The following interview is from the official Granada Televsion 1995 press release for the series "Band of Gold" in which Barbara starred as Anita Braithwaite.
What sort of a character is Anita?
At first when I read the script, I thought she was rather a bit of a "tart with a heart", but in fact I don't think that's true. I think she is basically a good person, but has a sort of savage and cold streak.
In what way?
I think she can be quite calculating and is immensely selfish - and so, like most actors, I'm very interested in the horrible side of her character. I don't want to just be nice people all the time!
And I hope that that part of her comes out, because if she was too soft-centred she would be perhaps a little bit too stereotypical. But I don't think she is like that at all. Because she is a Scot, I think I got to know her character very quickly, and I sort of played her like tough west-coast Glasgow would be.
She's very street-wise - and she has no illusions about her relationship with George Ferguson, her boyfriend who comes to visit her once a week. I mean, he comes really to sleep with her once a week - on the quiet and his wife doesn't know anything about it. He's obviously got plenty of money because he pays all her expenses, so she just carries on her life and once a week they meet each other. I think she thinks that's what relationships are really like, perhaps she does long for George to love her, but she doesn't long for another relationship.
But she doesn't really love him though, does she?
I think it's the nearest thing she gets to love. She likes her physical relationship with him, although it's only once a week - she enjoys it, it brings a lot of warmth into her life. And I think she does love George in her way, that's why she's so devastated when he does what he does...
But she is slightly dizzy...
Yes, she is, yet she thinks that, because she isn't a prostitute, she's a slight cut above eveiybody else. She's an interesting character, Anita, because she's much more complex than at first she appears. I think she is seen as a rather dizzy, tarty figure - but I think she really does have a bit more depth to her. She is genuinely fond of Rose and Carol, and yet she doesn't want to be associated with how they make their money, apart from making a few bob on the side if they need a roof over their head, of course...
But do you think that in Kay's mind, she is meant to be the acceptable face of prostitution, in that she is still living off a man? One of the questions that Kay wants the audience to face is at what stage would I sleep with somebody for something....
Of course, of course. That was also the sole topic of conversation amongst all of us - all of the actresses talked about what actually makes the woman take that step and I think it is very interesting what Kay has raised here. I would say that Anita actually is a very interesting character because she shows, if you like, the unacceptable face of other women's relationships. I'm not saving that, as a result, you have to draw the conclusion that there is nothing wrong with prostitution, but Anita doesn't haven't a particularly good time either.
Effectively, we could draw the conclusion that there's not much to be written home about having a steady relationship with a man, unless it's the right kind of relationship.,.. and obviously Anita and George's relationship is not the right sort of relationship. They're holding themselves up like a pair of sort of crazy bookends - she and George - you know, if one moves the whole lot collapses.
How did you actually approach the role? Did you do any research for it?
The only research I did was in Bradford, with the rest of the people I was working with. I thought that was very important. If I was going to play her as a Scot, I wanted to get a kind of feel for Bradford. I do actually know Bradford relatively well as I used to work in West Yorkshire folk clubs many years ago. I spent time then wandering about in Bradford... getting to know it and eating curry with various people who ran folk clubs, and I used to stay with a couple I knew who lived just outside Bradford.
I soaked up a bit of the atmosphere, and familiarised myself a little bit with the twilight world in which prostitutes and their friends operate.
So this was actually going out on to the streets, watching the girls at work?
Yes, which I did with Geraldine, Cathy, Ruth gemmell, Sue Milton, the make-up designer, and Sue Peck, the costume designer. We didn't really do anything controversial, we just got into costume and walked around to see whether we fitted in. We didn't do anything - we didn't try and mingle with the people, we kept very much to ourselves, but it was quite a weird thing to do. But what was really beneficial was meeting the working girls themselves, and going on to the pub where people gather, and to be around Lumb Lane and just see where everything was supposed to happen.
What did that give you?
It gave us a reference. It was almost like soaking up the atmosphere, like a sponge - and also meeting the working girls gave us, I suppose, a sort of "matter-of-fact" attitude to what they do in their everyday lives.
