Vicky EntwistleBest known to TV viewers as Coronation Street’s Janice Battersby, Vicky Entwistle waved a fond farewell to Weatherfield’s cobbled streets in order to pursue a career on the stage. After a successful stint as Madame Thénardier in the West End production of Les Miserables, Vicky is this month visiting the Midlands to play Mari in a new staging of Jim Cartwright’s hit musical, The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice. What’s On recently caught up with her to find out more...

Mari is a huge role and a physically demanding one. What coping strategies
are you putting into place to deal with this?

It’s still early days but I’m trying to work my way through it. Mari’s not an athlete and she’s not a slim woman - so if I get hot and bothered, that’s exactly what she’d do too. So I’m not particularly worried about it.

Are there many similarities between Janice Battersby and Mari?
I don’t think they’re alike at all. For a start, they’re from a different era. Mari, although she might look trashy, thinks she’s glamorous. She really makes an effort - and she’s a lot more fun than Janice. Mari’s a bit of a dreamer and is into her men. I guess she’s a promiscuous, fun-loving party girl, whereas Janice is more of a realist and quite dour. They both work in a factory, but that’s probably where the similarity ends. Well, it certainly will be the way I’m intending to play it, because I don’t want her to be anything like Janice. I’m trying to break that mould. I don’t think you should play a part and have it trap you forever. That’s why I’m doing lots of different theatre. Every part is different from the one I’ve just played. Otherwise there’s no point in doing it. I might as well have stayed in Corrie.

You certainly proved there’s more to you than Janice Battersby when you played Madame Thénardier in Les Miserables in the West End. How was that experience?
It was great, but I felt a bit like Granny Grumble because I was probably the oldest cast member - me and Cameron Blakeley, who played Thénardier. I see it as another string to my bow.

Was wanting to progress as an actor your only reason for deciding to leave Corrie?
I wanted to challenge myself and put myself into positions, parts, situations and roles that were going to test me; ones which I’m going to learn from.
I want to break down barriers and move out of my comfort zone. Being in Les Miserables did that for me because I’m not a singer. I didn’t train as a singer, but Cameron Mackintosh paid for me to have lessons and that gave me the confidence I needed. Just because I’m not a singer shouldn’t mean that I can’t play this amazing woman, so I just played to the woman and didn’t think about the singing.

Did the outcome surprise you?
Yeah, I suppose it did. I don’t think I could do opera somehow, but it certainly doesn’t have the same fear for me now. I think that’s what it’s all about. When I left Corrie, I went to drama centre and then went on to play a part that was very close to me - a northern girl who worked in a factory. Now I’m having fun because I’m getting to put into practice what I was taught for three years.

So how did your role as Janice Battersby come about?
I was doing a play with Jill Halfpenny called Like A Virgin and the casting director from Corrie came to see it and offered me an episode. I was told to just come in and play a factory girl. I didn’t get wardrobe, costumes and wigs - or even time to think about the character - because as far as I was concerned it was just a single episode. They asked me if I wanted to do a few more episodes, then a few more, and then they said they were writing this family around me. So before I knew it I was playing Janice as this factory girl. I might have made different decisions had I been allowed the luxury of creating the character myself. It was flattering, but at the same time I was always trapped into what I’d done with those first few lines.

You’ve been back and forth a few times. Why did you make the conscious decision to leave?
The time goes so quickly. I was in it for fourteen years but it only seemed like seven. When I got to forty I thought, if I don’t move now then I’m never going to play the eleven women who I want to play.

Who are the eleven?
I couldn’t say, other than that I’ve played two of them already, Mari included. They’re all very different and that’s why I want to play them.

Your tag line on Twitter is ‘drink life while it’s still fizzy’. So is your glass half empty or half full?
Leaving a big institution like Coronation Street has taught me to embrace every opportunity that comes my way. What can be achieved is quite special when you work hard.

How do you feel about again appearing opposite Chris Gascoyne, who played Peter Barlow in Corrie?
It makes it a lot better. We came to the meetings about the roles with absolutely no idea what the other one was doing. We knew nothing until we were cast, but we were both ecstatic. Out of all the people I worked with on Corrie, Chris was one of the ones who made me think, ‘Yeah that’s a proper actor’.
I’m so glad I’m going to be working with him because we just get each other. We have a real friendship anyway, so it’s really easy. The only thing that I’d say is that we’re a little bit daunted by having to snog each other’s face off. He played my son-in-law for a couple of years, so that’s going to be a bit odd - but he’s a good-looking lad so I’m sure I’ll get over it.

Can you see Janice treading the cobbled streets of Corrie again?
I’m not thinking that way. It was brilliant while it lasted and I had an absolute ball, but you can’t keep going back. I remember it fondly and it was a great job, but the whole reason for wanting to fly was so that I could do other things. To return would go against what I’m trying to do. Sometimes it’s quite hard to shake off a character, so by making a return you’d be back at square one. Every single role that I take on now seems to shake off a little bit more of Janice. I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I had a great time on there, but I want to work with different people and different directors. As lovely as it is working constantly with the same company and directors, you end up knowing exactly how everybody is going to say their lines. You’re very rarely surprised. I want to be surprised. I want to be kept on my toes and learning new things.

The disciplines of working in TV and on stage are very different. What was the
most difficult change to deal with?

I’d done a lot of theatre jobs before I went into Corrie. I just had to learn how to tell stories which came from the character’s mouth. On stage there’s a lot more at stake. You only get one shot at it. You can’t go again. I much prefer theatre because you get that instant reaction from the audience. I love that buzz and seeing the emotion that you can provoke. It’s a really euphoric feeling that you don’t get with television.

Jim Cartwright has written Mari in a very particular way. Do you get much freedom in terms of how you portray her on stage?
Jim’s been brilliant. If I want to try something and it’s not working then obviously we go down a different avenue. He’s pretty much allowing me to have real fun with it.
What I’ve discovered is yes, Mari’s fun, childlike, demanding and loud, but she’s also extremely damaged, vulnerable and insecure. Those moments when things don’t go how she wants them to should be absolutely heartbreaking - and that’s what I’m trying to achieve. It’s a real rollercoaster ride of emotions, with Mari having these terrific highs where she behaves in a way that normal people wouldn’t. She’s off the scale and then, when she crashes, she becomes so volatile. You really don’t know what you’re going to get from her, which makes it a really exciting role to play.