{"id":77912,"date":"2025-10-14T13:59:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T13:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/77912\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T13:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T13:59:20","slug":"gavin-stacey-star-joanna-page-was-told-you-cant-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/77912\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin & Stacey star Joanna Page was told ‘you can’t act"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"StillStill Moving Media for Cheltenham Festivals<\/p>\n

Joanna Page was speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival about her new autobiography<\/p>\n

Gavin & Stacey star Joanna Page has said she was told at drama school that her performances were poor because she is Welsh.<\/p>\n

Page, who played Stacey Shipman in the hit comedy, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in London where she says she was constantly told she could not act.<\/p>\n

On her final visit to the school, a director’s assistant told her he realised that she was not, in fact, a bad actress, but the problem was that she is Welsh, Page said.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t believe it. I turned around and I walked out, and I have never, ever been back since,” she told the Cheltenham Literary Festival on Monday.<\/p>\n

“I’d left early to go and work at the Royal National Theatre and I was doing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and I came back because I wanted to do my three, which is when you do your monologues to get agents,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I had an agent by that point, but it was a point of principle, and I wanted to go back and I wanted to do my three.”<\/p>\n

The actress said a director’s assistant came up to her and told her that “all these years” he thought she was a poor actress “but it’s not that, it’s that you’re Welsh”. <\/p>\n

Page, who grew up in Swansea, also said during her career she had suffered “loads” of “MeToo moments” and said it was the “norm”.<\/p>\n

\"PAPA Media<\/p>\n

Joanna Page, pictured with Ruth Jones (right), on set filming the Gavin & Stacey Christmas Day special in Barry<\/p>\n

“I remember one particular job I was doing on the telly and there was this one actor, and nobody liked working with him,” she said.<\/p>\n

“He was just very difficult to work with and was just so sort of smutty in everything he was saying, but you just had to get on with it.<\/p>\n

“As a young female it’s utterly terrifying and if somebody says stuff that is really inappropriate it is very difficult as a young woman to go, ‘can we just stop filming?'”<\/p>\n

Page, 48, who is married to fellow actor James Thornton, said an out-of-the-blue missed call from Gavin & Stacey co-writer James Corden tipped her off that the finale of the show<\/a> was being made, meaning the 2019 Christmas special cliffhanger of Nessa’s proposal to Smithy would be resolved.<\/p>\n

\"BBC\/ToffeeBBC\/Toffee International Ltd\/Tom Jackson<\/p>\n

Gavin & Stacey cast (L-R): Nessa, Stacey, Gwen, Gavin and Uncle Bryn<\/p>\n

“I just thought, ‘oh my God, it’s happening, it’s happening’. I was excited because I thought, ‘I’m going to know if he says yes, I’m going to know if he says yes,”‘ she said.<\/p>\n

“When they said, ‘don’t tell anybody,’ I said, ‘oh my God, James, of course I won’t’.<\/p>\n

“I put the phone down and phoned my mother. And then I told my husband and then when the script arrived, I just showed it to mum straight away and James.<\/p>\n

“One time I was trying to learn my lines and I was sitting on the bed in my bedroom with my mum going over the lines and I made my daughter go out of the room.<\/p>\n

“She had a funny look on her face as she was leaving, and I looked under the bed and she put her iPad under there and on record. I took it out and deleted it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Still Moving Media for Cheltenham Festivals Joanna Page was speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival about her new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-77912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77912","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=77912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}