Kika Mirylees

Plays
Julie Johnston

Kika loves the fact that she is so different from her character Julie Johnson in real life, especially the look.  “They do quite a good job at transforming me!  The make-up department just whack it on!  Julie’s make-up is very, very thick and she has all these slides and little clips and things in her hair.  We use bright colours, lots of blues on the eyes and very caked on.  It’s very sixties/seventies and over-the-top tacky.  Bless her, she doesn’t have any taste at all.”

And that’s what is so endearing about the Two Julies – “they think they have wonderful taste!  They love it when they talk about the magenta lipstick or the apricot blush as they take their make-up very seriously.  It’s something they’re really into – given half a chance they would open Salon de Julie!  I do enjoy that side of it, and once I have the clothes on it changes me completely!”

For the inseparable Two Julies it looks like a trial separation might be on the cards this series and as KIKA describes, “it takes Julie J along a suicidal path… the whole thing starts to fall apart for her.  The thought of losing Julie S (played by Victoria Alcock), even though it would be because of electronic tagging, is too much for her.  The two of them must have worked for 15 to 20 years together, so it is a long, long time that they have done everything together. The Two Julies have offended and re-offended over the years – together.

“My Julie is the weaker of the two. She really relies on Julie S to support her.  Dear old Julie J, she just chug chugs along and tries to keep up with her leader Julie S”. 

If Kika is not on set she is busy looking after her four horses!  “I am horse crazy!  I’ve just bought a bull-fighting horse from Portugal for dressage.  I had been in Portugal during the summer dressage training on Lusitano stallions, which was incredible and ended up buying one!  I am now looking for my own land with a partner to start breeding and training horses.  We’re going to start breeding with my Danish Warmblood mare, who is another amazing horse!  That’s what I really want to do, train horses but using new techniques – that’s my dream for the future.”

Kika Mirylees’s television credits include: Doc Newton in Red Dwarf, Lucy Harcourt in Class Act, Angela Snow in The Darling Buds of May, Andrea in Canary Wharf and Flora Meinnes in Strathblair.