{"id":74427,"date":"2025-10-14T17:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/74427\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T17:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T17:54:12","slug":"how-sally-wainwright-made-musicians-out-of-actors-for-riot-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/74427\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sally Wainwright made musicians out of actors for Riot Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

Learning to play musical instruments for Sally Wainwright\u2019s latest BBC drama was a \u201cterrifying\u201d experience for the actresses Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne and Amelia Bullmore. <\/p>\n

In Riot Women, the trio, who are all in their late fifties and early sixties, play a group of friends from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire who form a makeshift punk-rock band.<\/p>\n

Ashbourne, 64, whose credits include Sherwood and Bridgerton, admitted that she underestimated the scale of the challenge after being given five weeks to learn the drums. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Amelia Bullmore, Lorraine Ashbourne, Rosalie Craig, Joanna Scanlan and Tamsin Greig star in Riot Women<\/p>\n

PA<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone thinks they can play the drums and I went into it thinking, \u2018Yeah, easy\u2019, but it\u2019s actually frustrating and really difficult. And now I\u2019ve got huge respect for drummers \u2014 all musicians \u2014 but drummers especially since doing it,\u201d Ashbourne said in a Bafta masterclass.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t pretend that I\u2019m now a drummer. I can do three songs. It was terrifying and not a natural instrument for me by any means.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that it was particularly daunting because Wainwright, the creator of Happy Valley, is herself an accomplished drummer.<\/p>\n

Greig, 59, whose credits include Friday Night Dinner and Episodes, added that her nephew advised her against delaying guitar lessons until the new year after she got the part in November.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Tamsin Greig and Amelia Bullmore were tasked with learning the bass and guitar<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me I needed to start right away,\u201d Greig said, adding that preparations for the show included \u201cvery good, structured, brilliant lessons with show teachers \u2026 an exercise regime and someone we had to play in front of every week. It was absolutely terrifying and thrilling all at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, she said, her character had been written by Wainwright as being \u201ca bit shit at it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was very helpful for me,\u201d she said. \u201cI leant very heavily into my shitness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wainwright, 62, said she had been \u201cslightly worried\u201d that audiences may be surprised by the show, which got two million viewers when it launched on Sunday and had been billed as a comedy drama.<\/p>\n

She said that it actually has parallels with Happy Valley, the BBC drama that ran for three series from 2014 starring Sarah Lancashire played a police officer pursuing a criminal played by James Norton.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Sarah Lancashire and Charlie Murphy in Happy Valley, Sally Wainwright\u2019s gritty crime drama<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n

\u201cRiot Women is not unlike Happy Valley in terms of its depth and the human trauma and emotion that one of the characters had to go through,\u201d she said. \u201cSo while there\u2019s a lot of humour, it also has a much darker theme running through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wainwright added that she has faced questions about Riot Women that she did not believe would have been asked had it not been about a group of women \u201cof a certain age\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting the number of times that I\u2019ve been asked who this show is for and if it is for menopausal women,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if this was a show about men with guns rescuing women then nobody would be asking that question.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times television critic Carol Midgely<\/a> called Wainwright\u2019s latest effort \u201craucously high-energy<\/a>\u201d, adding: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to think of anyone better to write about unapologetic, wall-kicking, midlife female rage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riot Women is on BBC1 at 9pm on Sundays. All episodes are also available on the BBC iPlayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Learning to play musical instruments for Sally Wainwright\u2019s latest BBC drama was a \u201cterrifying\u201d experience for the actresses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-74427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74427","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=74427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}