{"id":563632,"date":"2026-05-03T07:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T07:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/563632\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T07:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T07:28:11","slug":"sarah-parish-sex-scenes-in-the-nineties-could-get-pretty-awkward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/563632\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Parish: \u2018Sex scenes in the Nineties could get pretty awkward\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Posh pissed English woman \u2013 that\u2019s me, smoking,\u201d says Sarah Parish<\/a>, taking a drag on an imaginary cigarette. The laugh she emits moments later, throaty and faintly lascivious, sounds like a car engine turning over.<\/p>\n

The archetypal role she\u2019s talking about, in films and TV, is in the likes of Christmas staple The Holiday (2006), as the sozzled Daily Telegraph editor to Kate Winslet<\/a>\u2019s lovesick columnist; patchy romcom The Wedding Date (2005), as the perennially worse-for-wear TJ; and across three series of BBC drama Mistresses, as a GP whose penchant for the wine rack is as liberal as her approach to medical ethics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t playing far from type,\u201d she says, recalling times spent in the late Nineties staggering through Soho House, drink in hand. \u201cWe were of an age where we could do a whole day\u2019s filming, 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

We\u2019re in Toynbee Studios in east London, where Parish is rehearsing for her new play, Eclipse, which opens in Chichester on Friday. Settling into her chair, dressed in a blue and white chunky pinstripe shirt, jeans and Nikes, she offers me a tea and gestures towards a medley of biscuits and chocolates. As advertised, she is exceedingly warm, not to mention free of ego.<\/p>\n

At 57, Parish has hit a sweet spot halfway between driving ambition and the imperative to savour everything she does. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether I\u2019ve got enough time in my life, now, to do things I might not really want to do,\u201d she says, with mellow contentment. \u201cI\u2019ve got maybe 20 years. What do I really want to do? What\u2019s going to feed me and make me want to get up in the morning?\u201d Theatre, she says, ticks a lot of these boxes.<\/p>\n

Eclipse is the first stage play by John Morton, creator of W1A, Twenty Twelve and Twenty Twenty Six<\/a>, those wonderful deadpan BBC mockumentaries of British institutional life. Of course, Parish and Morton go back a while. He gave her Anna Rampton, the near-monosyllabic Director of Better in W1A, whose \u201cYes. No. Exactly\u201d has become a kind of cultural shorthand for institutional evasiveness.<\/p>\n

\"TreadingTreading the boards once more: Parish in rehearsals for \u2018Eclipse\u2019 (Ellie Kurttz)<\/p>\n

Set in the kitchen of a Devon rectory, Eclipse has a simple premise. Parish and Spooks star Rupert Penry Jones play a brother and sister fixated on banalities \u2013 talking about the toaster, bins, roads \u2013 while their father lies dying in the next room. \u201cIt\u2019s the last 24 hours of somebody\u2019s life,\u201d Parish explains. \u201cAnd it\u2019s how families are with each other around death \u2013 the bad behaviour, the good behaviour, the revelations.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Eclipse sounds morbid, Parish is quick to add that it\u2019s very droll, full of observational comedy. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t write jokes,\u201d she says of Morton. \u201cHe just writes characters that are real and recognisable in a way that becomes very humorous. I hope it\u2019s funny, anyway. Otherwise we\u2019re just finding ourselves funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask about one of the hot-button issues in theatre right now. Last month, speaking on Radio 4, Lesley Manville declared it insulting<\/a> when theatregoers photograph curtain calls, urging them to \u201cclap or don\u2019t clap, but don\u2019t just stick your phone in our face\u201d. Parish isn\u2019t so sure.\u201cYou\u2019ve got to have your phone to get in, but then you\u2019re suddenly telling them, \u2018No, put your phone away.\u2019 I understand what Lesley\u2019s saying, but these people have paid 200 quid to sit in the audience. I kind of go, this isn\u2019t the precious memory you\u2019re supposed to keep in your head. This is a bunch of actors going, \u2018I hope you enjoyed what I did.\u2019 Personally, I don\u2019t mind if somebody wants to take a picture of me.\u201d But, she adds, it\u2019s \u201cunforgivable to get it out while someone is performing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018It\u2018It got amazing viewing figures\u2019: Parish in ITV\u2019s psychological thriller \u2018Bancroft\u2019 (ITV\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

What troubles her more is the hammering successive governments have given the arts. \u201cIt\u2019s so detrimental to life, to the way countries are run, to human beings,\u201d she says. \u201cTo take money away from the arts \u2013 the one thing people need in terrible times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The consequences, says Parish, fall hardest on working-class kids. \u201cThe first things that get scrapped in schools are drama and music and arts. And if the outlets are not there for them, what are you going to do? I do still think it\u2019s pretty manipulated by the middle class.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Meryl Streep is to imperious suffering, or Cate Blanchett is to glacial authority, Parish is to women who wield enormous amounts of control \u2013 and then start to lose it. A classic example is Bancroft<\/a>, the 2017 ITV psychological thriller in which her hard-bitten detective \u2013 who has spent decades concealing a murder \u2013 is slowly, inexorably found out. If Parish always had one of those \u201coh, I know her\u201d faces, thanks to parts in Broadchurch<\/a> and Doctor Who<\/a>, it was Bancroft, out of nowhere, that made her a household name. The series was a huge, unlikely hit. \u201cIt snowed really, really heavily the day before it aired,\u201d says Parish. \u201cIt was January, nobody had any money, nobody was going out \u2013 and then Bancroft came along and got amazing viewing figures. It was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theatre could be our last chance of actually going to see a human being<\/p>\n

Since her late forties, Parish has been consciously seeking out, in her words, \u201cedgier roles\u201d. She found one in Industry<\/a>, the twisted HBO\/BBC banking drama created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, in which she played Nicole Craig, a formidable senior financier. \u201cShe\u2019s a bloody predator, a grotesque,\u201d says Parish, \u201cbut they write these people so well. They don\u2019t buckle and go, \u2018Oh no, we better put something sentimental in,\u2019 to make sure Nicole is not that bad. None of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The role\u2019s most notorious scene \u2013 in which Nicole masturbates a callow young trader in the back of a limousine \u2013 required Parish to work opposite Harry Lawtey<\/a>, 30 years her junior. While she has mixed feelings about intimacy coordinators \u2013 vital in some situations, she thinks, while in others you don\u2019t need to be \u201cconstrained by the minutiae\u201d \u2013 for that scene she was grateful. \u201cIn the Nineties, it could get pretty awkward. The director would go, \u2018Right, and then you get to this bit, and then, you know, you just have sex.\u2019 I was like, \u2018Blimey.\u2019\u201d She pauses. \u201cIt\u2019s important young actors feel safe, that they feel held and protected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Yes.\u2018Yes. No. Exactly\u2019: Parish as the TV executive Anna Rampton\u00a0in the BBC\u2019s\u00a0\u2018W1A\u2019 (BBC)<\/p>\n

Parish grew up in Yeovil, Somerset, the youngest of three in a musical household. Her father was a helicopter engineer, her mother a deputy headteacher who ran the school drama group. Her brother John, meanwhile, is a longtime collaborator of the visionary singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. Most recently, he produced Aldous Harding\u2019s new record. Parish recalls a young Polly Harvey coming round on Thursdays, when John was teaching her guitar. \u201cShe didn\u2019t talk that much \u2013 quite shy, quite private. But I remember thinking, \u2018She\u2019s interesting.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Parish herself wanted to be a ballet dancer. She auditioned for the Royal Ballet School when she was 11, but managed to forget her kit in the boot of the car. At 17, she arrived in London, where she sold fake gold chains in a Wood Green shopping centre, cleaned flats at the Barbican, and attended a now-defunct drama school, ALRA.<\/p>\n

Parish went into the industry, she says, already convinced she didn\u2019t belong \u2013 \u201cI am an imposter, I should not be here\u201d \u2013 sitting in audition rooms alongside Rada and Drama Centre graduates, who breezed in radiating a confidence she had no idea how to replicate. \u201cI don\u2019t come from a famous family. I don\u2019t come from London. I didn\u2019t go to a posh drama school\u2026 I should have been a little bit more confident that I could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the late Noughties, flush from the success of her hit hairdressing drama Cutting It, Parish flew over to the US for pilot season, hoping to land herself a series. \u201cLA,\u201d she says, \u201cis a funny place. You never feel like you can relax. If you go out to a restaurant, there could be somebody there who could be a director. You\u2019re always on point. And I found that really difficult. I\u2019m quintessentially very British, and I think that doesn\u2019t help.\u201d The sycophancy made her skin crawl. \u201cI feel very uncomfortable with a lot of smoke being blown up my arse.\u201d And then there was the sexism. \u201cWhenever I went over there, the guys were having a f***ing great time. But all the girls looked like they were about to have a nervous breakdown. And I just felt there was something really grubby about it. I was so glad to get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

After she came back and got pregnant, Parish was struck by tragedy: she and her husband, actor James Murray, lost their daughter Ella-Jayne at eight months old. She had been born with a rare genetic condition and a hole in the heart. \u201cYou are living by your fingernails,\u201d Parish told The Times. \u201cAnd then it\u2019s over.\u201d The couple went to volunteer in orphanages in Cambodia and Vietnam, before having a second daughter, Nell, now 16. They set up the Murray Parish Trust \u2013 now renamed Imagine This \u2013 supporting the mental health of seriously ill children and their families. Last year, the King awarded them both MBEs.<\/p>\n

As our conversation ends, Parish finds herself circling back to the thing that seems to motivate her the most: theatre. We don\u2019t have community any more, she says, and \u201cno one really goes to the cinema any more. Theatre is like cinema used to be. It\u2019s just that community feel of sitting with other people and enjoying one experience.\u201d She thinks about AI. \u201cTheatre could be our last chance of actually going to see a human being,\u201d she says wryly. \u201cThey\u2019re coming for your job. They\u2019re coming for my job. And it\u2019s terrifying.\u201d Then the engine backfires, mid-laugh. \u201cWe\u2019re all f***ed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Eclipse\u2019 is at Chichester\u2019s Minerva Theatre, from 8 May – 6 June; tickets here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-563632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}