ABOUT THIS EPISODE
She killed Dirty Den and buried him under the Queen Vic. Then she ran Torchwood, got turned into a Cyberman, and lost a soap award to a small dog in a bow tie.
Tracy-Ann Oberman has been in more of the things you love than almost anyone alive. EastEnders, Doctor Who, Toast of London, Friday Night Dinner, After Life, It’s a Sin, The Witcher, The Sandman, Ridley Road, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the new Harlan Coben series on Netflix.
She joins Martin Deeson, who has known her since they were teenagers, for a very funny and occasionally jaw-dropping hour on fame, tabloids, antisemitism, Matt Berry, and why the best thing that ever happened to her career was being told she did not look right for the part.
In this episode:
- Why the head of her drama school told her to change her name, and what she said back
- Reading the Toast of London pilot script and immediately ringing her agent to turn it down
- Matt Berry, Mrs Purchase, Clem Fandango, and why the dads at the school gates suddenly wanted to talk to her
- Auntie Val, Friday Night Dinner, Auntie Val Core trending on TikTok, and the dog cage she refused to come out of
- Ten days from audition to Albert Square, and the Selfridges spree with an unlimited budget
- What Leslie Grantham said to her in the EastEnders chemistry test, and what she said back
- Being told she was the Katharine Hepburn to his Spencer Tracy of Walford
- Killing Dirty Den, burying him under the Queen Vic, and then acting opposite him while he was under it
- Turning up to work on the Monday after a six-page tabloid expose of her co-star
- The small dog in a bow tie that beat her to a Soap Award, and why she thinks about it more than a BAFTA
- Russell T Davies, Dr Who, Yvonne Hartman, Torchwood, the Daleks, the Cybermen, and getting cybered
- It’s a Sin, and the friend whose family burned the bed sheets and buried the cutlery
- Ridley Road, Cable Street, and her great uncle put through a plate glass window by Mosley’s Blackshirts
- Becoming the first female Shylock in The Merchant of Venice 1936
- Noel Coward’s Present Laughter reimagined with a female lead at Studio 54, opening at Bath Theatre Royal
Three things you will take away:
- What it actually costs to join a soap at the height of the tabloid era
- How a jobbing actor turns a part she nearly refused into a cult classic
- Why she calls herself an accidental activist, and what she thinks that obliges her to do
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/martin-deeson-unloaded/id1885169674
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDeesonUnloaded
X: https://x.com/martindeeson
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martindeeson/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@martindeeson
Website: https://www.unloadedpodcast.com/
Tracy-Ann Oberman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyanno/
Present Laughter tickets - Theatre Royal Bath, then touring to Cambridge, Cheltenham, Malvern, Liverpool, York and Chichester: https://linktr.ee/PresentLaughterTour
