got children and a husband to get back for, so it's not like the olden days (laughs).
You also front Emergency With Angela Griffin. Where did that idea come from?
It was originally just an idea from the production company that they'd worked up. It was another 'blue light' show, but their angle was to put someone from the telly in to that situation. You know, someone slightly normal into that situation and see how they react, because with a lot of those shows, you only see it from the paramedic of police officer's point of view. Because they are so incredibly professional, sometime they'll be doing the most incredible thing, but it's all just in a day's work for them.
So on TV, it just comes across as 'Oh, that's nothing special, I do it every day', they genuinely do themselves down. But then you put someone like me in to the equation going 'You do understand that this isn't normal. That going into a house and bringing somebody back from the dead is not actually an everyday thing' and it's almost like I'm holding a mirror up to them and give people at home a normal person's view of what being in an ambulance was like. Originally though, just the outline came through to me and I said 'Yeah, I'll have a go at that!'.
Did being in Holby City help prepare you at all?
Absolutely not, not at all, not even slightly. It couldn't be any more different. When I first started doing Holby, I went up to Watford General to do some research with my lovely friend Nicola Stevenson and even going on to a real hospital ward does not prepare you for what life is really like at the end of a 999 call. It's unbelievable. I actually miss the adrenaline. Whenever we finish a series, I come home and think 'I can't do this anymore, it's so hard' and then after a couple of months I get the feeling that I need the adrenaline rush and the buzz that comes from it.
It's one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had in my life, and it's one that most people won't get to have unless they're the ones making the call. It's nothing like the telly. In fact, that's all I get when I'm in the ambulance stations; "Casualty and all that's nothing like this. Their ambulances don't break down. They don't show when someone calls up just cause they want us to nip down the shops and buy them the paper", and I just nod and agree. So being on Holby didn't prepare me in the slightest, apart from the fact that I knew what cardiomyopathy is.
You're really into your food too, so what can you tell me about Pigs And Dogs?
Yeah, it's very exciting! It's me and my husband's new little venture. We're going into the street food market, so when I'm not working, I'm going to be serving food out of a hatch in a lovely trendy area of London town. It's something that we've always played with, we're both massive foodies. We've looked into buying cafes before but with our kids being so little and me disappearing off to Manchester for months of the year, it's hard to commit that sort of time to a cafe.
Then we had a look at what we could do around the kids, what my husband could do if I'm not here and Pigs And Dogs was born. We're going to be launching on December 2nd, as long as we get our hygiene certificates sorted that is.
Finally, what's next for you then?
In an acting way, I'm what's known in the industry as 'resting' or 'taking a break'. Otherwise known as I'm waiting for auditions to turn up, going for them, hoping I get them. At the minute there's nothing, we're still waiting to hear on another series of Mount Pleasant, possibly that would mean going back and filming again in February. But at the moment, I've not heard on that, but I always keep myself busy.
Cutting It is on weeknights on CBS Drama.
Click here to buy Cutting It - Complete BBC TV Series : 1 To 4 on DVD
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