{"id":352129,"date":"2026-03-22T10:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/352129\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T10:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:20:15","slug":"ive-never-really-been-in-a-relationship-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/352129\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve never really been in a relationship before\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Aprils ago, Jessica Gunning was shopping in Covent Garden for hairspray. She popped into Space NK, where a woman asked her for a selfie. A line of people quickly formed and on leaving the store Gunning found an even longer one snaking down the pavement. \u201cThere must be one of those pop-up shops,\u201d she thought and joined the rear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To her surprise everyone in the line turned round. \u201cWhat\u2019s this about?\u201d she asked, puzzled. \u201cWhat are we waiting for?\u201d The queue had to explain: \u201cWe\u2019re waiting to meet you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d Gunning exclaimed. \u201cOhhhhh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having worked as a character actress for 16 years, she hadn\u2019t been entirely unfamiliar with strangers\u2019 attention. \u201cVery occasionally \u2014 maybe once a month, only in central London \u2014 someone might say, \u2018How are you?\u2019\u200a\u201d They usually knew her face from The Outlaws, Stephen Merchant\u2019s BBC comedy drama in which she played a probation officer. A few had seen her as a barmaid in the modestly successful Channel 4 comedy drama Back. \u201cBut often they\u2019d think I was Janice from the Co-op or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When Netflix released Baby Reindeer in the spring of 2024, Gunning had hoped the low-budget drama \u2014 presented as \u201ca true story\u201d \u2014 would find a small but appreciative audience. She played Martha, a mentally unstable fantasist who stalks a stand-up comedian\/barman played by Richard Gadd, who wrote the series and essentially played himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dream,\u201d Gunning recalls, \u201cwas always to be in something that was critically acclaimed. You know, respected and liked and connected to \u2014 that\u2019s the bit that I craved all my life. I never thought of the fame or recognition side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000982874756\"With Richard Gadd in Baby ReindeerNetflix<\/p>\n

Within weeks of its release more than 80 million people across the world had watched Baby Reindeer. Internet sleuths swiftly identified the real-life Martha as Fiona Harvey, a Scottish woman who, like Martha, claims to be a lawyer. Harvey appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored, flatly denied having ever stalked Gadd and issued a $170 million defamation lawsuit against Netflix. Baby Reindeer filled global column inches and airtime for months, won Gunning an Emmy, a Bafta and a Golden Globe, and made her face one of the most famous on the planet. Overnight, at 37 she became someone strangers stop in the street \u201cevery hour\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t really, even in my own head, explain what the whole process was like,\u201d she murmurs, searching for words. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to be looked back on by maybe all of us involved as feeling almost like a dream. Everything that happened, the intensity of it, the unexpected\u2026\u201d The sentence tails away into dazed silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BabyFiona Harvey, the inspiration for Gunning\u2019s character, on Piers Morgan UncensoredUNPIXS<\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking in the dressing room of an east London studio, while the usual hoopla of a magazine photoshoot \u2014 stylist, make-up artist, clothes rails, photographers \u2014 sets up next door. Warm and unaffected but faintly self-conscious, Gunning seems apprehensive about the attention. \u201cI never wanted to be famous. I never wanted to be known as myself.\u201d It\u2019s easy to see why she gets mistaken for Janice from the Co-op.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now \u201cBaby Reindeer\u2019s Jessica Gunning\u201d is about to be everywhere. This Easter holiday\u2019s big cinema release is an adaptation of Enid Blyton\u2019s The Magic Faraway Tree, in which she plays Dame Washalot in an ensemble star cast featuring Michael Palin, Lenny Henry, Claire Foy, Jennifer Saunders, Andrew Garfield and Nicola Coughlan. This summer she co-stars with James Norton and Bella Ramsey in Sunny Dancer, an improbably funny British film about a holiday camp for teenage cancer patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001065280993\"With Bella Ramsey and James Norton in Sunny Dancer, in cinemas this summer<\/p>\n

Last autumn she began filming another British film, Frank and Percy, alongside a trove of national treasures \u2014 Derek Jacobi, Sheila Hancock, Stephen Fry, Ian McKellen and Felicity Kendall. An American comedy movie, Anxious People, co-starring Angelina Jolie, Jason Segel and Aimee Lou Wood is also in production. In May we\u2019ll see her in a new Steven Soderbergh movie, The Christophers, co-starring James Corden, Michaela Coel and McKellen again. And just last month Gunning was announced as the lead in a new Hollywood biopic of the Mamas and the Papas singer Mama Cass Elliot.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be approached by a big American production to play the lead,\u201d she marvels softly. \u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true, isn\u2019t it?\u201d As she says so, however, she sounds like the opposite of a lottery winner and looks daunted, so I ask why.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident in how I work.\u201d She describes herself as \u201ca geek\u201d and could easily have filled our two hours together talking about her fascination with stagecraft and reverence for her co-stars\u2019 brilliance. But her confidence, as I soon begin to see, doesn\u2019t necessarily extend to herself as a person.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"PortraitSane Seven for The Sunday Times Magazine. Hair and make-up: Dani Guinsberg. Styling: Hope Lawrie. Green dress by Asos Curve. shoes by jimmy choo<\/p>\n

Gunning grew up with two younger sisters in the small West Yorkshire town of Holmfirth, where Last of the Summer Wine was filmed, \u201call cobbled streets and fresh air and hills\u201d. Her father worked for the council and her mother taught English and drama at Gunning\u2019s secondary school. Never a rebellious teen \u2014 \u201cNo! Because of my mum, the teachers were real people to me\u201d \u2014 she starred in school productions, joined a local drama group and was voted head girl, so I ask if she was cool.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way. I used to have long pigtails and wear a No Fear cap backwards, so definitely not cool. But I was friendly with everyone and I always liked to be funny. I\u2019m from a funny family, my grandparents were funny, my uncle and auntie, my mum, dad, all of them. So I grew up around a lot of laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

On winning a place at the Rose Bruford drama school in southeast London, Gunning staged a production of Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Holmfirth to raise money towards the cost. Two roles in National Theatre productions after graduating quickly launched her career, but for the next eight years Gunning averaged little more than one job a year \u2014 Law and Order: UK, Doctor Who, Holby City \u2014 and worked in an office doing admin to make ends meet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"JessicaGunning as a drama student at the Rose Bruford College in southeast London, c\u20052007Courtesy of Jessica Gunning<\/p>\n

Her father badgered her to come up with a plan B if acting didn\u2019t work out, but Gunning was having none of it. \u201cI was, like, why would I want to do that? I want to be an actor. I don\u2019t want to fall back on anything else.\u201d She looks fleetingly bashful. \u201cThere\u2019s a natural instinct in everyone that\u2019s either glass half full or half empty, and I\u2019ve always been on the optimistic side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gunning quite liked being able to say she had an office job, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t want to be, like,\u201d and she adopts a deep Rada voice, \u201cI\u2019m an act-torrrr.\u201d But in 2014 she was making coffee in the office when a bus passed the window emblazoned with an ad for a film she was in called Pride. Seeing her own face beside Imelda Staunton\u2019s, she exclaimed to colleagues, \u201cI\u2019m on that bus there!\u201d \u201cOh, great,\u201d replied one. \u201cCan you take those to meeting rooms two and four, please?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I was, like, I\u2019m on a bus. And I\u2019m serving coffee in the office \u2014 not that there\u2019s anything wrong with that. But that moment made me feel like I need to just be brave and just be an actor.\u201d She quit her job and hasn\u2019t stopped working since.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001065559223\"With Stephen Merchant in the BBC comedy series The Outlaws (2021)<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000159750774\"In Inside No 9 with Julie Hesmondhalgh, Steve Pemberton, Mark Benton, Reece Shearsmith and Jack Whitehall (2015)BBC<\/p>\n

Landing the role of Martha in Baby Reindeer would be her career-defining big break, but it came at an equally momentous and unexpected point in her private life. In November 2022 Gunning happened to get chatting with a lesbian who casually referenced the moment when she\u2019d realised she was gay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I was, like\u2026\u201d Gunning mimes a lightbulb moment, \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m gay!\u201d It was a stunning revelation. \u201cEveryone around me was gay. I just didn\u2019t think I could be.\u201d Now, all of a sudden, she knew.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m gay,\u201d she blurted out loud, but the woman assumed she was simply stating a known fact, not an epiphany, and the conversation moved on. Later that day Gunning visited a friend. \u201cShe opened the door and took one look at me and went, \u2018What\u2019s changed?\u2019 And I went, \u2018I\u2019m gay!\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

None of her friends were surprised by her news. Her family thought it was \u201cgreat\u201d and were \u201clovely\u201d about it. The puzzle is why she hadn\u2019t recognised her own sexuality until then. \u201cI think it\u2019s because I\u2019ve never been in a relationship before. With anyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one at all? \u201cNo, not really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001065751286\"Gunning as a young girl, front left, with her grandmother, brother and sisterCourtesy of Jessica Gunning<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001065751279\"Aged tenCourtesy of Jessica Gunning<\/p>\n

I ask what story she told herself to explain why she\u2019d never had a relationship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, not to get too deep, but it was probably that I didn\u2019t want to go out with guys and so I was finding a way to avoid it. I never knew how to flirt, I didn\u2019t get it. And I was always friends with guys and would set them up with other friends. In a way it was, like, \u2018Great, because I\u2019m not interested.\u2019\u200a\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matchmaking gave her a purchase on the romantic economy without requiring her to go to bed with anyone? \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her family wasn\u2019t at all worried about her celibacy and nor was Gunning. \u201cBecause my job was my passion and my love. And the characters I got to play, I felt like I maybe lived vicariously through a lot of them. I felt very sexual and I felt very connected to myself, so I was so happy in so many ways. It didn\u2019t feel like I was lonely. I lived with my best mate. I felt fulfilled. So I didn\u2019t feel like I was lacking anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Apart from sex? \u201cYeah, apart from sex.\u201d Thirty-six years was a long time to go without it. \u201cYeah,\u201d she agrees quietly. \u201cYeah.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hesitantly, she volunteers, \u201cIt might be connected to size. Maybe because I was bigger, I\u2019ve always felt like \u2014 it\u2019s hard to word this because I don\u2019t want it to seem like I\u2019m saying it in a negative way, because it definitely isn\u2019t, I didn\u2019t feel like an alien in a negative way \u2014 but it was like an otherness. And the otherness, I suppose, looking back, protects me from having to go, \u2018I don\u2019t fancy men.\u2019 So I was just, like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s not the time for me,\u2019 or whatever. And then, before I knew it I was in my thirties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chubby from early childhood, she never tried to lose weight. \u201cLuckily not. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve got that much of an unhealthy relationship with being bigger. I\u2019ve never yo-yo dieted or anything like that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LosOn stage at the Emmys after winning best supporting actress for Baby Reindeer in 2024Alamy<\/p>\n

I ask if size has always felt central to her identity. \u201cYeah, I think quite quickly size was connected to my identity. And funniness and all that kind of stuff.\u201d She pauses. \u201cBut there was a slight, not defensiveness, but I was, like, is it my identity? Sometimes parts would come in that I\u2019d actively try to avoid if they were just written as a big lady. Sometimes bigger characters can be lazily written, so I kind of avoided a job where it was \u2018She enters eating a pizza\u2019 or whatever, or when you\u2019d get the breakdown for an audition and it would say something like \u2018Karen, 25, chunky or curvy\u2019. Loads of my favourite characters never have that kind of descriptive word.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At drama school her dissertation was titled Does Size Matter?, which allowed her to \u201cmeet loads of people in the industry to talk about whether it does or not. Those chats made me realise I never wanted it to be like a defining thing. My favourite casting directors or actors or directors are the ones that think outside the box and can see when being bigger isn\u2019t in the character description but just works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mama Cass will be a rare exception. \u201cShe is a fascinating woman because she was probably one of the first famous big women.\u201d The movie is an adaptation of a memoir by Cass\u2019s daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, who was just seven when her 32-year-old mother died in her sleep, of heart failure probably brought on by obesity, crash dieting and drug abuse. The memoir debunked the cruel myth that Cass died choking on a ham sandwich, and Gunning shares Elliot-Kugell\u2019s indignation that this falsehood \u201cended up being the defining narrative. Imagine being reduced to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MamaThe singer Mama Cass, whom Gunning plays in a forthcoming biopicGetty images<\/p>\n

The plot will include Cass\u2019s love for her band member Denny Doherty, which was always described as unrequited. \u201cBut the daughter met him later in life, before he died, and he basically said she was the love of his life. He was just too embarrassed to go out with her because she was bigger. So size is going to be quite a big part of her story.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gunning is pleased to be involved in the project at its early stage and can bring her own perspective. \u201cBecause sometimes you can make a fat joke and there\u2019s no vulnerability to it, it\u2019s just funny.\u201d She tells me about staying at a hotel near Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, a floor of which had been booked by the New York Jets, an American football team. Two actors were staying on their floor and when Gunning tried to visit their rooms she was stopped by the Jets\u2019 security guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see he was, like, \u2018I know this lady.\u2019 And he went, \u2018You\u2019re one of the chefs, right?\u2019 And it made me laugh so much because of course he\u2019s going, \u2018How could this lady be related to the Jets? What job could she do? She must be a cook.\u2019 And I promise you, I find that 100 per cent funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask if she\u2019d describe herself as body positive. \u201cIt\u2019s all very nuanced and everyone\u2019s different, so it\u2019s hard to speak on behalf of anything, really. I never want to be a spokesperson for anything.\u201d She also doesn\u2019t want to talk about politics, her opinion about weight-loss drugs or the recent Tourette\u2019s furore at the Baftas, and can\u2019t discuss the controversy about Baby Reindeer\u2019s veracity while Fiona Harvey\u2019s Netflix lawsuit remains ongoing. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily a relief,\u201d she tells me, but I bet it is.<\/p>\n

She has always said that she played Martha as a purely fictional character and tells me that she didn\u2019t research Harvey and had been completely unaware of their physical resemblance until online sleuths outed her. She hasn\u2019t even watched Piers Morgan\u2019s interview with Harvey, seen by more than 15 million viewers. Wasn\u2019t she even slightly curious?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt very protective of Richard,\u201d she says of the show\u2019s creator and changes the subject.<\/p>\n

I would bet my house that Gunning is a dream to work with. \u201cI love filming, I love getting to know the crew. We get so close, I always grieve it when it\u2019s over.\u201d Every time she references a fellow actor, her face fills with the same tender affection I see whenever she mentions her family in Yorkshire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cObsessed\u201d with her young niece and nephew, she goes home \u201cmore than ever now, just to see them\u201d, and has \u201cat least eight, maybe ten\u201d godchildren. \u201cI love children.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PortraitSane Seven for The Sunday Times Magazine. Hair and make-up: Dani Guinsberg. Styling: Hope Lawrie. Green dress by Asos Curve<\/p>\n

Having never been on social media or snapped by paparazzi, she has kept her private life private, so I ask if she now has a girlfriend.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh gosh, I wish I had more juicy gossip. But since I came out, everything happened with Baby Reindeer. So that\u2019s been nuts. I\u2019ve had two\u2005\u201d she begins but stops. \u201cI suppose I\u2019ve just been focused on work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although currently single, \u201chopefully I\u2019m open to it. I\u2019m a big believer in love.\u201d Has she tried dating apps? \u201cI just like the idea of meeting someone in real life. I\u2019m a bit of an old-fashioned romantic at heart; I\u2019m a bit of a believer in fate and chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baby Reindeer catapulted Gunning from jobbing obscurity to stardom, so if it hasn\u2019t yet found her a girlfriend I assume it has at least bought her a house. She laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaterially, nothing\u2019s changed.\u201d She has never owned her own home and still rents a flat in south London. \u201cMaterially, I have nothing. But Mama Cass might be a bigger thing, I guess.\u201d I\u2019m pretty sure Hollywood can afford a south London flat, I say, but Gunning shrugs as if she couldn\u2019t really care less about the money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, maybe.\u201d
The Magic Faraway Tree is in cinemas from March 27<\/p>\n

Opening image: Sane Seven for The Sunday Times Magazine. Hair and make-up: Dani Guinsberg. Styling: Hope Lawrie. Green dress by Asos Curve<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Aprils ago, Jessica Gunning was shopping in Covent Garden for hairspray. She popped into Space NK, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-352129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}