Singer and actress Martine McCutcheon talks to RTÉ.ie about her latest role, as author of her first novel 'The Mistress' and about her Irish boyfriend.
She shares her view on being cast in 'Love Actually', 'EastEnders' and almost throwing in the towel: "If you want me to stay in this stinking business, you've got to show me a massive sign because I'm getting a lot of criticism at the moment and I don’t know what I've done!"
Taragh Loughrey-Grant: After starring as 'EastEnders' Tiffany Mitchell from 1995-98, do you watch the soap?
Martine McCutcheon: I haven't watched 'EastEnders' in a long time and when I did watch it, it was when Patsy Palmer went back.
I wanted to see my little name sake Tiffany and I wanted to see Patsy go back and play a role that I think no one else can do. She is just so fantastic as Bianca. She was as brilliant as ever, she hasn't lost it. And I know she's also had time to have loads of children. She's got the balance right I think, she's got the real-life and she's also back up there doing what she does best in her career, which is acting Bianca brilliantly. She's as mad as a hatter but I absolutely adore her.
TLG: I think when word spread about her return there were echoes across Western Europe of 'Rickaaaaayyy!!
MMC: [Bursting into laughter] I know!
TLG: What do you think of Barbara Windsor's news that she's retiring from 'EastEnders' next year?
MMC: I'm really pleased for her because it takes a lot for an actress to say 'I deserve some time out', we're all such people pleasers in our nature. She has worked so hard for so long. If that woman doesn't deserve a break, I don't know who does.
TLG: I loved what she said as well; 'I think I better spend some time with my old man, he's not getting any younger you know'. Scott Mitchell, her third husband, is 26 years younger than her!
MMC: Yeah, I know and it's brilliant because she's the one saying to him, I can't see you then and I'm doing this interview after that...she certainly keeps him on his toes! She probably wants a bit of quality time with him, I mean I feel like that and I'm in my 30's!
TLG: Do you think you've found your balance?
MMC: I think I have, you have to know who you are to know who you want to have in your life. I spent so much time being a version of myself that people wanted me to be, that's what paid my bills and that's what was exciting to me that I didn't have time to work out where's the real me in all of this, which sounds a bit naf but its true.
As a result you can starve yourself of what you really want and go for the obvious things, like the glamour and the applause and the glossy jobs but you're up at 5am, you work long hours and you've no time to yourself. I really enjoyed the solitude of writing a book and I loved not having to put the hair and make-up on, I loved it.
TLG: Rumours are rife that you've fallen in love with an Irish guy?
MMC: I'm in love with a man called Jack McManus, the family are Irish and they've welcomed me into their family and taken care of me and they are wonderful, all of them. I like them because they've got that Irish banter and they also put me in my place.
I know I can only go so far before they'll bring me down a peg or two, all done with a laugh and a glint in the eye! He is definitely the most remarkable, gentle, gracious man I've ever met who wants me for once to go out and shine and isn't jealous of the career. So it's fantastic.
TLG: Actress, singer, performer, author - do you love each of these roles?
MMC: I love them all, I think life is like a blank canvas and you put on it what you want to put on it and it's all so creative for me. For someone else it might seem a bit random that I'm designing a range one minute, doing a movie the next and then singing a rock song, for me they're all linked because they're all performance based. As long as it's something creative I'm really happy and I think I'd be so frustrated if I didn't give things a go.
TLG: 'Love Actually' – do you still smile when you think of that film?
MMC: I love it, I would have been absolutely livid if that role hadn't have worked out. Luckily it did, I met Richard Curtis at the Bafta's and I'd just had the number one, 'Perfect Moment' and he came up and asked 'Would you sign an autograph for my children because they absolutely love your song and so do I but if I'm being honest, now I hate it they've played it and played it to death! And I was like 'Oh my God, it's Richard Curtis and he's sick of my song, I'm not quite sure how to respond!' So I said, 'Of course I'll sign something for you and if it all goes wrong for me and I end up stacking shelves somewhere please come and get me and put me in one of your films because its my dream to work with you and Hugh Grant and I don't know where I'm going to fit in but I would love to.' And he remembered.
When I was thinking of giving up the business after 'My Fair Lady' and all my voice and health problems, because I was working like a demon for years and it all caught up on me, I went away to Spain with two of my camp, gay friends and I did a deal with God. I looked up to the heavens as I was on the plane and I said 'If you want me to stay in this stinking business, you've got to show me a massive sign because I'm getting a lot of criticism at the moment and I don’t know what I've done!'
Then literally a week later I got a phone-call from my agent, an Irish guy Conor, going 'Martine, I know you told me never to call you ever again and that you hate the business and you're not going to do it anymore but something huge has happened -Richard Curtis has called and he wants you to read for a movie.' Well I was on the plane, quicker than you could say Bobs your uncle, all memory of giving up the business was gone and forgotten!
TLG: As soon as you read the part of Natalie, you knew she was the one for you?
MMC: I read the part and afterwards Richard told me that they had to change the script in a hurry that morning because he didn't want me to get a big head. They had originally got my name down for Natalie's role alongside Hugh Grant's as the PM, so the role was written for me, which was amazing. In a hurry they had to give my character a name, as they just had Martine down so they chose Emma's [Thompson's] cousin's name, Natalie and that was that!
TLG: Had you ever met Hugh Grant before then?
MMC: No and I had a huge crush on him. When I met him I just thought 'Oh my God, you're gorgeous' and I just kept thinking 'Be a professional, be a professional, hold your own'. Sitting there with him, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson and Alan Rickman around you for this read through and all joking aside, my confidence had gone and I was shaking, as I was turning the pages over.
Alan kicked me under the table and said 'Are you okay?' and I said 'I'm so nervous' and he said 'Don't worry darling, we all are, we're just acting that we're not'. When he said that, it really helped me.
TLG: How did the book come about?
MMC: I decided to write an idea for a TV show because a head of a TV network said 'Martine, we'd like to create something for you, have you got any ideas?' And I said 'Well I've always played the tart with a heart or the girl next door, or butter wouldn't melt and I'd love to do something quite raunchy. I was trying to think of different things and the mistress came up, it was before 'Mistresses' the TV show had come out and also we thought it would be more fun to have an unrequited, ongoing love-affair that could go on for series after series. So he said, 'Go away, write a full-body of work for me and come back and we'll see what the producers think of it.'
Then as happens, people got wind of it and publishers started asking 'Who's your literary agent, we're publishers, and we'd like to publish your book for you.' And I kept saying, that I wasn't writing a novel and I wasn't quite sure if I was ready for it but I got a literary agent – very high-brow and very credible and he was very honest with me and said 'You've got to leave the fame and the glory outside the door and you're going to have to work really, really hard because the cynics are just going to want to knock it and I want you to be proud of this. What kind of book do you want to do?'
I said, 'I want it to be like a working title movie, a 'Sex in the City' but in London'. We met different publishers, showed them the work and there was a bidding war for it! My agent said 'The minute people read it; they know you wrote it yourself and that's why they're fighting to publish it.' Luckily they believed I'd the brain to do it. So I went away, locked myself away for the best part of a year. I wrote it all with long-hand, then felt stupid that I'd done that but then they told me that Jackie Collins does the same thing so I thought if its good enough for Jackie its good enough for me! I kept putting it off, the deadline because I was scared and my mum, who has had a No. 1 Best Seller with The Times with a book called 'Behind Closed Doors' under Jenny Tomlin, knew how to get me organised.
I had to read really sexual scenes to her and I could see her laughing and then she said 'We are taking our relationship as mother and daughter to a level I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable with!'
TLG: What made you decide to write the story of a mistress for your debut novel?
MMC: Most people I speak to, all know someone who has flirted with a married man or they know somebody who knows somebody who is a married man having an affair or they have been the mistress themselves. Nowadays we're so used to being saturated with controversy but still when you talk about the mistress, something about it makes people go 'Ooohh' and raise an eyebrow. They want the gossip on it, they want to know, its just human interest to be tempted elsewhere, to think the grass is greener and it's also really hard to choose who you fall in love with and you can't.
Sometimes its just chemistry, sometimes its just fate, whatever you believe in. I just thought, if that happened to me and being known, I don't know what I would do – it would effect my career, it would effect everything but would I be able to control it and say no actually I'm not going to fall in love with you? I don't think I would. The truth is no one knows what goes on between two people.
One of my friends who, was one of the inspiration for the book first started seeing this married man and she was asking me for my advice as somebody who had been cheated on in my own love life, I didn't know what advice to give her. It puts everybody in such a difficult situation. So I spoke to my mum and she said 'You just have to be there for her, they're consenting adults, let them get on with it.' I thought it wouldn't last and ten years later, they're still together.
TLG: What do you think of the critical response to the book?
MMC: Yeah, I've seen people with the knives out but I'm so proud of it that none of them are going to flatten my dream. I just hope people buy it and make up their own minds.
Martine McCutcheon's 'The Mistress', published by Pan, is in shops now.
