Loyalty, support, and 'the sisterhood' are there in spades in 'Jamestown.'
— Sophie Rundle
Filming 'Jamestown' in Budapest for six months felt like summer camp. There was a lovely cast of 16 actors, and we got along so well.
My mum and dad aren't actors, but we all sit around doing impressions.
In a drama, you generally have to be very faithful to the script and the storyline, and it all has to fit together, and it's weighty and serious.
We don't see a lot of LGBTQ representation in period dramas because there was so much shame around it at the time. The stories that we tell about that time don't tend to focus explicitly on those sorts of characters, which is nonsense because they existed.
I love a period drama - the theatricality of going into work and having that distance between yourself and the character you're playing.
I haven't just been swanning around Hollywood, you know.
It's ridiculous, the people I get to work with.
I want to be old Princess Margaret, without a doubt. Kaftan wearing, Caribbean island-dwelling... that's my inner spirit animal.
All Anne Lister wanted was a wife, and the other liaisons couldn't commit, but Ann Walker did. She took sacrament with her, and they became wife and wife. That shows extraordinary strength.
That's something I've been conscious of and want to make true in all jobs I do. It's important we have women at the front and centre.
You just hope each job is going to be as good as it possibly can be.
I'm fascinated by female relationships.
I get embarrassed saying what I do. If you're chatting to a cabbie, and they don't know you're an actor, I cringe because it's always coupled with the inevitable, 'So, what have I seen you in?' And you're left reciting your CV.
Some of my best friends now are from drama club.
It feels a lot freer doing a comedy.
When people write about someone else, you have to take it with a pinch of salt.
I think that we're starting to allow ourselves to imagine that gender doesn't have to be binary, sexuality doesn't have to be binary, and you are allowed to choose who you love, how you behave, and how you dress.
I trained at RADA, then went into the theatre, but TV is like starting at the bottom again. I have just been learning.
I've never had a mental break-down, where I've grappled with my own sense of religion, but I've definitely had my heart broken and fancied people I probably shouldn't have fancied and all that stuff.
I think I just have one of those faces that can look like lots of different people.
If we don't start representing women properly on screen now, we're never going to change our opinion of them as a society.
I don't think I look like I do on the telly.
I don't know. I feel really lucky. I've just got work in the way that I really enjoy working. That's not too much fuss. Just getting up and going on set every day.
The 'Jamestown' set was so convincing. It had been raining for a few days before we started filming, and when we turned up, we were knee-high in mud. There were pigs and goats everywhere, too, which meant the whole place smelled pretty ripe. It definitely helped us enter the 'Jamestown' world immediately.
As a family, we'd watch films and talk about people on screen - what was good or bad and whether you believed them and their stories. I loved that.
The joys of making a comedy are that it feels very playful and silly, and the energy is totally different because they want you to feel free enough to come out with something a bit mad.
I think, in a comedy, it's easy to play people as very two-dimensional. But what is enjoyable to watch is seeing a more fully rounded person.
I'm fascinated by delving into the historical context of what life was like in the past.
As a woman, you're expected to behave and model yourself in a certain way, but that's not right for everybody.
So often, when you're an actor, you're told what to do and what to say and what to wear. Your opinion is, at best, tolerated and, at worst, not wanted.
I'm always going to be an actor first and foremost, but I certainly want to have a voice in the kind of work that I'm doing.
I've done shows before where it's supposed to be about the women, and then it quickly turns out it isn't.
It's the reason I love doing TV - revisiting stories and characters and the length of the story arcs.
I rarely get recognised. Almost never.
I'd always wanted to act - since I starred in 'Alice in Wonderland' as a girl, that was it.
