'Usually I play cardigan-wearing mums – here I’m a badass': Sheridan Smith on new drama The Castaways
There is a shot in Sheridan Smith’s new survival drama The Castaways, the story of two sisters torn apart after a plane crash in Fiji, adapted from Lucy Clarke’s bestselling novel, that the actress is quietly proud of. “For this scene I’m out on a raft,” says Smith, covered in mud, after a baking hot day’s filming in Greece. “They were going to put my stunt double on it because I’m not a great swimmer. Before shooting this series, I couldn’t even go underwater without holding my nose, but I’d had a day with our brilliant stunt coordinator. So I was like, ‘Please let me do it. I can stand out there. I’m not going to fall off.’ They were like, ‘Ooh, I’m not sure we can let you because of insurance’. But they did. I was so pleased because it’s a great shot of me in the middle of the sea going, ‘Yessss!’”
The day after Smith completed her acclaimed West End run in Shirley Valentine, Willy Russell’s one-woman show, she hopped onto a plane to Greece where Plaka Beach, a secluded cove on the south coast near Volos, doubled for the Fijian desert island where her character, Lori Holme, finds herself stranded with a dangerous assortment of fellow passengers – plus a crocodile – for company.
“It is so different to anything I have ever done before,” acknowledges Smith, who celebrated her 42nd birthday with her three-year-old son Billy whilst on location. “And it’s surreal that I am doing this having just finished Shirley Valentine. I finished the play on the Saturday night and flew out here on the Sunday morning. Usually, I’m in rainy Manchester or London on a night shoot, freezing, wrapped in blankets, playing cardigan-wearing mums. But here my character goes from wearing twee dresses and being a bit of a wallflower to starting to take charge on the island and becoming a badass.”
“It’s a very exciting role for an actress to play,” says Andy Tohill, co-director with twin brother Ryan. “Sheridan wanted to go to the place that Lori goes, which Ryan and I have been massively championing. We told her, ‘We’re going to have you an Amazon warrior by the end of this.’”
For those already familiar with Clarke’s holiday pageturner there has been a double-down on the action by showrunner Ben Harris. There are motorbikes, seaplanes and spear guns. But it is the relationship between the two sisters, Lori and Erin, the latter played by Bafta and Emmy award-nominated Céline Buckens, that remains the heart of it.
Buckens first appeared on screen aged 13 in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War Horse, alongside Emily Watson, Benedict Cumberbatch and David Thewlis. But it was the 2021 BBC courtroom drama Showtrial that put her into the spotlight. In the drama, Buckens found humour and empathy in the darkest of places without giving two hoots about likeability and followed that with another potentially unsympathetic role as the “other woman” in the psychological drama The Ex-Wife.
Smith and Buckens had barely met before they were filming their biggest scene together in Greece. Buckens had at least managed to see her co-star on the stage.
“I bought tickets to Shirley Valentine – note bought rather than blagged – when I found out we were going to be playing sisters,” says Buckens. “Because it was sold out, the only ticket I could get was in a box with another woman. I was chatting to her in the interval, and it did seem like a lot of the people in the audience were Shirley Valentines in a certain way. Sheridan is such a force. I have rarely worked with somebody so present.” On screen, the sisters’ relationship is not so warm.
Has Smith found there to be sisterhood when it comes to acting? “There are definitely people who have helped me,” says Sheridan whose early television break was in Caroline Aherne’s sitcom classic, The Royle Family. “I didn’t go to drama school, so I have learned on the job. Walking onto a set with Caroline Aherne and Sue Johnston and Liz Smith, I just watched in awe and took it all in. I didn’t have a clue really what I was doing. Liz Smith was just so funny.
“I also got to work with Maggie Smith who was lovely and took me under her wing. She said, ‘Smiths stick together!’ She was wonderful. When I opened in Hedda Gabler she sent me this beautiful gift and a handwritten letter. Then when my dad passed, she sent me a hamper and another handwritten letter. I just thought how lovely that was from someone who was like a superstar to me.”
Buckens’s recollections of her big Spielberg break are understandably a little hazier. It’s one of those disappointing things where people are always, ‘What was he like?’ I was in my early teens when your memories aren’t that reliable. I was more interested in the catering than what Steven Spielberg was like as a person or as a director. But Spielberg worked very closely with me. I think he must just be really, really good with young actors. I mean, E.T….”
Arriving at a time of year when everyone freezing in the UK is in dire need of some escapist action set in sunnier climes The Castaways should hit the spot whilst also chiming with any siblings busy navigating those traditional Christmas family flashpoints.
For Smith it also provides a live-action photo album of a particularly happy adventure with her young son. “Billy has had the time of his life,” she says. “He’s the opposite to me with the water. He is like a little water baby. He’s got arm bands and he is having swimming lessons. He loves it.”
The Castaways is on Paramount+ from Boxing Day