Interview with Anita Dobson (Janine)

23 October 2024

Janine presumably isn't the kind of role you're generally offered. What did you make of the script?
I got a message from my agent saying that something exciting had just come in the inbox. I read it and thought: I’m not sure about this. So we had a little chat, then I spoke to Ben Wheatley, who was so lovely and sweet and unassuming, and a diamond to work with – you can’t imagine all this stuff comes out of his head! Everybody else I talked to spoke so highly of him, including Reece Shearsmith, who I knew from doing an Inside No 9. So I just thought: I've never done this before, maybe I'll find out things about me in the process of doing it, which I did, actually. You may be older, but there are still good parts out there. You’ve just got to be open to them.

You must have spent a long time in make-up?
We got in very early and wouldn't get on set until almost lunchtime, then at the end of the day we had to come in and get it all off again. I didn't mind – it was just something new for me, although I’m not good with blood and gore. When I was first approached to do it, I was a bit nervous about the prosthetics, because I'm a bit claustrophobic and I don’t enjoy having facemasks done, but Ben explained that Janine gets the infection in the arm. Then it creeps up and ends up on her face. He went, “Anita, if it doesn't make you laugh, we can't do it.” Fortunately, it did!

Janine is a force of nature, isn’t she?
Yeah, she's a grandma whose husband has died, so she's finally got some freedom with the little bit of money that he’s left her. She’s doing what she wants, going off on holidays and having a life that she never had before, but hoped she might have. She's not giving the money to her family! She gets bitten early on, which was really interesting because she doesn’t suddenly become a zombie. It’s a slow process: she's hungry, she doesn't know how to deal with her granddaughter, she can't explain the feelings she's got but she's slowly turning into something. And even though she becomes disgustingly horrible and has a desperate need to eat anything that gets in her way, there is still that bit of her that loves her granddaughter Kelly (Buket Komur). There were lots of nuances in the script.

How did you get on with Buket?
I have step-grandchildren in my life and I get on great with kids. Everybody tells you not to work with animals, but you know where you are with them. If they don't like you, they walk away or pee on your foot. Children are the same: if they don't like you, they won’t bother with you. Buket was adorable. She came running over and said, “Are you Anita? You're playing my grandma!” We bonded really quickly.

How was the flesh-eating experience as a vegetarian actor?
For the most part, I got off quite lightly. I didn't have to do anything like eating brains or a dog, although I did have a baptism of blood and gore on my very first scene when I had to bite a neck. They had a pump so that, as soon as you look like you've locked down, it starts squirting. They must have overloaded the pump because it went everywhere: in my eyes, up my nose, in my ears, all over the walls, all over everybody in the room… The only scene I found really tough was a scene in the forest where we feast on a lot of tourists. When you're actually eating pieces of people, that somehow resonated quite hard with me, but we did it, it was fun, and we had a boogie afterwards. Once you're doing it, it, you know it's a game. And the blood itself was raspberry jam, strawberry jelly, all stuff that's not good for you!

Did you form a bit of a gang offset as well?
Yeah, you've got to when you’re doing something like this. Sue Johnston (playing Cecily) was lovely, so it was easy even though I hadn’t worked with her before. Sue gave as good as I was offering. It’ll be interesting to see whether people will align with either one of them, because Janine wants to be the boss. Even though they're all led by a desire to feed, they still have these touches of humanity you wouldn’t expect. I thought they'd fight over food, but they were fighting over everything!

What issues does Generation Z tackle that interested you?
The fact that they were older and discover that they're actually feeling as young as the youngsters. That was a big thing for me, to play someone who has rediscovered herself and realised you can still have power when you're older. It's all in your mind: if you want something, go for it. Janine fights her corner. As you get older, you tend to not do that so much, because you think: I've had my time, now it's the youngsters’ time. I worked with Sian Phillips years ago and we were talking about pain, physical and emotional, and she said, “Darling, you just have to push through.” That's what's happened to these people as zombies: they push on and live for today. I've always been a bit like that, so I loved that in Janine. People tend to treat some older women as if they're obsolete, but Janine can be the strong me I've always felt I was – and she looked quite hot in those jeans and that little pink cardy, if I say so myself.

How would you cope in a zombie apocalypse?
Having done Generation Z, if they were cognisant zombies then I'd probably say to them: turn me, but don't eat me. Do a deal if you can!