{"id":507923,"date":"2026-07-03T12:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/507923\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T12:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:54:10","slug":"suddenly-i-was-a-celebrity-i-didnt-want-to-be-sue-johnston-on-fame-loneliness-and-her-new-robot-pal-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/507923\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Suddenly I was a celebrity. I didn\u2019t want to be!\u2019 Sue Johnston on fame, loneliness and her new robot pal | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sue Johnston is the kind of actor who usually can\u2019t stand seeing herself on screen, but for Ann Droid she made an exception. The new sitcom by Diane Morgan<\/a> and Sarah Kendall<\/a> stars the 82-year-old as a recent widow whose son hires a humanoid robot called Linda (played with delightful uncanniness by Morgan herself) to assist her after he moves out. The results are initially farcical: Linda is a dated \u2013 and therefore relatively cheap \u2013 model who lacks the intelligence of newer variants and attempts to cheer people up by blasting Cotton Eye Joe at them. Yet the pair soon become inseparable. Johnston describes the show as \u201crich with humour and love\u201d. When she watched it back, she found it so absorbing that \u201cI forgot it was me \u2013 I very rarely do that and\u00a0I just enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann Droid is worth raving about on its own terms \u2013 it\u2019s rambunctiously funny and exceptionally poignant \u2013 but it is clear Johnston\u2019s enthusiasm stems from somewhere else too. \u201cI\u2019m proud of Diane and I just want it to work for her,\u201d she says with feeling. The pair met on the set of the Sky sitcom Rovers before Morgan made it big with Philomena Cunk and Motherland and kept in touch. \u201cWhich you don\u2019t with everyone. We\u2019re both silly about our dogs; we just made a connection.\u201d She was thrilled to reunite. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot about Diane that reminds me of Caroline Aherne. They\u2019ve got that northern, straight-face, cut-through humour. And they\u2019re\u00a0geniuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The down-to-earth humour, exquisite pathos and weary warmth Johnston brought to The Royle Family<\/a>, Aherne\u2019s masterpiece, is all present and correct in Ann Droid, too: I cried at least once per episode. \u201cThere was only ever Sue Johnston that I wanted for this role,\u201d says Morgan (hard evidence: she even named the character Sue). \u201cShe\u2019s so adept at comedy obviously but is also incredibly moving in the more emotional scenes. She\u2019s very relatable too, which helps. Basically she\u2019s a perfect human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fun ride \u2026\u00a0Johnston as Sue with Diane Morgan\u2019s Linda in Ann Droid. Photograph: Justin Downing\/BBC\/Boffola Pictures<\/p>\n

Playing Sue didn\u2019t require a huge leap for Johnston. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of self-recognition in it. Except that I hadn\u2019t lost a husband \u2013 I had one and lost him 100 years ago.\u201d (She divorced director David Pammenter, with whom she has a son.) Sue comes to treasure Linda\u2019s companionship, and Johnston very much \u201crecognised the loneliness thing. Although I have a very full life, there is a loneliness that creeps in when you\u2019re old and you\u2019re on your own.\u201d We first meet Sue in hospital after a fall; Johnston had one herself last year. \u201cSince then my son wants me to move near him but I\u2019m fiercely independent. If he could have got me a robot, he\u2019d\u00a0have got me a robot!\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnston really doesn\u2019t come across as someone struggling to cope. Aspirationally groomed and glam in an emerald green Issey Miyake pleated coat (a devoted Liverpool fan, she\u2019s also wearing a 97 pin to commemorate the victims of the Hillsborough disaster), the actor also seems to have been working relentlessly. Johnston entered public consciousness as a beleaguered matriarch \u2013 first as Sheila Grant in Brookside, then as Barbara in The Royle Family \u2013 before going on to star as forensic psychologist Grace Foley in the popular police procedural Waking the Dead<\/a> for 11 years. Lately, however, she\u2019s been appearing in a slew of prestige television series about the elderly, including Ben Wheatley\u2019s comedy horror Brexit allegory Generation Z<\/a>, in which she played a pensioner turned zombie, and Truelove<\/a>, about a group of old\u00a0friends who decide to help each\u00a0other die.<\/p>\n

Does she still have a lot of energy? \u201cNo,\u201d she says bluntly, then laughs. \u201cI\u2019m all right when I\u2019m at work and there\u2019s a sort of adrenaline; get up at five and go, I can do that. But when I\u2019m not working, I\u2019m buggered. I do take it easy.\u201d The roles she has been offered recently must have been hard to resist \u2013 a far cry from the kindly grandparent characters of yore. Why are there so many meaty, edgy parts around for actors in their\u00a070s and 80s nowadays? \u201cI\u00a0think that\u2019s down to the generation we were,\u201d says Johnston, who sees a through line from 1960s rebellion to modern-day popular culture. \u201cIt was almost revolutionary how we broke out of the traditions our parents grew up in. We were the ones that got miniskirts and wild music and fought for a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having grown up nearby, Johnston spent some of those years at Liverpool\u2019s Cavern Club, working for a time for Beatles manager Brian Epstein (she was the assistant to his assistant\u2019s assistant) and becoming close friends with Paul McCartney. We speak a couple of weeks after the latter released his 20th solo album to much acclaim \u2013 yet more evidence that the cohort who broke out of societal strictures aren\u2019t being sidelined in the way their predecessors were. \u201cI saw Joan Collins being interviewed last night, she\u2019s in her 90s and she\u2019s playing the lead in her film,\u201d marvels Johnston. \u201cPeople don\u2019t dismiss the old as much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Family care plan \u2026 Johnston with Diane Morgan, Andrea Valls and Paul Ready in Ann Droid. Photograph: Gary Moyes\/BBC\/Boffola Pictures<\/p>\n

In TV terms, Johnston is up there with the greats, but I think it might be scientifically impossible for her to be less of a luvvie. Rather than holding forth on her craft, she describes approaching projects with \u201cpanic and nerves. You don\u2019t know whether you\u2019re going to have the capacity to do it.\u201d You might attribute this lack of ego to her career trajectory; she was 38 when she shot to fame in Brookside in 1982. It was \u201ca shock \u2013 suddenly I was a celebrity. I didn\u2019t want to be!\u201d By then she had been working as an actor for decades, including 11 years in theatre and education. The experience of taking drama to schoolchildren may also be why she\u2019s such an emotionally convincing actor. \u201cKids can see right through you \u2013 and will say! That\u2019s what makes good drama, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

In less capable hands, Ann Droid\u2019s dramatic arc could have been a tough sell. Set a handful of years into the future, it sees many frightening predictions around AI come true: robots are decimating the job market, and Sue\u2019s son Michael (Morgan\u2019s Motherland co-star Paul Ready) is eventually made redundant by a machine. Yet he\u2019s so lazy, selfish and useless it\u2019s hard to feel sorry for him. This is a world where robots are loyal and egoless, while the humans (Sue aside) are crushing disappointments.<\/p>\n

Did filming Ann Droid make Johnston view our tech-dominated future more positively? She recently saw a video of robots running a marathon (\u201cThey moved exactly like Diane did!\u201d) and found herself looking at them \u201cwith more affection than I would have done in the past\u201d. Still, she\u2019s far from an\u00a0AI\u00a0advocate. \u201cI feel 50\/50 about it. There is a danger it could fall into\u00a0the wrong hands because there\u2019s a lot of wrong hands around at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she started out, \u201cyou\u2019d just kiss somebody or smack somebody, nobody cared\u201d. For one scene in Brookside, her on-screen husband Ricky Tomlinson (who also played her other half in The Royle Family) had to hit her across the face; when their characters fought they\u2019d \u201cjust grab each other\u201d, she recalls with a shrug. \u201cI think it\u2019s better that people are cared for,\u201d she quickly clarifies. \u201cI\u2019m not saying go back to smacking each other!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Down the memory lane \u2026 Johnston with Ricky Tomlinson, Craig Cash Caroline Aherne and Ralf Little in The Royle Family. Photograph: Granada\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

That said, those days are full of precious memories. In between takes of The Royle Family<\/a>, the cast \u201cnever got off the sofas\u201d. Instead of going to trailers and dressing rooms they stayed \u201cnattering and laughing \u2013 the crew as well\u201d. Johnston describes herself as the \u201cstraight man\u201d and felt it was a \u201cprivilege\u201d to watch her cast mates clown around. \u201cRicky\u2019s a great raconteur, so is Craig [Cash] and Caroline.\u201d On set they had a \u201cnaughty corner\u201d, where they had to stand if they laughed during a take or forgot their lines. Eventually, the carpenters built an\u00a0actual cell-like structure \u201cthen\u00a0the sparks [electricians] put\u00a0a\u00a0blue light over it\u201d.<\/p>\n

She still feels the loss of Aherne, who died of cancer in 2016<\/a>, greatly. They were very close: in her 2011 memoir, Johnston wrote that \u201cCaroline calls me her second mum\u201d. After Aherne died, \u201cRicky had these paintings done of her from an artist friend of his for us all. Mine\u2019s at the bottom of the stairs, so when I come down every morning, I go \u2018Morning!\u2019\u201d As many times as Johnston has moved me to\u00a0tears on screen, I\u00a0wasn\u2019t expecting to actually start crying during our interview. Yet she relates this routine with such understated sadness that I\u2019m\u00a0left\u00a0temporarily speechless. \u201cIt\u2019s horrendous,\u201d she nods.<\/p>\n

In the book, Johnson also writes about her fear that the phone will never ring again after finishing a project. She recently wrapped series three of James Graham\u2019s superlative state-of-the-nation drama Sherwood (she plays an \u201cold-school working-class woman \u2013 a battleaxe\u201d) and says she has nothing else in the diary. Does she genuinely worry about work drying up? \u201cEvery actor does. You finish the job and you say: \u2018Great, I can\u2019t wait to be on the sofa with the dog.\u2019 Then two weeks later you think: \u2018Oh, that might be my last job.\u2019\u201d As strange as it sounds, I believe her. Well, of course I do: it\u2019s impossible not to be convinced by Sue Johnston. Which is precisely why she won\u2019t be on that sofa for long.<\/p>\n

Ann Droid starts on 17 July at 9.30pm\u00a0on\u00a0BBC One.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sue Johnston is the kind of actor who usually can\u2019t stand seeing herself on screen, but for Ann…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-507923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}