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<\/p>\nTwo years ago Sarah Parish seemed to be in everything, from Netflix\u2019s Geek Girl, in which she was an imperious model agency chief, to Paramount+\u2019s dystopian Curfew, where she was (as so often) a veteran cop. The scene seared into me, however, is from BBC1\u2019s Industry. As the predatory financial client Nicole Craig, Parish had sex with an investment banker 30 years her junior but the morning after woke up dead \u2014 a bad outcome but, you know, good for Nicole anyway.<\/p>\n
So I am alarmed to see who Parish portrays in ITV\u2019s frenetic police academy sitcom Piglets, which returns this week for a widely unexpected second series. In a savage grey wig and tombstone fake gnashers, she is Superintendent Julie Spry, a lesbian who admits to having been called a \u201cbarren, withered hag\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d forgotten about that line,\u201d Parish says when we meet in her exceptionally large house in Hampshire, which she shares with her actor husband, James Murray (today out fishing), their 15-year-old daughter, and workers for their charity, whose origins and aims Parish will later explain. \u201cJulie did find that a step too far. She could probably handle \u2018barren\u2019, but \u2018withered\u2019? I think she thinks she\u2019s still got a good few years in her yet. I think she thinks she\u2019s fairly attractive.\u201d <\/p>\n
In any case, I say, Parish, who is 57, looks about 20 years younger than Spry. Is she that rare thing, an actor without vanity? <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think there can\u2019t really be vanity in acting. I mean, I understand that there is. I know there is because whenever I do want to play a part with no make-up, the first thing the make-up lady says is, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, we can stick on some false lashes\u2026\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
As she had done for lonesome Anna Rampton, the BBC\u2019s \u201cdirector of better\u201d, in W1A, to play Nicole in Industry she worked up the character\u2019s backstory. \u201cWho am I? Why would I do that? So when you go into a scene like that, you know why you\u2019re doing it. It\u2019s not just, \u2018Now we\u2019ve got to simulate hard sex in front of an entire crew and it\u2019s going to be awkward.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
And for Spry, how much hinterland was necessary? \u201cNot a lot really. It\u2019s all about the wig and the teeth.\u201d <\/p>\n
So, what does she think of critics these days, I ask. The first season of Piglets was ITVX\u2019s biggest comedy yet and attracted an average of 1.6 million viewers a week, but it received astonishingly bad notices \u2014 even the Police Federation, which found its title offensive, piled in. \u201cWell, it is the Marmite of sitcoms, isn\u2019t it, really?\u201d Parish says.<\/p>\n
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With Mark Heap in the new season of Piglets<\/p>\n
MONIKER PICTURES<\/p>\n
I say The Times gave it four stars<\/a>. \u201cGood grief,\u201d she says with a gasp. \u201cComedy is a very personal thing. If you don\u2019t like slapstick, stupid, in-your-face, on-crack comedy, this isn\u2019t for you. If you want to watch W1A, which is very naturalistic and almost a mockumentary, then Piglets is not going to be for you. But as actors, we want to do everything.\u201d <\/p>\n I gamely suggest that Piglets is about hormonally charged youngsters and antediluvian oldsters trying to navigate woke. \u201cI do think there is a time and a place for political correctness,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m all for political correctness. There\u2019s a place for Les Dawson. There\u2019s not a place for Bernard Manning, because one was funny in a loving way and one wasn\u2019t funny, in a hateful way.\u201d <\/p>\n But our discussion misses the defiant pointlessness of Piglets. The two 22-year-old charity workers who live above her garage love it, she says, \u201cbut I haven\u2019t even let my husband watch it because I know he\u2019ll just go, \u2018This is so stupid.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n The two of them (Murray plays Prince Andrew in The Crown) sometimes discuss their careers. Would it have been better had they been bigger stars, or would fame have intruded upon their own hinterlands? In truth it was not really a choice. There were rumours 25 years ago that Parish had signed a \u201cgolden handcuffs\u201d exclusivity deal with ITV, but she says that was never true and the overexposure would probably have been unwise in any case. <\/p>\n Did she ever feel on the cusp of true stardom? After, perhaps, playing the head stylist in the hairdressing drama Cutting It at the turn of the century, or the randy GP Katie in Mistresses a little later? \u201cI don\u2019t think I ever was on the cusp of it. I was always like a C student at school and I\u2019ve always just been a working actor, just a jobbing actor. And sometimes that\u2019s really frustrating and sometimes it\u2019s a real gift because it means you can go for all sorts of different parts. I don\u2019t get great big huge leads in amazing things, but I get really good parts.\u201d <\/p>\n She was the title character, a psychopathic senior cop, in ITV\u2019s compelling thriller Bancroft but it was cancelled after two seasons. The first, in the winter of 2017, had huge viewing figures because, she says modestly, Britain was snowed in. Come season two, the weather and ratings were less kind. \u201cIt\u2019s not about the show a lot of the time: it\u2019s just about the luck.\u201d <\/p>\n Parish may be the least egotistical, most grounded actor I have interviewed. Perhaps she was always like this, the Somerset girl who wanted to be a dancer but was judged by the Royal Ballet School to be growing too tall so joined instead Yeovil Youth Theatre, which was more fun and less commitment. After drama school, she worked in \u201cvery odd pub and physical\u201d theatre until her first television job: \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, hello. This money is great.\u2019\u201d Filming Cutting It in Manchester, she partied hard. \u201cWe were of an age where we could do a whole day\u2019s filming and then go out and get drunk and get up the next day and still look good. Which, of course, can\u2019t happen now.\u201d <\/p>\n Yet mothers on ITV dramas begin every evening with a \u201cwell-earned\u201d glass of wine? \u201cI noticed that the other day. Like, every time I see this woman \u2014 I won\u2019t say the show \u2014 she\u2019s got a massive glass in her hand. I\u2019d be absolutely shit-faced.\u201d <\/p>\n Parish and her husband James Murray have raised millions for children\u2019s charities<\/p>\n GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Or perhaps her wisdom was hard-won. In 2008, the year after marrying Murray, her first daughter, Ella-Jayne, was born with the rare genetic disorder Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome. It is highly debilitating but not in itself life-limiting. Three days after Ella-Jayne\u2019s birth, however, the baby needed her first heart surgery. <\/p>\n \u201cIt would have meant a hoist. It would have been maybe non-verbal. It would have been a very, very different life for us. But we got better at it. We were like, \u2018OK, we can do it. We\u2019ll manage. We\u2019ll do it.\u2019 And you start to look forward to that life: \u2018This is going to be great. This is a real challenge but we can do it.\u2019 And then for it to be snatched away so quickly\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/4af66fa9-7f22-4bdc-8b57-abdcca8e25bd.jpg\")
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