Sharon Duncan-Brewster

Plays
Crystal Gordon

“I was pretty nervous coming back.  The guys had been back for four months.  I’d come back in November and done one day’s filming, but when I came back properly, I thought ‘Oh - can I do what I was doing before?  How does Crystal talk?  I talk a lot like her anyway, but she’s a bit more streety with her voice, and her mannerisms.  The next thing I knew it was ‘action’ and for a couple takes I was so nervous that I couldn’t speak.  It was like being back at school.

This series we get to see a much more glamorous Crystal: “I’ve got my way with my hair this year.  I turned up to meet the gang with my hair long, down to my bum and Kate Rudlin (make-up designer) must have thought ‘Hmmm… long hair…’ I think it’s Crystal becoming a bit more modern.  I couldn’t stand that short hair.  You have to have it pinned in, and just at the most important part of the scene, a little lock of hair would flop down… some directors just couldn’t stand it!  So my hair behaves a bit better now.  I think now Crystal’s with Josh, it’s chilled her out a bit.”

Talking of Josh: “Lovely Josh (Nathan Constance).  It’s lurve.  I don’t know for him why it’s love.  Crystal’s such hard work.  She won’t let him go near her – separate beds, in this day and age.  But he does get the old how’s-your-father in the laundry room this series, which I think was really sweet, it was done in a really nice way.  Even down to how they treated us on set.  When I read the script I thought, ‘It’ll just be covers up to chins, it’ll be all right!’ But then people in make up were saying ‘What are you going to wear?’ and I said ‘What do you mean?! It’s up to chins, it’s up to chins!!’  On the day of filming, I went into my changing room, and it was a boob tube and a pair of hotpants! All that time they were joking about me wearing stuff, it was true.  Everyone was really sweet.

“Crystal is the good girl in Bad Girls.  This time, she’s there under false pretences really.  She’s more tormented.  For the first time she’s tried really hard to stay on the straight and narrow, no stealing at all, she’s found the man of her dreams, she’s getting married, everything’s going fine… and then who turns up at her door….Shell and Denny?!  There’s a kind of code among ex-offenders and people inside, they all stick together, and I think that’s why she took them in. She could have said no, but….”

Sharon Duncan-Brewster is the only actress in a family of doctors and nurses.  She has just bought her first home.  Last year Sharon opened on off-Broadway, in the critically acclaimed play Yard Gal, which she premiered at the Royal Court in 1998.  Most recently she has performed at the Hampstead Theatre and is due to start filming Baby Father for the BBC.