The Light in the Hall: Interview with Joanna Scanlan who plays Sharon

3 January 2023

Joanna, tell us about the drama The Light in The Hall and your role in it.

The drama is the story of a young woman Cat Donato (Alexandra Roach) who has left the town that she lived in her teens and gone off and made a life in Cardiff.  She’s a journalist and she’s looking for stories to promote her career. And when she realises that the killer of her former school friend is about to be released on parole, she goes back to her home town. I play Sharon Roberts the mother of the victim of the murder. The killer Joe Pritchard (Iwan Rheon) has never revealed what he has done with the body. So Sharon’s deeply shocked when he’s released on parole. She begins to take things into her own hands, which is illegal in itself and wildly, psychologically unsettled and disturbed. What she really wants is her daughter back and she can’t have that. The only thing she really wants is what she can’t have and I think the madness that ensues because of that, she just cannot face that reality of loss. She’s in a netherworld, a half world because she just wants to be with her daughter.

You started learning Welsh last year and took part in the learner’s program Iaith Ar Daith. Did you think that you’d be acting in a Welsh language drama just one year later?

Oh my God no! I can’t believe firstly that they thought of me and secondly that they thought I could do it! The only way I can rationalise it is - well, if they’re crazy enough to think I could do a Welsh language drama, then I’ve got to be crazy enough to try! And I have loved every second of it even though it is massively challenging. And it is hard, there is no doubt, but you get so much reward for that work that it is quite compelling. You just want to go back and do it again. It’s been absolutely wonderful and I can’t thank them enough (Triongl, S4C, Channel 4, Duchess Street Productions) for taking a punt on me. I’m staggered and I am a better person for doing this, no doubt about it in my mind!

Do you speak a lot of Welsh in the drama?

Yes, I do. There are a lot of scenes and I do have to speak quite a lot. And occasionally I have got chunky speeches as well which are obviously a bit more challenging to learn. One of the things that is really different about a script in English as opposed to a script in Welsh is that in English it is written out in fairly formal non-dialect, non-contracted sentences and then the actor tends to do the work on that. In Wales, the sentences are written in a way where you get a lot of apostrophes and what I call contracted speech (dyma might just be ‘ma). As soon as that work is done it seems to be able to sit in my brain that much better but what does really help is knowing how the grammar in the sentence is working. Then you almost do this brain shift into a different box, where the positioning of the verb in the sentence, which may be different in English, suddenly becomes natural.

The Light in The Hall was filmed simultaneously in Welsh and English – was it difficult to film in two languages?

Well, I think that the way I’ve always seen it is that the Welsh for me is the primary version of it because I’ve had to spend a lot more time learning the Welsh. Almost when I’m doing the English, I’m translating back from the Welsh into the English in order to play the scene in English. And if I can anchor myself in the ‘iaith Gymraeg’ [Welsh language] then I am in it but if I anchor myself in the English I can’t do it – it just doesn’t work. That’s probably from having to learn so much. The difficulty for me in pure technical acting terms is the way stress works in Welsh is very different than the way stress works in English. In English I can precisely stress a word to change a meaning whereas I’m just too ignorant of the natural patterns to be able to choose the word in a Welsh sentence. I feel like I’m swimming in the sea in the dark in the middle of the night sometimes just hoping that I’m going to reach the shore.

You have Welsh-speaking family in Wales, what did they say about you acting in Welsh? And have they helped you learn your lines?

They are really excited about it. My mum is especially excited about it because she’s long been a supporter of the Welsh language and has had a lot of friends who have been involved in the development of the Welsh language. She’s always been very proud of being Welsh herself and living in Wales. She does speak a bit of Welsh so she’s been really thrilled. My niece has been brought up speaking Welsh because of living in Wales and she’s gone to school in Welsh and all her friends speak Welsh – that is normal for her. For her it’s less of a deal that I’m speaking Welsh but she has been the best guide because firstly, she is North Walian and my character is, so everybody else I’m dealing with is in South Walian dialect whereas she is north Walian so she’s looking at the lines of the characters who aren’t my character and saying whhhaat? I don’t understand any of that! That’s been really helpful actually because I’ve been able to see that if you grow up with a language in a certain way, then that’s what you speak. In the early days when I really was at a loss to know what anything meant, she was just brilliant at inventing rhythms and chants and ways to just lock it in so that it would seem more natural. She’s a very talented and able person. Her main line to me when I was panicking and thinking ‘I can’t do this’ was ‘get a grip’! When you get to my age – most of the things that you do in your life you’re pretty competent at. When you go into the kitchen you can cook your dinner. It’s really a horrible feeling of almost vulnerable humiliation when you’re really bad at something. Nobody’s actually judging you but you judge yourself. And so it’s really nice having a family member because you feel less vulnerable making mistakes in front of them. She is 100 per cent supportive and sends me lovely texts all the time.

You grew up in Wales – did this help you in the role of Sharon Roberts?

I think that the primary starting point is that I was brought up and educated in Wales. At my school, Howell’s School Denbigh, we sang in Welsh and a lot that we did was in Welsh like assemblies, church services – those sort of formal events had a lot of Welsh in them. I had a lot of close friends who were Welsh speaking, so growing up around that helped. I think if you really came to it from zero, and you just saw the words and the letters and you didn’t know how to unpick them into the Welsh alphabet, I think that would be another stage again from what I’ve had to do, from what my challenge has been.