Charlotte Ritchie interview
Fresh Meat star Charlotte Richie talks about her new comedy role...
What is Siblings?
Siblings is a TV show about a dysfunctional brother and sister who live together and who endlessly find themselves in situations where they act inappropriately.
What attracted you to Siblings?
I think what attracted me to it was probably that it's quite different to the parts I've played before in the sense that, Hannah was completely not self-aware, blunt, inappropriate and driven by one thought only, not having hundreds of thoughts in her head necessarily. I really like that, it's kind of an interesting part - and I thought the script was funny.
What was working with Tom like?
Terrible! No, really nice. It does become a sort of brother and sister relationship. Well, not as close as a brother and sister because we've only known each other for as long as we worked on Siblings. We kind of knew each other before we met, over the years through friends, but we've never worked together. At first I was nervous because you have to spend a long period of time with someone and in the end it was brilliant. Luckily, I find him very funny so that helps.
Would he make a good brother?
I think so, in real life, yes. And, in fact, in the show. His character is much nicer than mine I think. He's much more well-meaning. His mistakes come from him being desperate for friends whereas mine come from, also being desperate for friends, but usually driven by quite selfish impulses. But he's very nice, Tom is a very lovely man.
You've got some brilliant guests in the series, what was it like working with them?
It was so good. Our mum is played by Stella Gonet and she's just brilliant. She's so funny and so dry. She's really great, she's so glamorous. She was in a play about Margaret Thatcher just before she started and she did her impression of Margaret Thatcher; it was really scary! I love the rest of the cast, the casting is brilliant. Some of them I knew before, I'd seen their comedy and stuff. It's very comforting to have good people come in.
Do you see any similarities between you and Hannah?
I don't think so. I like to think I'm not similar, maybe deep down I might be but she's quite selfish and driven by her own needs and I at least attempt to not be that. And if I am that I try to suppress it as much as possible or try to disguise it as being charitable. But I do admire her in a way for just being blunt and it's very fun to do.
You're in a band with your brother. Tell us about that.
A few months before I started Siblings I actually started working with my brother, which we thought would be really weird but, actually, it's really great! We've both done music independently for a long time and we'd always kind of been interested in each other's music and it just seemed like an interesting thing to do. I moved home and I was really close, around the corner, and I did harmonies for one of his gigs and then we thought this might be a viable thing.
It's nice and liberating because we can't get rid of each other because we're related and we do get on really well, and we have the rest of our family, my sister and my mum and dad to temper us. It's good because a lot of Luke's songs are sung from the third person so we never sing at each other, it's not the kind of weird brother sister thing. I think we complement each other's voices quite well and we get on.
What style of music is it?
I guess the best way to describe it is close harmony acoustic music. It's driven a lot by acoustic guitar although we've got an electric track. The close harmony is a big element, and we've tried to make it as equal as possible and on a lot of the songs both of us are singing most of the way through so there's no one main leader.
This is your second comedy. What's your favourite comedy on TV at the moment? Are you a big fan of old comedy or do you prefer new comedy?
I really like old comedy. I'm a bit of a nerd in the sense that I really like Monty Python. My favourite is Green Wing. I like quite surreal stuff but I really also like the guys behind The League Of Gentlemen and they just did Inside No. 9, which I just love. It's really dark, some of it is really funny. I think they're just amazing. So that really kind of surreal dark stuff I really like, even though that's not necessarily what I've done.
I've got a lot of friends who are beginning to do comedy like my friend Ellie White, Tash Demetriou and her brother Jamie Demetriou and they are people that I started in comedy with. Liam Williams is really good, so people that are up and coming.