The Light in the Hall: Interview with Alexandra Roach who plays Cat Donato
Category: Press Pack ArticleTell us about The Light in The Hall and your character Cat Donato?
When we first meet Cat Donato she is a journalist in Cardiff. She’s been thinking about something that happened to her 15 years ago in Llanemlyn, a town in West Wales where she grew up and where her her best friend Ela went missing. Nobody knows what happened to her and they never found her body. And it’s always been at the back of her mind. Her parents took her away from Llanemlyn when she was 15 to give her a fresh start away from all of that trauma. So she decides in Episode 1 that this is the story that she needs to investigate. She needs to find out what happened to Ela. We see her travel back to Llanemlyn and dive into the story and try to come to terms with what happened and to try to find out the truth.
Do you think acting is like journalism in a way?
I think I always try to approach every character a bit like a journalist. Me, Alex approaches the script and you’re looking for hints and you’re looking for clues and you’re looking at the story in general so there’s definitely that correlation. Then as an actor you have to dive in and you do have to see the story as a full arc and there are definitely similarities. I think Cat is far more determined and head-strong with this story because it is a very personal story to her. So you really feel that passion she feels to get to the truth because it involved her friend. And I really love that about this script, because you see a lot of TV crime thrillers and it’s a story of a person going to a new place and discovering all these new characters and uncovering the story. With The Light in The Hall it’s Cat going home to a place that she knows very well, that she was actually sad to leave so there were lots of hidden threads and a lot of hidden emotions there for her.
What did you think of the script when you saw it?
I was really taken with the script, especially with Cat as a character. I really liked her determination and what I really loved about it was there are so many different characters we meet across the series, and it really gives a sense of a West Wales community. There’s a handful of characters that you meet in Episode 1 and you think you’ve met the whole array of characters that make up the community but no, it keeps going and we meet so many people and it really gives the colour and the dynamics of a small community. And I think that the writer really captured a sense of that.
You are from Ammanford – a small town in West Wales. Did you feel a bit like Cat – going from your home to the big city? Did it help with your character? Could you understand her frustrations and that wish to move away but also the wish to return?
There were moments, especially in the first reading of the script, that I thought that there were a lot of similarities between me and Cat. I moved away, I was a bit older, I was 17 when I moved to London and I do go back and see my family often. And that’s the difference between me and Cat in that she’s got nobody there except for friends that she lost contact with. But there is a sense of when I go home that I’ve missed out on things and I think Cat feels that as well. There’s a sense of frustration sometimes of living somewhere so rural. If you want something, you can’t just get it instantly like you do in a city. But there are such a lot of positives about not living in a city and I really embraced that when I was filming.
Was it nice to be back working in the area you grew up?
Yes, it was really special actually. I’d recently had a baby so this was my first job back and it was serendipitous almost that my first job was filming 10 minutes away from my mam and dad which has never happened before. My best friend from when I was about four years old – she has just had a baby so we got to go to spend time together - it was really special. The language definitely played into that for me because I always knew I wanted my daughter to speak Welsh but I didn’t really know - living in England now - how I was going to put that into action. But then going back and immersing myself into the community and into a Welsh language community, it just became second nature to me.
You began your acting career in the legendary Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm – didn’t you win a soap award for best newcomer?
I was 15 or 16 and I won a prize and I had to go to London to get it and it was all very exciting. I am very grateful for that start I had in my life. When I went to drama school, I already knew so much about how to be on set, how making a TV show worked, especially a soap like Pobol – it’s so fast and you have to learn on the job. I learned so much. When I came to graduate, I knew I wanted to do TV and film. And I knew that that knowledge came from Pobol Y Cwm. I already had that wealth of experience and it equipped me to go on into my career.
How did it feel to be working in Welsh again?
It’s my first job in Welsh since leaving Pobol Y Cwm when I was 15 or 16 and I was feeling really anxious, actually, about working in Welsh. I haven’t lived in Wales since I was 17 so I was feeling really anxious about turning up on that first day and doing the English version and then ‘reit – nawr mewn i’r Gymraeg’ [right – now into Welsh]. I was like ‘o my gosh am I going to be able to do this’. And that first couple of weeks doing back to back [English and Welsh] - you have to almost make new neurological pathways in your brain! By the end of week two you think ‘ah ok, I understand this now’ – and it becomes a very rewarding experience.
Has having a baby changed the way you look at the world and how you approach acting?
Yes, I think it changes you as a person completely. I have to organise my time a lot more especially with learning lines. Before having a baby I’d learn them the night before and that would be work well for me. Now, I need to find pockets of time to focus quickly.