Small But Perfectly Formed
The Northern Echo, 10 March 2009
CREATE a show based on the lives of four stroppy women and comparison with US hit Sex And The City is perhaps inevitable.
But while BBC series Mistresses features four headstrong female characters trying to find their way through life and relationships, the similarities end there.
While Sex And The City was all sex, shoes and shopping, the first series of Mistresses developed into a compelling drama, showing how making the odd wrong decision can lead to people’s lives spiralling out of control.
It’s now back for a second series, and Sharon Small, who plays mother-of-two Trudi Malloy, believes the show’s success is down to its believable characters.
The 41-year-old Scottish actress says: “One of the fantastic things and joys of acting is looking for flaws in characters – if you are perfect or too likeable, you are not going to be believable so, hopefully, you bring in flaws as well.”
In series one, Trudi was trying to get over the death of her husband, who had seemingly perished in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She formed a new relationship with another single parent, Richard, only to find that her husband had fathered a separate child while working in New York and the love child and his mother wanted a share of the money Trudi had received as compensation.
It later transpired that her husband had faked his death and she had to make the difficult choice of either handing him over to the police and losing the money, or ensuring financial security.
“There’ll be times when you think ‘I can’t bear that woman’ because Trudi has a naivety that I am sure would frustrate some people, but there are people out there who want to believe in their men and are idealistic about relationships,”
Sharon says, explaining that Trudi’s inability to realise when she was being taken advantage of meant she kept making the wrong choices.
While Trudi chose to dob in her husband and series one ended with her happy with Richard, but facing a very uncertain future, Sharon says there are more tough times ahead in series two.
She says: “It is now set 18 months on and Siobhan has her baby and is getting on with being a mum, Katie has a fresh start and re-training again as a hospital doctor.
“Shelley is getting married – to a man – she was previously having a relationship with a married woman – and then my character is still with Richard and we are juggling three children between us and living in two houses and there is not much in the way of romance going on there.”
But while the characters’ may be believable, Sharon does not think all the storylines in Mistresses are particularly reflective of everyday life.
“There is no way you could all have that much drama going on at the same time, so you need a bit of artistic licence so people watch and hopefully enjoy what is going on,” she says. “However, I also think life is stranger than fiction sometimes, and I think people will be able to relate to lots of little bits.
“I know someone who recently said to me, ‘Oh my goodness – my toes were curling, that was my life on the screen’, so there are people out there experiencing issues we deal with on the series – and even stranger.”
Fortunately, Sharon says she has little in common with her character in real life – “I do not think I would make the decisions Trudi makes, I think I am a bit more than cynical than Trudi” – but admits there is one similarity.
“I am the least glamorous, the tired old mum, so there is a similarity between my character and me as I am the tired old mum in real life too,” she says.
Sharon had just had a baby when the first series started filming, then fell pregnant not long after it finished, so she returned to Bristol to film series two with a new baby and an excitable toddler in tow. Luckily, her partner travelled down to help out while she was on set.
Like Sex And The City, everyone is keen to pounce on any stories of diva behaviour or bitchiness on set, but Sharon says there is little chance of that happening with the Mistresses crowd.
She says: “There is no point having competition really, we just really enjoy each other’s style and work and who we are as women, celebrating women, working together playing leads.
“Women can sometimes be very hard on each other or feel a little insecure and so be a little competitive, but I have not experienced that in this at all.”
