Nottingham shot film wins national award

April 2015

A SHORT film shot in Nottingham city centre and starring Wollaton actress Lauren Carse has picked up a major award.
Echo, a 15-minute drama about a schoolgirl who tricks shoppers into giving her cash, won Best Short at the National Film Awards in London, where the likes of Idris Elba and Tulisa Contostavlos were in attendance.
“It was great that we won although we weren’t expecting it because we were sat right at the back,” laughs Lauren.
“And we were on a table with the people who supplied the linen for the tables, so we thought this is not spelling out ‘award-winning’.”
She collected the award with the film’s producer Lawrence Mason.
“It took an age for us to get to the stage,” adds the 23-year-old.
“And it was the last award of the night so I was on my third glass of wine after two glasses of champagne.”
The graduate of the Television Workshop thanked its director Ian Smith during her speech.
“I mentioned the cast and crew who couldn’t be there and thanked Ian for his continued support, much like Jack O’Connell did at the Baftas.”
The fellow Workshopper was up for two awards for the drama Starred Up and the film ‘71 at the National Film Awards at Porchester Hall in Mayfair.
“He couldn’t be there because he was filming in New York,” says Lauren, whose character in Echo is a 17-year-old called Caroline. She is seen taking a call on her mobile, becoming distressed at some apparent bad news about her dad being in a motorbike accident. But it’s a con, to trick passers-by into giving her money for a taxi to the hospital. It’s based on an incident witness by the film’s writer James Walker.
Its director came to the Television Workshop, where Lauren started as an 11-year-old, to cast the film.
It was shot two years ago in King Street, Wheeler Gate and the Old Market Square, where Lauren is seen with her on-screen brother, played by Newark teenager Oliver Woollford.
So convincing was her apparent distress, many people interrupted filming to check if she was OK.
“That was really reassuring, good on you, Nottingham,” says Lauren who has also appeared in Casualty, Doctors and the Nottingham-set BBC drama Truckers.
Echo director Lewis Arnold went on to work on TV dramas Misfits, Human and Russell T Davies’ E4 drama Banana, in which Lauren also appeared.
“He couldn’t come to the awards because he was casting in Manchester,” says the former Fernwood Comprehensive pupil.
“I was at the audition but I got to London in time for the awards.”
She adds: “I’ve been to quite a few auditions lately are quite exciting.”
Others at the awards included Keith Chegwin, Rizzle Kicks, Linda Robson, EastEnders’ Tanya Franks, were in attendance.
The red carpet event, included a goodie bag for nominees that included jewellery.
“There was another one we were given on the way out that included popcorn, water and chutney,” she laughs.
“We were really treated.”

Aisling Loftus (Mr Selfridge)

January 2014

 SHE doesn’t get recognised a lot. It’s not like it’s becoming a problem, although Aisling Loftus, who plays Agnes Towler in Mr Selfridge, which returns to ITV1 tomorrow for a second series, would prefer not to look so rough when it does happen.
“Usually the people who say hello are really nice,” says the 23-year-old.
“The only thing is, it always happens when I look awful. You can see it in their faces... ‘wow, they heap the make-up on you, don’t they?!’”
If Aisling (pronounced Ashling), who grew up in Lady Bay, is going to be recognised anywhere it is in the actual Selfridges store in Oxford Street.
“My mum had come to London and we popped in,” she says.
“And my mum went, ‘Ooh, Ashy!’ because she saw all the Mr Selfridge DVDs and books with a little picture of me on the front. I said, ‘Mum, we cannot be seen loitering near these, we need to move on!’ At which point a woman who had one of the DVDs in her hands turned to me and said, ‘Would you mind signing it?’
“I thought, ‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to! I don’t think I can just scrawl on one of their DVDs’.”
She laughs: “That was a very cringe-worthy moment. But it was really lovely for my mum.
“And I did sign it in the end but it was really embarrassing. As if I’d gone into the store especially to autograph a DVD.”
Mum Eileen and dad Patrick still live in Lady Bay, where Aisling and her older sister, Aoife grew up.
“I come back every six weeks or so,” says the actress, who lives in North London with her musician boyfriend.
Mr Selfridge, which is set before the First World War, is loosely based on the story of the flamboyant American Harry Selfridge, who heads to London to set up its first department store.
The first series became a TV fixture every Sunday evening at the beginning of last year, attracting up to eight million viewers each week.
“People really got behind it,” says Aisling, whose character Agnes – or “Aggie” – experienced an abusive father and a broken relationship during the ten-week run.
“She’s a bit of an underdog and a trier, facing her fair share of hardships,” says Aisling, who shares screen time with American star Jeremy Piven as Mr Selfridge, Katherine Kelly, the former Coronation Street actress and Downton Abbey actor Cal Macaninch.
“I was also quite excited to see that Sara Cox and Zoe Ball both watched it and liked Agnes – because I like them an awful lot,” she adds.
“But more than anything I was really happy that my friends and family enjoyed it.”
The second series moves on five years and Agnes is back from Paris where Selfridge sent her to continue her artistic and retail education at the Galeries Lafayette department store.
“She returns with a real sense of confidence.
“She has been living as a single, independent woman and knows exactly who she is.”
In reality, she and boyfriend Jason Anderson, who is also an actor best known for starring as Omen in the film Adulthood, visited the French capital just before filming started for the second series.
“I thought I really should go to Galeries Lafayette but we both wanted to go to Disneyland Paris,” she laughs.
“I did a fair bit of online research on the store instead.”
Selfridges has moved on in those five years and is a more glamorous place to work, particularly for Agnes, who is promoted to head of display.
But this creates a conflict with the new head of fashion, Mr Thackeray (Cal MacAninch).
“He is her self-doubt personified,” says Aisling, whose TV credits include Public Enemies with Anna Friel and The Borrowers alongside Christopher Eccleston.
“Mr Thackeray is undermining and quite acerbic, always ready to stick the knife in at a time when Agnes is really trying to show what she has learned.”
There’s added pressure with the First World War looming, as younger brother George (Calum Callaghan) is encouraged to sign up.
“The prospect of him going to war is deeply upsetting and unsettling for Agnes,” she says.
There were plenty of male suitors in the first series and romance is on the cards again.
“There is lots of turbulence in her love life, you could say.”
She adds: “The first series was all about establishing the store and the characters.

“Now there’s more focus on how life would be playing out at this moment in history and I think the series itself is deeper and richer.”
Aisling started acting at the age of nine, while at St Edmund Campion, the Catholic school in West Bridgford, then The Becket School during which time she joined Nottingham’s renowned Television Workshop.
There were roles in Peak Practice, The Bill, Doctors, Casualty and Bernard’s Watch up until the age of 19 when she left for London.
Aisling was back in Nottingham in November for the Workshop’s weekender at Broadway to mark its 30th anniversary of training young actors.
“I love seeing anyone else doing well from Workshop,” she says.
“I love watching anything with Joe Dempsie, Jack O’Connell and Vicky McClure in, not just because they are Workshoppers but because they are among the best actors in the country.
“Vicky was one of the actresses at the Workshop that I looked up to. Joe is good mates with my boyfriend so I saw him quite often.”
Next up for Aisling is theatre and a Tennessee Williams play called Green Eyes.
“I’m absolutely terrified because there’s no second chance but I think that’s a good reason to do anything.
“It’s about a young couple on honeymoon in new Orleans. He’s just come back for Vietnam and is in quite a bad way, mentally.
“It’s a wicked play. There are just two of us on stage and the audience is in the round, within touching distance.
“I want to do things that I get excited by, although I do have a mortgage to pay.”

Mr Selfridge begins on ITV1 on Sunday, January 19 at 9pm.

The Television Workshop

November 2013

Ian Smith

HE had no idea she was going to be there. As far as Ian Smith knew he was at the family home of one of his ‘Workshoppers’ just for a spot of lunch. And then Angelina Jolie walked in.
“She said: ‘Oh my God, Ian Smith, I’ve heard so much about you, tell me about the Workshop.’” says Ian, the director of The Television Workshop for much of its 30 years.
“I thought, this woman knows more about me than I do about her!” he laughs.
“It was incredible.”
This was in Derbyshire earlier this year at the home of Jack O’Connell, who is currently in Australia filming with the megastar for her latest film as director, Unbroken.
“For him to be playing the lead in an Angelina Jolie film is pretty amazing for a lad from Alvaston,” says Ian, 58, at the Workshop in Stoney Street.
“Jack was training for the part of  Louis Zamperini, an American Second World War veteran and national hero. She came over to meet his family. As ridiculous as it sounds for her to helicopter in to the Priest House in Castle Donington... that’s exactly what she did.”
He adds: “We had lunch, which was slightly surreal. We talked about the Workshop, the plays we’d done, playwrights like Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, about Jack and how amazing she thought he was and perfect for the part...”

Jack O'Connell

O’Connell, who had joined the Television Workshop when he was 13, had come to Ian to help him film a video audition for the part.
“That got him a screen test and she was infatuated by his talent, as was I,” says the Carlton born mentor.
Ian, who started out as a comprehensive school teacher, is not one for being starstruck.
“I’m as awed by some of the kids in my group for their talent than those who have made it. But stick me in front of a musician and I’m tongue tied. I remember meeting Desmond Dekker in the toilets at Gatwick. This man had been on my record deck most of my teenage life and I was all the shop. It’s because music is a mystery to me. It’s something I don’t have a gift in. But acting I know.”
He started out on stage himself with the Lace Market Theatre and did make an appearance opposite Bob Hoskins in Shane Meadows’ TwentyFourSeven.
“I was all right,” says Ian of his own acting ability.
“I do like acting. The problem is working with the likes of Vicky McClure, Jack O’Connell and Toby Kebbell; they’ve an incredible gift. I’m a better director, let’s put it that way.”
Ian was also running the youth theatre at the Lace Market Theatre.
“I was sending kids to the Workshop and they asked me to run their youth group there.”
Central Junior Television Workshop was started in 1983 at Central Telvision in Lenton Lane by the programme controller of children's TV, Lewis Rudd. Its aim was to train youngsters, aged from seven to 21, to act. Many appeared on the locally produced Central series Bernard’s Watch, Woof! and Press Gang.
“And 30 years down the line we’re not just surviving we’re thriving,” says Ian, who took control of the Workshop after four years.

Vicky McClure

The biggest success story is Samantha Morton, a two-time Oscar nominee who has worked with Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Woody Allen and Johnny Depp.
“As an actress she has done some amazing gigs,” says Ian, proudly.
“But she’s also a very talented director. I went to see her on the set of The Unloved in Nottingham and she was in her element.”
Others include Chris Gascoyne (Coronation Street), Joe Dempsie (Game of Thrones), Aisling Loftus (Mr Selfridge), Toby Kebbell (War Horse, Prince Of Persia, Wrath of Titans), Pui Fan Lee (Teletubbies), Rosamund Hanson (Life’s Too Short), Chanel Cresswell (Trollied) and Michael Socha (Being Human).
“They think of me as their dad, which is worrying,”  laughs Ian, who refers to them all as Workshoppers.
A few of them are taking part in this weekend’s 30th anniversary celebration at Broadway, which runs until tomorrow.
It’s another celebration that follows a gathering earlier this year at Nottingham Contemporary.
“That was one of the most amazing nights of my life; I was still dancing at 6.30 in the morning,” says Ian, who taught at Frank Wheldon School in Carlton and Fernwood School in Wollaton.
“There were people who hadn’t seen each other for 20 years. There was a Mexican wave of screams of recognition that went on all night. It was like a school reunion on Prozac.
“There were people texting and emailing the next day saying ‘it was the best night of my life’”.
The party is only eclipsed by the BAFTA in terms of his highlight of the past three decades. The Workshop was handed the gong in 2006, in recognition of its “outstanding development of young talent for film and television.”

Toby Kebbell

Classes run at Stoney Street six days a week. There are 200 who attend classes weekly and another 100 in the reserve group.
Does he know straight away that a youngster has acting ability?
“Give me five minutes,” he says, stressing how important the ability to improvise is.
“If they can improvise then you can see that they can act. It’s an ability to think of your feet and enter an imaginative zone with full commitment.
“And we like fearlessness. You have to get up and go for it.”
As intense as that sounds, the Workshop is, he insists, fun.
“It’s not school. It can be quite daunting but they are soon laughing in classes. Everyone has a good time but they manage to take the job seriously. Although not themselves too seriously. That defines what we’re about.”
He says the requests for youngsters to go for auditions for film, TV, theatre, radio and adverts come in every day.
“In my office at home in Calverton I was a wall of pictures of the current Workshoppers and I’ll look at them and think who’ll be the next Jack O’Connell or the next Vicky McClure.
“You recognise kids with the same sort of energies, who are something special.. With good luck and the right sort of casting they could well end up as another BAFTA winner. Or the one who will bring home that first Oscar to the Workshop.”
There have been times when the Workshop has faced the axe as Central became Carlton then ITV Granada before the Nottingham studios closed for good in 2005.
These days The Workshop is funded with a £300 annual subscription fee, for those who can afford it.
“No kid is turned away with talent,” insists Ian.
They also rely on donations from past Workshoppers.
He says: “Financially it’s incredibly tight and there are ex-members who are incredibly generous.”

For more about The Television Workshop go to thetelevisionworkshop.co.uk.

Nottingham’s biggest music star Jake Bugg is good enough to join the Workshop if he ever fancied branching out in to acting, says Ian, after watching his debut in the video for his latest single Slumville Sunrise. Directed by Shane Meadows, the video closes with the 19-year-old in a scene with Rosamund Hanson.
“If you see him being interviewed he’s monosyllabic at best. He’s not comfortable in that situation. But in the video... I think that’s Shane’s magic. And Ros is great fun to work alongside. I was pleasantly surprised.”