What's on TV - 8-14 June 2002

Anna Friel plays a press photographer with a nose for a good story

When Anna Friel decided to return to TV after four years of making films, the last place she expected to find herself was in a pen of stinking pigs on a freezing cold winter’s day up North.

“There was the most vile stench you have ever smelt in your life”, says Anna, 25,  wrinkling her nose up at the memory of it. “You were practically throwing up as you were trying to get through your dialogue. My character was meant to be shocked by the conditions the animals were kept in, so I didn’t have to act very much ! The ironic thing was that in the catering van that day, bacon was on the menu. I don’t think anyone touched it!”

The farmyard scenes were all for BBC1’s new two-part thriller Fields of Gold, in which Anna stars as Lucia, a young press photographer, who alongside tabloid hack Roy Lodge (Phil Davis), finds herself investigating sinister connections between the government, big business and the scary world of genetically modified crops.

“It has been proven that whatever you inject animals with, somewhere along the food chain it’s going into our bodies”, says Anna. “If we don’t watch out, farms will become like museums as farming becomes more about technology and chemicals. After filming Fields of Gold I have only eaten organic food”.

Since quitting Brookside in 1995 – she’d played Beth Jordache for two years – the actress has only appeared on TV once, in the BBC drama Our Mutual Friend. Instead she’d been in several films, including Land Girls (1998), Rogue Trader (1999) and Me Without You (2001). She’s currently in Montreal shooting Timeline, an adaptation of the novel by Michael Crichton, and will then star in a film version of the Marian Keyes novel Watermelon.

“I avoided TV for a while because of the association with Brookside”, says Anna. “But I think that has been lifted. When people recognise me now, they don’t call me Beth any more, which is nice.”

For Fields of Gold, Anna – who lives with actor David Thewlis – spent a week researching her role with a newspaper photographer.

“It made me feel softer towards the paparazzi as it’s actually a hard job to do”, she recalls. “Having a camera in your hand does make you feel powerful, but I prefer to be on the other side of it, because sometimes it did feel quite intrusive. It’s much easier just to smile and go into the party!”.

-Tim Randall