From Bridgerton to Sherwood and Alma’s Not Normal, the actor has lit up our screens all year – and her ‘victory lap’ is only just starting …
Lorraine Ashbourne has had a massive year. “I know! People keep saying: oh God, Lorraine, get off the telly, we want somebody else,” she says. “But it has been extraordinary.” She kicked things off in January with ITV’s entertaining disaster thriller After the Flood, playing Sophie Rundle’s tough, grieving mother, Molly. As the year went on, she returned to two of her biggest and most significant roles yet, as the former secret spy cop Daphne Sparrow in Sherwood, and Grandma Joan in the wrenching, hilarious second series of Alma’s Not Normal. Has she ended up in such outstanding shows because she’s picky? “Absolutely not. I’ll do anything! I’m a cheap date. It’s just timing that these things have fallen into place.”
Right now, Ashbourne is at home in north London. She grew up in Manchester, where she went to drama school. She met her husband, Andy Serkis, there, when they were both starring in a play at the Royal Exchange, in 1989. But she has lived in London for “40-odd years, so I’m a Londoner”. The couple’s three adult children still live at home with them, and Ashbourne’s parents are staying; her father has just had his 90th birthday. “We’re run ragged. It’s a busy household.”
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