Actress Alison Steadman reveals her behind the scenes anxiety and how much she loves working with Larry Lamb.
One of the most moving moments in the BBC’s Gavin & Stacey Christmas special has to be when Mick reveals his and Pam’s secret fertility heartache.
Actor Larry Lamb reduced us all to tears when telling Smithy’s stag party revellers how they’d tried and failed to have a second baby.
’It was tough for a while. Heartbreaking some days because it didn’t happen and for a few years we felt there was something missing,’ he said. And in that instant, 19.3 million viewers understood in the drama’s last ever episode why Pam was such an overprotective mum to her precious only boy.
In real life, actress Alison Steadman’s luckier than her alter-ego as she’s the proud mum of two grown up sons - Toby, 45, and Leo, 43 - with her former husband, director Mike Leigh. On the grandchildren front though, Pam wins on numbers with her fictional three - Harri, Caitlin and Megan - as Alison, 78, has just two - Freddie, 7, and Milo born last Spring.
But who’s counting? Not besotted gran Alison who admitted a decade before Freddie’s birth how she yearned to be a grandma and had kept her sons’ childhood toys in the hope they’d be used again.
‘I love kids!’ Alison told Yours magazine last year when she exclusively announced that she was to become a gran again. ‘The happiest times of my life were when my kids were growing up and they were at home. I just loved it. It was a really happy time for me.’
Though she hopes she’s nothing like Pam as a mum, family means everything to Alison. She was close to her own late parents, George, an office manager and Marjorie a housewife growing up in Liverpool with her two older sisters Pamela and Sylvia.
‘I was very lucky. I had lovely parents and they always supported me throughout my career. They were thrilled to bits that I was going to become an actress.’ It was her mum who helped calm Alison’s pre-performance nerves which still bother her today.
‘When I was at drama school I would call her and say, “Mum I’m really scared; I’ve got to go on tonight.” And she would always be calm and supportive.’
Sadly Marjorie, who passed after suffering from pancreatic cancer, was no longer here to calm her daughter ahead of the Christmas special. For despite her overwhelming success playing Pam, Alison was anxious about being back in the popular role.
’The expectations have grown, so everybody I see in the street says, “Can’t wait for Gavin & Stacey!” Which makes me think, “ I hope I don’t let you down.’
‘As the years go on your confidence grows obviously. But there’s always an occasion when you think, “I hope this is going to be all right because that’s life. You need that challenge. You need to face your demons and get on with it, she says.
Naturally Alison didn’t let anyone down, as the staggering viewing figures have shown, but filming was a fraught time, especially as for the past year, she’s been regularly travelling from her north London home to Liverpool to help care for her older sister Sylvia, 91, who has dementia. Their middle sister, Pamela, passed away two years ago.
‘She’s bed bound and has no one to help her except me,’ she has said. It’s made for an exhausting time.’ Alison told Yours previously, ’She’s not great so it’s quite sad.’
Inheriting her mum’s natural positivity, she hasn’t complained despite earlier admitting that filming is ‘very tiring.’ Off set, Alison, who lives with her long time partner Michael Elwyn in North London, loves nothing better than spending time with her nearest and dearest.
‘I’m happiest when I’m with my family,’ she says. Only a 15 minute walk away lives her screen husband Larry Lamb who she met before doing Gavin & Stacey. They had been introduced by a mutual friend and were in the drama The Missing Postman, together.
When they did audition together for the roles of Pam and Mick she recalls, ‘We read some stuff and we chatted with the director. and it kind of clicked. It just clicked. It was lovely. It was brilliant.’
Since describing Gavin & Stacey as ‘the best job ever’ she adds, ‘Right from the start it just felt so easy. The writing was brilliant. It felt right. You didn’t feel you had a lot of acting to do. It was just there.’
It’s unlikely they’ll be playing Mr and Mrs Shipman again, but they still have some ‘good laughs’ together off set as they did on.
‘We see each other now and again and we message each other. It's just lovely to have that relationship. We’ve become friends, not just colleagues’
‘Larry and I are friends as well as colleagues. As the years go on your confidence grows.’