Ashes to Ashes star Keeley Hawes on the show biting the dust
She takes all manner of brickbats from Gene Hunt and fends them off with a steely glare and a flick of her 80s hairdo. So how come I’m the one to make Keeley Hawes cry? The 33-year-old star of Ashes to Ashes is best known for her part as retro cop DI Alex ‘Bolly’ Drake, a modern woman trapped in a semiconscious nightmare of police procedure, slaps on the bottom and Spandau Ballet.
For two years she’s had to put up with her boss DCI Gene Hunt (Phil Glenister) calling her Bolly Knickers and patronising her with a level of masochism that makes Roy Chubby Brown look like Mother Theresa. Yet here she is now, sitting in front of me, crying.
Keeley’s just finished filming her final scenes on Ashes to Ashes in a disused factory block in a south London housing estate in Bermondsey. For the first 20 minutes of our interview, she made all sorts of stoic noises about not getting emotional, not needing to pinch any of her character’s costume items for posterity and being ready for the next job, whatever it may be.
Then an innocuous question about where she’d place Ashes to Ashes within the framework of her career so far and… suddenly Bolly’s all bubbles.
It’s not Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars but it’s still enough to knock her off her stride. Blubbing, she says: “They’re so fabulous, these guys. This is certainly a high point. I’ve had a lovely career and this show is one of those things which raises the profile. I’m sure we will all see each other again.”
“That’s one of the great things about what we do. Inevitably, people always pop up again.”
Then she’s off, biting her lip, sobbing her sobs and dabbing at her eyes with her cuffs. It’s all a bit incongruous, this. Less than half an hour ago, Keeley was chirpily proclaiming she wasn’t emotional and that she hated the spartan dressing rooms in the ramshackle old building anyway. It all pointed to moving on, closure, acceptance. “I’ve spent a lot of time in these rooms,” she’d said. “We were here on Spooks too.”
“I hate this room. It’s much nicer to be out filming on location.”
Now, though, it’s almost as if it’s just dawned on her that she’s come to the end of one of the best loved drama franchises of the last 10 years and that the Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes chapters are finally closed.
“I’ll miss all of the characters,” she says. “They become such a big part of your life, more than anything else I’ve done.
“Well, apart from Spooks, which was ultimately life-changing for me.” (She met other half Matthew Macfadyen while filming the drama’s early runs). “There’s something odd about Ashes to Ashes. It just doesn’t leave you.”
Having said that, she thinks it’s the right time for the show to end. After two series of Life on Mars and now three of Ashes to Ashes, it’s time to bring down the curtain.
She says: “Three series is enough. I know Spooks has gone on and on and got better and better. But for the boys this is the fifth year of playing the characters and they get itchy, they want to do something else.”
“People want answers now so it’s best to go out when they’re still vaguely interested.”
So. Answers. Some fans of Life on Mars, the precursor to Ashes to Ashes starring Phil Glenister with John Simm, felt the sight of Simm jumping off a roof at the end of Life on Mars wasn’t as conclusive an answer as they’d hoped.
What a prospect, then, to learn that this series will plug gaps in both the Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes canon.
Keeley says: “The producers were worried about sending out preview material for the Press — they were worried it would be leaked. But you’d need pages and pages to explain it. You’re not going to get it in a headline.”
“We’re still asking each other what some of it means. It is complicated.”
“Alex is out of hospital. She’s running around Piccadilly Circus. The first 10 minutes of the first episode are… well, let’s just say there will be a lot of ‘pause and rewind back to that point’ going on when fans get to the end of the run.”
“I knew we’d be going on for three years at the start of Ashes to Ashes and that things would change dramatically throughout — she’d start as one thing and end up as something different.”
“She changes the people around her and they change her by the end.” Surely not. Bolly Knickers changes the dinosaur that is Gene Hunt? How?
“I can’t tell you that,” Keeley says. “She doesn’t change him into a different person. But she changes him.”
“She changes him in a way that Sam Tyler in Life on Mars changed him. He expanded his mind and gave him different views on the world.”
“She carries that on and ultimately she gives him the answer. It all starts to fall into place and by the end she knows exactly where she is and what she’s doing. It does tie everything up.”
“Alex tries to get back to her daughter Molly and also solve the mystery of what happened to Sam Tyler in Life on Mars. So it’s all tied up. I just hope we can give everyone a good ending.”
“I was happy with it. I sobbed my heart out at the end. It’s sad and also optimistic — a bittersweet ending, which is what I wanted it to be.”
Having already road-tested the final scenes on hubby Matthew, she’s confident it will strike the right note with viewers. She says: “I took home the last 10 minutes.”
“He cried like a girl, which is always good to see. He loves it and just doesn’t want it to end.” However, it seems at least one person will be glad to see the back of Bolly.
Hard as it is to dislike her character, you never can predict the whims of the great British public. Keeley says: “Some people were horrible when I first started.”
“A woman in a pub told me ‘Don’t you fucking talk to Gene Hunt like that.’
“I’ve since written a book in my head about how I should have answered her back — I’m an actress, it’s drama, are you insane?” The vitriol still wasn’t enough to get the tears flowing, mind. Perhaps she should have tried the softer approach…
• Ashes to Ashes, returning soon on BBC1.
By Paul English for The Daily Record.
(Source: dailyrecord.co.uk)