Former Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page has opened up on a very awkward encounter on a set that she once worked on. While she didn’t name the programme that it happened on or the man behind the actions the Welsh actress confessed that she was once “groped halfway through filming”.
In her autobiography book Lush!, Joanna recalled the moment that she was warned that a TV presenter was “very handsy”. A female producer reportedly told the actress: “He’s probably going to start touching you, but that’s just him.” Joanna wrote: “I was quite nervous meeting him anyway, but that doubled as I sat there waiting for him to spring on me.” Following on from her writing, in a recent interview with the Telegraph, the BBC star admitted that the producer’s prediction had come true. “Halfway through filming, he starts groping me,” she said. “I hit his hands and said: ‘What do you think you’re bloody doing? Keep your f***ing hands to yourself! … Jesus, I feel like I’m in Bristol Zoo being mauled by the lions.’ He stopped. It was bizarre, a female producer telling you this was going to happen, but it’s what you got used to.”
When asked why she wouldn’t name the man, Joanna admitted: “The legal people said: ‘Be careful!’”
The Stacey actress previously said that writing her tell-all book has been “like a therapy session” as she looks towards a new chapter of her life.
However, fitting it in to her busy lifestyle was a major challenge as she shared that she often had to resort to writing in car parks – depsite fears that she may “be attacked”.
She told the BBC: “I love telling stories and it was very exciting thinking I’m going to write my life story because a lot of things have happened. But trying to do that while looking after four children and four guinea pigs and a hunky husband is quite hard work.
“So at five o’clock I’ll hand the kids over to James, make myself a quick cup of tea, grab a chocolate bar and drive to a little local pub that is just waiting to change hands, so nobody is going there. I’ll park in the car park, think of stories and write notes until 11.30 at night when I’ll start freaking out, thinking I’m going to get attacked.
“So then I will drive to the car park of this cricket pitch closer to our house and work until about 1.30 in the morning and it’s pitch black outside. When I think about it now it’s ridiculous.”