Hang Ups: Interview with Katherine Parkinson who plays Karen

30 July 2018

What’s the concept of Hang Ups?

It’s based on Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy, which was a series on the internet, and she played a therapist who ran her therapy sessions over computer. In our series, Stephen Mangan plays Richard, the therapist who’s running his sessions in the same way. Robert (the director of our series) has tried to give it a really distinctive visual, by having quite a lot of it being shot down the lens on a laptop and things like that.

You play Karen. What’s her story?

She’s Richard’s wife. She works for a large pharmaceutical company, and she’s got a really inappropriate, strange boss called Werner, played by Paul Ritter. I think the idea is that she has a good relationship with her husband, but they just never have time to communicate. Their communication is always Facetime, and they’ve got a hectic life with a hectic house, and everything gets in the way of their communication. I think it was very important that we didn’t just have them hating each other. It is a good relationship, it’s just that life gets in the way.

Is it fair to describe her as the Alpha member of the household?

Yeah, but I think she’s also quite up for a career break. She’s not somebody who necessarily needs to be the Alpha member of the household. I think that’s where some of the stress comes from. I think she’s got a very interesting and high-powered career, but it’s stressful. They’re a proper modern marriage in that way, she doesn’t need to keep him at home while she’s the one out there, it just happens to be the situation for them at the moment.

What was it that attracted you to the project?

Oh, Stephen, definitely. We’d bumped into each other over the years, and had near misses several times to work together. And he just emailed me about this, and it just felt right. I’m a fan of what he does. Also, oddly, I have a DVD of Web Therapy because Andrew Scott (an actor friend of mine), had told me I’d like it, so I’d bought it three years ago. I knew of the director (Robert Delamere) as well, he’s got a good reputation in the theatre world, so I knew he’d be good and interesting. And I’d also worked briefly with Stephen’s wife as well [producer Louise Delamere] so I knew I was in good hands. Also, the cast list featured lots of my favourite actors. I only did four days, and I think I did a lot more than most people on it, but it was just such nice company to be in. Paul Ritter is just such a good actor. I’d worked with him before, he’s just lovely to be around. In this, when he went off improvising something, I really did have to go into a corner of the room, because I couldn’t stop laughing. And that doesn’t happen often, normally I’m quite difficult to corpse. But his character in this, Werner, is just a wonderful creation.

Is there quite a lot of improvisation in this?

There is, but my character has to hit various plot points, because obviously you have to have a frame to hang it all round. So we had some free rein within that, but I think people like Richard E Grant were literally in a room alone, talking to Stephen down a webcam, and had almost total freedom. I think a lot of actors were drawn to that.

 

Is there a pressure that goes with improvising, having to come up with something clever or funny off the cuff?

Yeah. I think for a long time I thought improvising was totally my thing, and just what I wanted to do, and then when it comes down to it, you sort of think “Oh God, I’ve got to be funny!” Of course, the trick is to not try and be funny, and to just try and play the truth of the scene. I think, with comedy it works particularly well just to go with your natural rhythms. Sometimes, you can have brilliantly written scripts, but when it comes time to actually do them on camera, it can feel slightly ‘written’. A lot of comedy comes from tiny moments, an exhalation, or whatever it is.

A fair amount of the filming takes place over online video calls. How was it filming those scenes?

Yeah, it was a real challenge. We all know how to use those things – even those of us who claim to be technophobic spend so much time looking at screens or down camera lenses. We could see ourselves on the laptop screen, but of course we weren’t meant to look at that, we were meant to look at the camera above the screen. I found little things like that extremely difficult.

You’ve just described yourself as a technophobe, which probably answers this question, but are you someone who embraces technology in everyday life?

I do. I think the technophobe thing is getting a bit tired, because I’m on my iPhone as much as anyone. Things are actually quite simple to use. I’m a technophobe in the sense that I’ve resisted social media, because I don’t think it would be much good for me. But I don’t think I can claim to be a technophobe as I sit here with my laptop open, on my iPhone to you, with my iPad within reach.

Lastly, Karen is an absolute superhero, holds the family together, keeps tabs on everything, is the main breadwinner, she never really misses a beat. How does Katherine Parkinson measure up to that in everyday life?

I am even better than Karen! No, I’m very definitely not like Karen at all. But when you have kids, you need to get better at knowing when birthday parties are. I’m perfectly happy to turn up late to things as me, but my eldest hates me being a second late, so I’ve changed, because you do it for them, don’t you? So, like the technophobe, there’s things I said I was at 30 that I am definitely not at 40, so now I would say that I am a tech whizz and extremely organised and capable in every way… [Laughs]