Sarah Parish is known for her TV roles, often playing formidable, sometimes chilling, women. In recent times, she has been the titular antihero of ITV’s Bancroft, as well as making smaller, eye-catching turns in W1A, Industry and the Netflix hit Stay Close. Next up, after a long break, Parish returns to the theatre, starring in Trouble in Butetown at the Donmar Warehouse as Gwyneth, the landlady of an illegal boarding house in Cardiff during the second world war. Parish is married to the actor James Murray and they have a daughter.
Trouble in Butetown is a new play by Nigerian-British playwright Diana Nneka Atuona. Why did you want to do it?
Well, I’ve got a real thing about new writing. I’m asked to do plays quite a lot and I don’t really have a desire to do stage work that is done over and over again. It’s just something that has never floated my boat. But new writing and creating characters that have never been seen or heard before, I find that really fascinating. And when you get to my age, there’s still lots of parts there, but they are maybe not as challenging. So to go on stage and go: “Oh, thank God, this is really stretching me”, that’s what you need as an actor.
Last year, it was announced that the Donmar would lose its Arts Council funding, about £500,000 a year. Do you feel under extra pressure to make this show a massive hit?
Ha! No, you can’t think like that as an actor. But it is a huge mistake: we have to protect our smaller West End theatres. It’s lovely to have all these great big musicals where things fly into the audience, but they cost hundreds of pounds to see. These smaller venues are so precious: to actors, directors, writers and audience members alike. So, though obviously I’m not surprised that our government has made this decision, I’m also horrified.
Is it true that you were housebound for months last year with a back injury?
Well, no. Actually I broke my back the year before [2021]. I was shooting Industry and luckily, [in that show] I’m usually sitting at a table in a restaurant, having a go at someone, so I could do that with a back brace on. But then last year, I had another very bad accident and I broke both my ankles, I had multiple calcaneal [heel bone] fractures. I jumped from a… well, what I didn’t know at the time, but it was quite a high height, I sort of fell off a fence. So yeah, I’ve got a terrible habit of breaking bones.
Erm, can I ask how you fall off a fence? Were you, maybe, a bit drunk?
Not drunk enough, let’s put it that way. There’s a pop festival very close to where we live and we get free tickets. So every year we go on a Saturday for three hours, have a burger and a couple of cans of beer. But all the exits had changed because of the pandemic and we couldn’t find our way out. So we had the stupid-slash-bright idea to climb up one of those marshal towers and get over the fence. But it was the drought, so the ground was rock hard and I let go too early and landed badly.
You were stuck at home for three months. Was that a mental challenge?
Oh, it was a tough old time, that. I run a charity with my husband, the Murray Parish Trust, and we had a campaign called Hares of Hampshire. So if I had to do anything for that, like public speaking, I had an electric wheelchair that I could buzz around in, like a really bad Bond villain. But after that, I fell into quite a bad depression. The reality of what happened had really sunk in and I was like: “Jesus, I’ve really fucked myself” – I can’t think of a better word. “I can’t work, I’m having to turn stuff down…” So there were a couple of very, very blue weeks in October. But I think this play, in a way, has really saved me. It’s given me something to work towards.
Which TV shows do people tend to recognise you from?
Gosh, it’s either Cutting It, Mistresses or W1A. Cutting It and Mistresses were long-running shows and they had big, big audience figures, so I understand those, and I think with W1A, some people just loved it so much.
And you sometimes also get credit for Suranne Jones’s output as well?
[Laughs] Not any more! I think there was a point where I was doing Bancroft and she was doing Doctor Foster and we both had dark bobs. We do look slightly similar, I suppose. Not massively, but slightly.
You once said that you didn’t have “a nice, cute little face”. Does that affect the roles you play?
I do get cast as a lot of killers and a lot of quite tough women. So I’ve obviously got that look about me. But so far, so good. Whatever the face is doing, I’m happy with it.
Has it been weird watching your husband play Prince Andrew in The Crown?
Fuck, yeah! Of all the princes he could have been! It was quite funny when he got the audition, he was up in Scotland with his friend [the actor] Robson Green. So he had to put himself on tape and Robson Green had to play the Queen, which really made me laugh. But it was shocking on the tape how much Jim managed, through his own physicality, to look like Prince Andrew. It was quite frightening. And I think he does it really well. A little too well!
