Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page has revealed she was “groped” by a TV presenter after being warned about him.
The actress said a female producer told her the man could be “very handsy” and was “probably going to start touching you.”
According to The Times, Page shared the story in her new book, Lush! She said she would not name the person for legal reasons.
Halfway through filming, he starts groping me. I hit his hands and said, ‘What do you think you’re bloody doing? I feel like I’m in Bristol Zoo being mauled by the lions.’
The 48-year-old explained
After that, he stopped, she said.
It was bizarre, a female producer telling you this was going to happen, but it’s what you got used to.
Ms Page added
In the interview with The Times, the actress also spoke about when the role of Stacey Shipman came along and how she had been working in a south London shoe shop.
It was the first time since leaving drama school I’d thought, ‘I know these voices! I know this world!’ My mum is exactly the same as [Stacey’s mum] Gwen. If you’re miserable or upset, she’s like, ‘Do you want an omelette?’ Before I first went to London my uncle Anthony gave me a rape alarm, just like Stacey’s Uncle Bryn. This part was mine. It was sacrilege if it went to someone else, who was either putting on an accent – although you’re allowed to do that, I have done my entire career – or they had famous parents, or they were just famous.
She added that if she had not got the part she would have been “done with the whole thing.” She told the paper that at the audition [Ruth] Jones asked her to use a Cardiff accent.
The one time I get to go for something Welsh, I still can’t do my own voice.
Page said she had no idea what a Cardiff accent sounded like, so she made one up.
Ruth took me outside and said, ‘What are you doing? Just talk the way you normally talk.’
She did, won the part, and Jones and co-writer James Corden changed the script so Stacey was from Swansea.
She told The Times that the series allowed her to turn down most other work to spend time with her children, two dogs, and four guinea pigs.
Previously, Page said she wrote Lush! in a disused pub car park, outside a cricket club at night, and in a car outside her house.
The result was “like a therapy session.”
Gavin and Stacey aired its final episode on Christmas Day last year and won the comedy award at the National Television Awards earlier this month.
The Christmas Day episode became one of the most watched scripted TV shows of the century.
According to official Barb ratings figures, after seven days of catch-up viewing the finale of the beloved comedy had been seen by 19.11 million people, which beat the last Gavin & Stacey special in 2019 which at the same stage had an audience of 17.92m, rising to 18.49m after a month.
As well as starring in Gavin and Stacey, Page hosts the BBC podcast Off The Telly with EastEnders star Natalie Cassidy and has appeared in films including From Hell and Love Actually.
Source: BBC