Sally Phillips Looks Back At Her Career

by Helen Earnshaw | 1 November 2011

Sally Phillips has enjoyed an acting career that has spanned over fifteen years and take in both TV and movie work.

She has gone from the likes of Smack the Pony to Bridget Jones's Diary and has recently penned the script for The Decoy Bride.

It has been a decade since Bridget Jones's Diary first hit the big screen and I caught up with Sally to talk about the movie, reprising the role of Shazzer in a third film an what lies ahead.

- You recently teamed up with Boots for a screening of Bridget Jones and reading in London so how was it returning to this movie ten years after it was released?

I just had such a good time on the film but it does seem like a lifetime ago - it really does.

It was a really nice event I went along and read from the book, it was really nice to go back to the book actually; I had forgotten how good the book was.

I read at a dinner party with the blue suit and the marmalade pudding - that was really fun because they were massive fans of the film, when you have been in something you are not a massive fan anymore.

- As I said the movie is new ten years old so why do you think it is still so well loved?

It was very much of it's time really - women were getting married later and it was really the first time that the whole single girl thing had really been done.

She really put her finger on a sociological phenomenon and the character is so likeable that people are very happy to identify with it.

And it was very female humour and I don't think that had been done before, that diary style, it was very very honest.

Then the film was a very faithful adaptation of the book - and they are all very likeable; Hugh & Colin are gorgeous to look at, Hugh is hilarious while Colin is adorable, and Renee is one of those people who you care about on screen.

It was great source material, very well adapted and brilliantly adapted.

- You took on the role of Shazzer in the film so what was is about that character that drew you to the movie?

I was happy to do anything in that film (laughs). At the time I was Bridget Jones as I was single, living in Notting Hill, had issue with my size and was trying to give up smoking - none of the parts were a stretch at that point (film).

All of them were fun parts and all of them were a laugh. But Shazzer was a part that I really enjoyed doing because when someone talks with such violence it's quite nice to play against it because you get to play really loving.

You get to play the opposite, which means that you have a nice time because you being someone who really likes the people around her - rather than being someone miserable.

- Are there any plans for you to reprise the role in the third movie?

Yes. I was penciled to start filming in September and that got pushed back to November, with my baby due on Friday. But now they have come through and postponed until January so who knows what is going to happen.

- Are you looking forward to going back?

Oh yes. On all those movies the friends have more fun than anybody else - my memories of the first movie were sitting in the caravan with Shirley Henderson and James Callis, James Callis is hilarious; he is one of the funniest people that I have ever met.

The script was overlong, Richard Curtis tends to overwrite and then they cut in the edit, and in the original script we had quite a lot to do but our scenes got cut so we wouldn't get on set.

So we just sat, and there were lots of night shoots as well, and we just sat and told stories and ate chocolate for three months all the way through the night - we became totally nocturnal. I had a real laugh.

- You have just penned The Decoy Bride so can you tell me a little bit about that and how it came around?

I heard that some celebrity couple, and I can't remember who it was now, were planning their wedding and they had booked four decoy venues, three decoy brides
and I just thought that that was hilarious.

So then is sort of germinated this idea of being a decoy bride and the idea that there are women who, it seems to me, are very good at being women - they have got manicured fingernails that have never been chipped and men think they are mysterious and beguiling.

Then there are the women who trip over their shoes, get fat bottoms, find chocolate cake irresistible and always attract the wrong kind of guys or are attracted to guys who aren't in love with them and I started to feel this compassion to this character, this decoy bride.

Also there is a friend of mind who ever single person she had gone out with had married the next girlfriend after her (laughs) so she was like this rehearsal person. So I started to build up this character in my head and then built up a story around that.

The whole film making process is fairly agonising in this country - we stared doing it just as all of the tax breaks were cut. Also I had written it starring a woman and it is very hard to get a film financed starring a woman and I had written her Scottish and for Kelly Macdonald - I had been quite specific really.

So it was not terribly straight forward really anyway it has been made and we are just waiting to hear when it is going to be released - Isle of Man reassure that they are definitely going to release it but I don't know when.

I am in the movie as an American, because I am much cheaper than real Americans (laughs). I drove all the real American berserk because I spoke with an American accent all of the time except for when the cameras were actually rolling, I found that I would be totally convincing then they would shout 'action' and I would drop the odd vowel.

- The movie has a great cast of Alice Eve, Kelly Macdonald and David Tennant so what did you think of the casting and what has it been like to see your characters come to life?

I have got asked this before but weirdly it is more fun watching comedy being filmed because it's a bit mental and it looks different to normal.

With this there were a lot of exteriors, we shot in the Scotland and the Isle of Man which are beautiful; but you don't go 'I wrote this' you go 'what a beautiful piece of countryside'. And I wasn't closely involved with their performances so they were on set much more than I was.

With comedy I remember fifteen years ago writing a sketch called Toilet Duck where a girl had stacked an entire supermarket with Toilet Duck - it was just a stupid idea that I had had one night. It took three grown men three days to stack the supermarket full of Toilet Duck - so I was more astonished to see that.

With my comedy writing it has been more of a thrill to see some of those sketches filmed - also this film it is so collaborative and there are so many people involved that by the time you get to the set the writer is the least important person; it becomes the director and the financiers vision.

- You have done lots of writing over the years so how much does what goes on behind the camera interest you - any desires to direct?

Yeah I think I will go on and direct. I don't love bossing people about, some people are really good at marshalling groups of people, so the idea of telling fifty hairy electricians where to put their light doesn't appeal at all (laughs).

But I definitely write in pictures and I have got quite a visual sense, more than writing for theatre, so I will probably try it and see if I am terrible at it.

There is a possibility of me directing a comedy thing fairly shortly - but I better not say what in case it doesn't work out.

- You have enjoyed a career that has spanned over fifteen years so how has the way that you select your roles change in that time?

When I started I was incredible arrogant really (laughs) I didn't have any financial needs at all and so I would only work with people who I thought were brilliant, and I was quite snotty about who those people were; they tended to be people no one else had heard of.

I have never been interested in doing 'The Sally Phillips Experience' and show off all the different acts that I can do I am much more interested in story and character than party tricks.

Also now I have got kids and I have to take into finances and not being away from London, which is why I have done much more writing recently.

- Most recently we have been seeing you in Miranda so what was it about that show they tempted you back to TV?

Miranda did a pilot and she called me and said she couldn't get the characters to work and asked if I could come and help her and I said yes. I think that I gave her her first TV job - I saw her at the Edinburgh Festival 1997 doing a double act and she wrote to me saying 'thank you for coming to see my show can you help me?'.

I then got Victoria Pile to see her for Smack The Pony and she did a couple of video dates on Smack The Pony and I told her to write to French and Saunders - and they too gave her work.

So I have known her for ages and I felt like this benevolent patron - of course she is this giant celebrity and I am very lucky to be in her show.

- Throughout your career you have worked in both TV and film so how do the two compare and differ?

I think that they have changed quite a lot over time, in that when I first started a low budget film had a budget of £5million and now a low budget film has a budget of £500,000 - so that is an enormous change.

I think there use to much more of a feeling that film was a superior medium and now I don't think that is the case because there are these incredible drama series from the States and some of the best writing in the world is happening on TV, and there is a large number of not very good films; very formulaic films.

It's more of a level playing field. Seven years ago I was thinking that ideally I just wanted to do film and now I don't feel that anymore as I feel that there is a chance to experiment and do some really interesting work on TV - providing that you get the right backing.

You could do something very exciting for BBC 4 for example - I find that even with a low budget film you don't get much free reign.

What's quite interesting is everyone is going back to live work now; music is all going live and they are getting much more control that way and comedy has all gone live.

It's quite a transitional time at the moment and I think that we are all waiting to see what happens.

- You are about to be a mum again so how difficult have you found it juggling work with being a parent?

Almost impossible (laughs) it's very hard. I don't think that everyone find it easy - either you are at work feeling a but guilty or you are not at work and you are missing it.

I think that you have to have to have some guilt gland removed. You go into acting because you slightly hyper-sensitive and so you are going to feel these things a little bit more - I have got a sister in law who is a pharmacist and she is very practical about these things while I torture myself wherever I am.

- Finally what's next for you acting wise - are you taking some time off once you have had the baby or are you going pretty much straight back to work?

Now that Bridget Jones has been put back to January I have got a few months there. I have got a couple of movie in January - Bridget Jones and a low budget film called Svengali.

Then I am doing a series for Sky called Parents, which is going to be eight episodes, I have got Miranda and a couple of projects with the BBC as well.

Sally Phillips is working with Boots Opticians to promote their new 'Mix and Match' offer which allows customers to buy two different prescription glasses from just £79

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw