Interview with Liz White who plays Emma Keane

24 May 2017

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What can you tell me about Ackley Bridge?

Ackley Bridge is a TV drama about a racially integrated school, a new academy which is being opened to help the divide between white schools and Asian schools. The series starts at the opening of the school, so the first day of term, and it takes you through the first term of that school year.

You play Emma, what is she like?

Emma is an English teacher at the school and when you first meet her she is just back from holiday, she has been on her travels, and she comes back to find that her daughter, who she would normally spend weekends and holidays with, has landed herself at the school.  She had travelled up from London and interrupts Emma’s lesson on her first day at her new job so she is overwhelmed by her appearance. It shows you that she has an unconventional life; she is not a full time Mum. Usually when couples split up the child will go with the mother but in this circumstance it has worked the other way around. Also, she has gone back to where she was brought up and she has a very strong social conscious and wants to help the kids in the area that she used to be part of. She is strong minded, strong willed and is fun. She isn’t afraid of tackling the system.

Is it fair to say she is a bit of a rebel and isn’t afraid to go out on a limb for the kids, particularly Missy?

Poppy, who plays Missy, and I discussed this as we were presented with the storyline whereby Emma really gets involved in Missy’s character and we decided that Emma and Missy first came across each other at the previous school Emma taught at. Missy had to drop out as her mum left home and she was left looking after her sister and her Nana and she couldn’t keep up with school anymore and left for a year. Emma was around for all that so she has a vested interest in Missy coming back to education. Also, because Emma knows about Missy’s personal life she knows that she needs extra support and doesn’t want to see her slip thorough the net like other kids have so throughout the series her commitment to Missy is tested and explored and it grows as Missy’s personal life becomes more and more strained.

Emma has a rather interesting history with some of the other characters, namely Mandy and Sammy, what can you tell us about them?

Emma used to go to school with Sami and had a relationship with him when she was really young and then they went their separate ways. They were always best friends, then they got together and split up, so it was love’s young dream gone wrong. They both went off and lead their lives and have come back and found each other in their mid-thirties and discovered that they still really like each other. But also it’s complicated by the fact that their lives have moved on and are not simple anymore…

The history with Mandy is that Mandy and Emma used to be teachers at the previous school and on a level pegging and now they have started this school and Mandy is the head and Emma effectively works for Mandy and they both have to negotiate that new relationship and there is a potential power struggle. I don’t think Emma is really interested in getting into a higher status job but she wants Mandy to appreciate Emma as a teacher, there is a conflict, as Mandy now has to steer Emma in line with the way she wants the school to be, so it’s tricky territory sometimes. Sometimes they come together but sometimes there are clashes of personality and tension.

What drew you to the series? And attracted you to the part?

First of all, it wasn’t a part that I’d get picked to play. I really didn’t think that they would see me as that role. When I went in for the audition I felt quite uninhibited because I just didn’t think it was going to work out anyway.  I liked that she is really sparky and her character really could go anywhere and also that it was depicting a mother’s journey that’s different from the ones we usually see. I also like her teaching style, she was very direct with the kids. She would try and connect with the kids in a different way, we would always joke that Emma was the funny and popular one but also that gets her into trouble as her daughter ends up posting something on social media so all the kids know a bit too much about her personal life. Also, I thought it was great that a TV programme is addressing one of the issues that is going on in our society which is the voluntary segregation in schools and Ackley Bridge is a school that is trying to shake that all up and bring people together to realise the similarities between each other and appreciate the differences between each other. So in terms of trying to be progressive in the choices you make as an actor I thought this story was a good story to tell because it’s about how progressive change can work, particularly in education.

Many of the kids that you have worked with on screen were cast locally, what was it like working with them and Fern, who played your daughter?

It was great and Fern was brilliant. I thought that part of my daughter was really tough, partly because the first scenes she turns up in she is drunk and Fern does it brilliantly. Chloe is a complicated child and Fern negotiated that really well, as you end up caring deeply for her because she has this fragility. But equally you can understand how trying she can be as a person, as a fellow student or as a daughter. I was really impressed with her and really enjoyed working with her. As for the other kids, you have Poppy and Amy who are just fantastic actresses who have worked lots; they are just brilliant and a pleasure to watch. The kids that were street cast were just so refreshing, it was really heart-warming to see how uplifted they were by the experience of working on this TV show and how they were having theirs eyes opened to all the different departments that a TV production has to offer. Even they don’t go into acting they have seen that there is an art department or a sound department and directors and assistant directors. It was great to see that young people’s eyes were wide and their horizons were hopefully being widened by this production.

It’s not your first time appearing in a school drama as you were in Teachers, how would you say Ackley Bridge is different from other school dramas?

The primary difference is they have consciously gone out to address the racial and social divides that are happening particularly up north. So Ackley Bridge is about trying to cut it right down the middle and make sure that it’s completely socially and racially integrated and that’s the focal point, it’s a fictitious school but it’s actually representing issues in education around the country.

You were born in Yorkshire, what was it like being back there?

It was beautiful being back in Yorkshire and the first time I have worked there. I loved it, we were staying quite near where the project was filmed and I loved the proximity to nature, the drive to work in the morning was glorious – either in rain or sunshine the view was spectacular.