Joan­na Scan­lan: ​‘I’ve usu­al­ly done com­e­dy but I’ve nev­er felt that’s me’

She stole every episode of TV’s The Thick of It as the lov­ably bum­bling Ter­ri Cov­er­ley, and then went on to receive acclaim and awards with her own hos­pi­tal-set sit­com Get­ting On. Her recent film roles have includ­ed a budgie-lov­ing, cat hat-wear­ing out­sider in Deb­o­rah Hayward’s Pin Cush­ion, and now the lead role Aleem Khan’s After Love, in which she plays Mary, an Islam con­vert who dis­cov­ers her late hus­band has anoth­er fam­i­ly across the Chan­nel in Calais.

LWLies: You’re known main­ly for your com­e­dy roles, par­tic­u­lar­ly played in a dead­pan mode, but After Love feels like some­thing dif­fer­ent for you in that it’s pure­ly dramatic.

Scan­lan: I always feel that, as an actor, when I approach any script, I look for the func­tion of the char­ac­ter with­in the whole. What is that char­ac­ter bring­ing to the par­ty? That’s where that know­ing or wink­ing thing comes in, because usu­al­ly the char­ac­ters I play want to make some­one laugh, and I’ve usu­al­ly been employed to do com­e­dy. How­ev­er, I’ve nev­er felt that is me. I’ve just nev­er been asked to let that drop. Of course, it’s a clas­sic case of get­ting employed on what somebody’s seen of you before. ​‘Oh I liked that, let’s have a bit more.’ I think I feel more at home not play­ing comedy.

It’s almost as if some­thing falls away, and I can be myself. A lot of com­e­dy is about cov­er. What’s fun­ny is some­one cov­er­ing some­thing up in them­selves, whether it’s self-decep­tion, or decep­tion to oth­ers. That’s part of the com­e­dy, and some­thing we recog­nise about our­selves. But it’s the let­ting go of that cov­er­ing, and being able to find a true emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, some­thing real­ly raw, that I was able to do with Mary. That was a love­ly, love­ly thing to do. I’m quite a raw per­son. I cry every day. Things get to me. So it’s just nice to be in that place and just ​‘be it’.

When you talk about that process of explor­ing the char­ac­ter, how do you actu­al­ly do that? Was it some­thing Aleem was involved in?

Yes. He was very clear about what he want­ed. He was pre­scrip­tive in terms of how things would be played. In a way, part of the job was to meet that in every scene. But then there’s anoth­er job that only the actor can do, which is to be in a state of being that the cam­era is going to pick up, which is not real­ly about where you’re stand­ing or what you’re feel­ing. It’s some­thing that’s a cou­ple of lay­ers back from that. In order to get into that place, a lot of the research real­ly helped.

How deep did you go on the research front? It feels like you could’ve spent a long time prep­ping for this role.

I had to learn a lot about Islam. I didn’t have to learn about bereave­ment, but I had to think about it and go into mem­o­ries of griev­ing. Then there was also a lev­el of research I did with Aleem’s mum. As he’s said, it’s not strict­ly a sto­ry about his fam­i­ly, but he was inspired by them to write it. I found spend­ing time with his mum the most pro­found kind of research. She was a white, work­ing-class girl in Waltham­stow who mar­ried a young Pak­istani immi­grant when they very young and she had to forge a life through the decades. She brought up six chil­dren. She was just the most the delight­ful per­son. And so inspir­ing. Cut to on set, in my inner tool­box, I had that pres­ence of Aleem’s mum with me.

What kind of ques­tions were you ask­ing her? Were they relat­ed to the film?

No, noth­ing about the film. I was just curi­ous about her life. Aleem had told me lots about his life and expe­ri­ences. From the out­side it wouldn’t have looked any dif­fer­ent from friend­ly chat­ting. Some­how that makes an imprint. It’s sol­id. You can keep it with you. Then you have this kind of fusion with your own psy­che, and you can cre­ate some­thing new. It’s a mys­te­ri­ous process.

With Khan’s con­nec­tion to the mate­r­i­al, did you ever find that you were being asked to recre­ate a scene that actu­al­ly happened?

There’s noth­ing in there that actu­al­ly hap­pened in life. It’s entire­ly fic­tion­alised. There was nev­er sense that it had to be like it was in his mem­o­ry. But there was always a sense in which I was a sort of man­nequin. Like a man­nequin with flesh on. I was moved around. Placed. Which is some­thing that hap­pens a lot in cin­e­ma. There was a sense that Aleem was quite imag­is­tic and cin­e­mat­ic. As an actor, you have to just throw your­self into that. You have to let it hap­pen to you. Some­times it doesn’t feel very nice, as if you don’t have very much con­trol. It’s ulti­mate­ly going to give you the best reward.

After Love is released in 4 June via BFI Dis­tri­b­u­tion. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.