Natalie Cassidy: Growing Up As 'Sonia'

By Tim Wilson

Natalie Cassidy has literally been growing up on-screen thanks to her role as Sonia Jackson on EastEnders, but to her it’s no big deal. Let me tell you, this is a young lady with a really good head on her shoulders. And it was my good fortune to have the opportunity to sit down with her at the EastEnders studios recently to discuss, oh, this and that.

Walford Gazette: Thanks so much for agreeing to do this, Natalie. I know all your schedules here at EastEnders have been going haywire since the show added a fourth episode in August, and things haven’t quite settled down yet.
Natalie Cassidy: It’s my pleasure. I like the Gazette – I’ve read it over here – in the make-up room!

WG: We’re honoured. You’ve been doing the show for how long, then?
NC: Eight years, believe it or not. Started here in 1983. I was ten – I’m eighteen now. Legal! (laughs) I guess you could say I’ve grown up here. It’s hard to believe at times, but it’s great. I’m very lucky to have been given the chance to work here – I know there are worse places to grow up than a successful television show!

WG: I gather your getting cast in the first place wasn’t courtesy of a standard audition process?
NC: No, it wasn’t. It was through this school I went to – Anna Scher’s.

WG: Oh, yes, Patsy Palmer (Bianca) and Sid Owen (Ricky) went there, too. An after-school acting school, of sorts.
NC: Yes, exactly. A lot of other actors on our show have gone there, too, like James Alexandrou, who plays Martin. Anna’s so great. It was just an after-school activity, really. A neighbourhood thing as well because it was so near to where I lived, in Islington, in North London.

WG: Were you ever in the same class as Patsy and Sid?
NC (smiles): No, they’re older than me so they were in the “grown-up” class! Going there was like taking up a hobby, like going to a youth club. I always enjoyed it and made lots of friends there.

WG: It seems to be a place where the kids aren’t put under pressure to book jobs, unlike some other so-called “theatre schools.”
NC: That’s right. Anna Scher’s kept your head on the floor! It’s not a place which is concerned with making kids go out to an audition where they must put on a fake smile and say things like “Hi! I’m Natalie! Let me entertain you!”

WG: Like Baby June in the musical Gypsy?
NC (laughs): Yes. Ugggh. So the EastEnders people stopped in one day and saw us do some improvisations and theatre games. Tony McHale, who created the Jackson family, was there to have a look around. So was the casting adviser, Jane Deitch. They liked me, apparently! I got sent up here to Elstree for what we here call a “re-call,” did my thing and got the part!

WG: There was no matching up of the Jackson family members?
NC: No, it was all decided without doing that. I don’t think it particularly mattered that none of us kids looked much like each other because all our characters had different dads!

WG: Speaking of dads, I gather your dad is one of the reasons you became interested in acting?
NC: Absolutely. It all started with the fact that Dad was and is a HUGE Frank Sinatra fan. And so was I, from the time I was two years old. I developed a real passion for him and his singing. In fact, I’d stand in the middle of our living room and belt out all his great hits like My Way and The Lady Is a Tramp!

WG: Did they let you hold a glass of Scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other?
NC (laughs): No, of course not, they didn’t want me to pick up his bad habits! I must have been two or three when I’d stomp into the kitchen or wherever and order them to put “Frank ’n Arthur” on our stereo system. I didn’t know that his last name was really Sinatra because I was so small! Frank ’n Arthur – Frank Sinatra! (laughs) I really, really loved him. What a brilliant singer. He told a story when he sang, didn’t he? He was unique – a poet. I know every word to each of his songs and every bit of the Nelson Riddle musical arrangements, too! I have a shrine to him of sorts in the hall of my small flat! I’ll always love him. He’s the man! So my parents could tell from all my carrying on in the living room that there was something there – that maybe I was interested in entertaining or becoming an actress. They never pushed me into it, which was good, but they always supported me through it, which makes a big difference, I think.

WG: Did you start off in school plays?
NC: Yes, we did fantastic shows because we had this great teacher named Mark Wardour who’d write original scripts and songs for us. They were such good shows, and I don’t say that because I happened to play the lead in most of them!

WG: Ahhhh, so that’s why you looked like you were having a lot of fun when Sonia participated in the community play.
NC (smiles): Yes, it took me back a bit to that time, yes. And I started after-school acting classes with Anna Scher, did bits and bobs and got cast in a production of The Beggar’s Opera for the Royal Shakespeare Company when I was nine, which I loved doing.

WG: Well, lah-di-dah, the Royal Shakespeare Company.
NC (laughs): Yes, lah-di-dah.

WG: Wasn’t it a bit scary, going from a school play almost directly to an RSC production on that massive stage at the Barbican Theatre?
NC: No, which was strange. I loved it all. I particularly loved being under the floorboards before my entrance and smelling that stuff they used to make smoke – dry ice! Yeah, I remember that smell very well. I had to creep up out of the floorboards and peer up and out at the audience in that show at every performance.

WG: You must have played one of the miserable, downtrodden, urchin types, huh? Like those kids in Les Misérables!
NC (laughs): Yeah, right! That finished up in July 1993, and as soon as the curtain came down I whimpered to my mum, “I only want to be an actress now, Mum!”

WG: Awwww….
NC: And in October I got EastEnders!

WG: The Jacksons were the major new family on the Square, that’s for sure. And you were part of it!
NC: Yes, I’ll always be thankful to Tony and Jane for seeing me as part of it. We all had very different personalities to bring to our parts – that’s why it worked so well in my opinion. Everyone was distinctively different.

WG: It must have helped that you all started more or less at the same time.
NC: We grew into a family together. I’m glad they never had the idea of Sonia being a kid brought up by Carol’s parents or something and then sent to live with Carol and Alan after they’d been on the Square for six months. It was much easier the way it was.

WG: Remember your first day on the set?
NC: Sure, it was with Wendy Richard (Pauline), and it was on the Square and it was freezing cold. Sonia was spraying graffiti on the laundrette door and got caught out by Pauline.

WG: That’s when she was a juvenile delinquent for all of two minutes.
NC (laughs): Yep!

WG: It’s like when Ricky was a racist for two minutes, and they nipped that in the bud.
NC: They must have thought, “No, let’s not do that. We like him.” Anyway, I was a bit nervous that first day, but Wendy was lovely to me.

WG: Those of us who were lucky enough to meet Wendy and spend an evening at an Indian restaurant with her and John in New York think she’s lovely, too.
NC: I’d love to come over to New York!

WG: Ever been?
NC: No. I have been to Los Angeles, though – I presented a holiday travel show for British television. We were there for four days this past June. Did the Universal Studios tour and some other things, but not Disneyland unfortunately. I would have loved to go to a taping of Friends but they were on their summer break. I didn’t get to do half of what I wanted to do! Oh well, I had a great time anyway. It’s a bit too industry-oriented in L.A. for my taste, though. I don’t think I’d like to live there for that reason.

WG: I bet you’d love New York.
NC: I know I would. If I could just nip over there sometime between Christmas and New Year’s on our two-week holiday break I’d be very happy. I really hope to. Words can’t really explain how I feel about the September 11 attacks. We over here obviously have a very difficult time understanding an attack on such a massive scale. Why it happened, I mean, the mentality that went into planning it and carrying it out. We do know that it was a disgrace and an outrage and our hearts go out to everyone there. I’ve been told I have a huge heart and, well, it goes out to you right now, it really does.

WG: Back to Sonia. She may only have been a juvenile delinquent for two minutes but she swiftly became Albert Square’s answer to Thelma Ritter for quite a long time.
NC (laughs): Oh, I know her from the old movies!

WG: That’s right, she was a wonderful character actress in Hollywood movies during the 1940s and the 1950s. She always played wisecracking types. My favourite line of hers was in All About Eve. After Eve tells her sob story to everyone Thelma’s character doesn’t skip a beat, and she murmurs, “Everything but the bloodhounds nipping at her behind.”
NC (laughs): Yes! Sonia was like that for the longest time – the lady with the one-liners! She was always the sensible, reasonable one in that crazy, messed-up family – maybe the most sensible, reasonable one in Walford!

WG: And the trumpet? Whose idea was it for Sonia to take up the trumpet?
NC: John Yorke, who was storylining then and is the executive producer here now. I took lessons and everything to learn to play that thing. At the beginning I was, of course, horrible. But as time went on I improved rapidly to the point where I was playing it too well. I was asked to pretend to play badly since Sonia was supposed to be playing badly, to the irritation of everyone else on the Square! (laughs) I still get it from people on the street, “Where’s your trumpet, Sonia?” Well, I dunno where it’s gone to. With the props that are no longer required on the show, I expect! (laughs) Sonia’s grown up a bit since then. She must have left it behind wherever she and her family fled in 1997… thank God!

WG: I remember watching the episode when the Jacksons left the Square and thinking that it was you, Natalie, crying real tears because you thought you might be leaving EastEnders forever.
NC: Yes. Correct. Absolutely true. I was also crying because I knew I’d miss working with Lindsey Coulson, who played my mum, Carol. She had decided the time was right for her to leave, which is why most of the Jacksons got storylined out. It wasn’t just that I thought I was out of a job here forever! I didn’t come back to the show for about four months or so after that. And after Clare left the Square I was gone for another eight months. I just got on with school and all that – and eventually got the call to come back full-time. I was thrilled, needless to say.

WG: Did you and Gemma Bissix (Clare) get on well when you were both in the show? Even during the storyline when Clare was bullying Sonia?
NC: Sure. We were good mates then. I admit I don’t see as much of her these days because she’s at college, not acting at the moment and doing her own thing. She needed a break. Good for her. I’m sure she’s enjoying herself.

WG: As you said, you’ve been on EastEnders for eight years. Now you’re a veteran of it compared to other actors.
NC: I know, isn’t that weird? I am very, very happy here. I am also very happy that in the years since I’ve joined Sonia has been given great storylines to play out and is no longer just Carol’s daughter or Robbie’s little sister or Bianca’s little sister. She’s now a character in her own right, and I couldn’t be more pleased. I love my job and am always very aware that there are others who would kill to be in my shoes, believe me.

WG: Any other actresses you admire?
NC: Oh, yeah. Well, besides the actresses here at the show like Patsy and Lindsey and many others I love Julia Roberts and that Australian actress whose name escapes me – the one in The Gift and Elizabeth?

WG: Cate Blanchett.
NC: Yes – she’s absolutely brilliant.Wow. I love the actresses in Friends, too. I love, love, love that show – like a lot of people, obviously.

WG: You love Friends, huh? That’s interesting because I happen to have a videotape of the first six episodes of the new season in the U.S., which I can lend you in thanks for being such a great interview subject.
NC (eyes widening): You’re kidding…. I LOVE YOU! (laughs)

WG: But just one more personal interest question for our readers to wrap this up… any brother and/or sisters?
NC: I’m the youngest of three – I’ve got two brothers.

WG: Very impressive. You have earned your Friends tape.
NC: Oh, I can’t believe it, thanks! I feel like I’ve won a quiz show or something!

We said goodbye by giving each other a big hug and promising to keep in touch. She is a terrific and talented girl – a joy to interview and a real sweetie. If I could snap my fingers and get her into a taping of Friends (or even a guest spot!), I would. I hope she gets to see New York first, though.




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