On set with Amanda:

On June 2nd, I went down to Elstree studios and interviewed Amanda on the set of Holby City. After a brief tour of the set and a visit to the Prosthetics department we went to Connie's office and spent twenty minutes chatting about Connie's first eventful year in Holby.

Quick Questions

Kayleigh: Hugh Grant or Colin Firth?
Amanda: Colin Firth.
K: No wrong answer.
A: No I’ve worked with Hugh Grant, its Colin Firth.
K: Is it a bobble or a hair tie?
A: A bobble, it has a round thing on it.
K: Do you have a middle name?
A: Amanda Jane.
K: With a ‘y’?
A: No, plain Jane.
K: Blonde or dark?
A: Dark, dark is in, people are done with blondes, dark is in.
K: Do you have frizzy hair?
A: Yes, very frizzy.
K: That was because Gary Beadle did an interview for his Holby City episode and he said something about you and having frizzy hair…
A: *laughs* I’m going to so get him, you know Gary and I have known each other since we were about 15.
K: What’s you favourite chocolate bar?
A: Green and Blacks, erm, don’t know which; I would say maybe the maya gold or maybe the dark chocolate, less sugar.
K: Do you have any tattoos?
A: Yes.

K: Right now for the burning questions, if you could play any character in the history of TV, who would it be?
A: Erm, I’d like to play Sally Bowles in Cabaret but that’s theatre. On TV... TV or film?
K: Either.
A: Well Cate Blanchett did a fantastic Elizabeth the first so I don’t think I could do that. Ahh there is someone, there is. Yes there’s definitely someone but I can’t think who.

K: If you were stranded on a desert island, what things would you take apart from Richard and the boys?
A: A boat…
K: A boat? That’s a bit practical really.
A: I know, I’m very practical really. Hmm what would I take? Sunscreen *laughs* I’m always going on about sunscreen. A knife, some music and… an endless box of matches.

K: Do you have any of the same qualities as Connie?
A: We look similar, I don’t know… I’m quite driven but not to the point of Connie. I love my job probably as much as she does. I think, we share a passion for work.

K: Who chooses your wardrobe, you or costume?
A: Me, well between us we kind of agree it but yeah me.

K: Can you still ice skate?
A: Yeah, absolutely. Not to the standard I did but yeah.

K: You’ve spoken both French and Japanese on screen; can you speak either of them properly?
A: No, I can speak a little bit of Spanish; I can get by in Spain.
K: The Japanese was really impressive.
A: Do you know, they rang me up the night before when I was at home and said we’ve got a new scene for you tomorrow and you’re speaking Japanese and I was like “Ha-ha yeah right” and I came in the next day and that was it.
K: Did you know what it meant?
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were Japanese people that I was talking to and so they had it written in English and spelt phonetically in Japanese and then I spoke it with the Japanese people and they were very impressed.
K: Took us ages to figure out what the French one meant…
A: I know, that was good fun actually because that’s a real challenge and I like that. I’ve never spoken Japanese in my life. Arigato gozaimasu is about it and that’s thank you. So I did like that.

Amanda on;

Connie and Michael...
She does not have children. But that’s the thing; she gave up the idea of having children for her work. And she and Michael were sort of a power couple and they agreed not to have children and just concentrate on their careers so that, yeah that’s a definite no-no. But as things go on the characters developed and so the detail changes slightly but I think generally the thing is her mentor and her inspiration, he was a very, very hard man but a very great surgeon and his mode of teaching she’s taken up. That’s why she was so hard with Will. She just doesn’t have time for timewasters. Because she’s so driven she expects everyone else to be like that, and she doesn’t understand why people don’t want to be like that. But I don’t think, I suppose it doesn’t matter who you play whatever your character you have to find some sympathy for them, even if they’re a murderer, in their minds you have to justify what they’re doing. So I can justify everything that Connie does.

Why Connie is like she is...
She’s not mean. There are times like with Will’s death you see why she behaves like she does. I think a lot of people see how why, why she’s hard. She’s really hard but she’s only hard for the right reason. If you’re not good at your job then she doesn’t care about you but if you’re good then she wants to make you better. And that was the training she had, you know she’s hard but she’s not unfairly hard.
I think what’s happening now is, introducing Michael you get to see, not a softer side, but a more personal side of Connie and then you know with things that are about to happen, you get to see that she’s not as bad as she seems. She’s all bark and no bite really and it’s just about the hospital and making it the best she can. So I think by the end of the year people will understand why.

The future...
There’s obviously the fall out from that (Chrissie and Michael) and various scams. What you get to see is who Michael is. And you see that Connie’s not quite that bad. I think most people will be anti-Michael by the end of the year.

Other characters...?
No. Absolutely not; I love Connie. I love Connie.