Rose Reynolds interview
Rose Reynolds talks about moving into sitcom acting...
Hi Rose. How would you describe this sitcom to our readers?
Wasted is pretty much about four people. I play Sarah, who runs an avant-garde shop with her brother Morpheus, and our mate Alison runs a tattoo parlour in the back of the shop. We haven't seen our friend Kent for over a year.
The basis of the show is kind of what do you do when there is not much to do in a parochial town. So we get up to mischief, but with good intentions... and it's all about how our relationships develop.
Great description. Do you identify with your character's situation?
I think so. I'm from a parochial town originally. At the beginning of Episode 1 she's planning a trip to India and she wants to leave and get out and explore and have adventures, but they are always pipedreams that never really accumulate into anything.
In that way she's different from me, because I can still have my parochial town as my base and my heart and my roots and all that stuff, but I've managed to leave the nest. So we share similarities in that we're both country bumpkins, but we differ in that I'm not stuck as Sarah is.
The show is set in the West Country, and you're from Devon...
It'll always be my home, and since I moved to London seven years ago I miss it a lot, because I don't get the opportunity to go back all that much. I love the busy-ness and energy of London, but I also love the quietness of home, so I always hope and wonder if I could somehow merge the two and create the perfect utopian setting. So I miss it, but I've very happy where I am at the moment...
Kent slips straight back into the friendship group when he returns. Do you experience the same when you do get to go back to Devon?
A lot of my friends have moved up to London, which is great, but there's a lot of people back home, and it is different rhythms. My Devon accent comes back when I come home; I find I go back into the Devonian lilt.
But, yes, when you do go back home, you do kind of pick up where you left off. My best friend in the whole world - we grew up together, I've known her for 22 years - when we go back it's kind of nice to catch-up, but also feel like we don't need to because we know each other so well.
Your CV has mainly been dramas up to this point. Were you nervous about taking on a sitcom?
I thought it was a bit daunting at first, because I'm a classically trained theatre actor. So when this came along it was interesting... I wasn't realty scared about it, I thought it would be interesting to find something new and find the truth in it. Because I think if you just play for slapstick laughs and all that stuff you lose character and you lose a sense of what these people are all about, so I was aiming to find a truth within the comedy.
I wasn't thrown in the deep end though, because Danny, who plays my brother, I've known for 10 years, and Gwyneth, who plays Alison, I've known for about 4 years. I didn't know Dylan, who plays Kent, before we started, but it turns out he's pretty much from the same place as me down in Devon and my dad taught him at school... so all four of us already had this link, and we had a week of rehearsals before we started filming so when we got onto set it was kind of organic, and it was like working with your mates already... so I had a leg up in that respect.
Sitcom film crews are notoriously straight-faced, to avoid ruining takes. Was it hard to judge if the show was being funny?
Because I haven't had that much experience in sitcoms I don't know other sets and how they operate, but this one it was like kids going to work.
We had a prop master guy called Max, who is actually in one of the episodes as a supporting artist, and he was our benchmark for what lines are landing. If he is laughing, then we've got it there.
We had the writers on set every single day too, so if we had a question about a line or wanted to add something they were really up for that. It was a very cohesive working environment, so it wasn't serious at all. I didn't feel like at any point we were doing a serial drama, because everyone was cracking jokes before and after each take.
Did you get to meet Sean Bean?
I didn't. He was wrapped [finished filming] in about four days, and all of his scenes were with Danny, so I didn't meet him... but I had daily updates from Danny, with some WhatsApp pictures. They're both Northern lads, and Danny was just saying what a great guy he was. I think their working relationship was a lot of fun by all accounts.
Wasted is on E4 on Tuesdays at 10pm.