Emma Pierson: Finding her voice

Looking for a posh-sounding, great looking lady? Emma Pierson is your actress. However, as Mark Kebble asks, is that all this north Londoner has in her acting bag?

High winds are smashing into Emma Pierson’s Barnsbury top floor flat, but does she mind one bit? “I quite like it,” she shrugs. “It sounds like you are out at sea. I like to call it my treehouse…”

It’s little surprise, therefore, that when her Hotel Babylon character Anna Thornton-Wilton finds herself in a tricky situation, Emma is only too happy to do the stunts. “There’s one scene where she is hanging upside down in a ventilation shaft,” she laughs about the third series, now back on our TV screens. “I know actors have stunt doubles, but I don’t have someone else delivering my lines do I? I love doing sports and stunts.”

Hotel Babylon’s look at the frenetic world of the staff behind the glamour and grins has become popular the world over. Receptionist Anna, quite simply a “posh bitch”, has the sole ambition of marrying into a lifestyle she believes she deserves – and is horribly insincere to anyone and everyone. As the programme has developed, so too has Emma’s character. “That’s great for me,” says Emma, “it means the hard work has paid off.”

For fans of the series, Emma promises some great storylines and a new side to Anna third time around. The north London actress talks very fondly of her creation – and make no mistake, it is her creation. “I don’t walk like Anna at all,” she insists about her real self. “The writers see what you are doing and they see how you interact with other actors, picking up on your ad-libs. The way that Anna walks is very much something I created. We have new writers coming in all the time. If they say that Anna will be more moralistic, I am determined not to scrap the last two years of hard work, so you have to find a way of doing it. I absolutely love the character and I am protective of her.”

Emma is a scream in Hotel Babylon. Despite Anna’s attitude, you can’t help but want to see her involved with what’s going on. It’s a role that has given Emma a lot of exposure, not only for her looks, but also for her distinctive voice it seems. “I got recognised in America because of my voice,” she laughs. “It does surprise me, though, that people stop me, say they know me and then pull out one of my more obscure roles.”

There has indeed been plenty to see of Emma in the past few years. It all started when she was 17 and a role in Grange Hill – “All the other kids had actually been to stage school, but literally Grange Hill was my school of learning about filming,” she recalls – where Emma admits that she went into acting because she had ambitions of being famous. Seeing what was going on around her, her viewpoint changed and she turned her hand to comedy. “I am glad for Grange Hill as it made me realise early on what I wanted to actually do.”

So why comedy? “I like a laugh and I like making other people laugh,” she says simply. “Comedy is quite tricky to do and I learnt a lot from doing it.” Ben Miller is one comedian that Emma worked a lot with in her early comedy days. “He’s lovely,” she gushes, “just so charming.” She also drew a few admiring glances as barmaid Connie in Al Murray’s Time Gentlemen Please. “Ben and Al are ‘proper’ comedians,” she states firmly. “They are all frighteningly intelligent. When I was filming with Al, he would do a lot of the warm-up and keep the audience going. He would ask them for any job title and he would know all about it, or about any country and he would know the history.”

Comedy parts in a variety of sitcoms followed, until her performance as Nell Gwyn in Charles II: The Power and the Passion indicated that she had some serious acting chops too. Justine Hopkins, the lead character in Bloodlines, signed and sealed the deal. “That was my biggest dramatic role,” she readily agrees. “It’s three hours in total and I am pretty much in every scene.” She plays a young PC whose investigations into the murder of her father throw up some very disturbing discoveries. It was not only her first major lead role, but was also a moment of realisation too. “Philip Martin directed it and that was probably the time when I realised how important a director was,” she admits. “Up until that point I saw a director as someone who might move the camera around a little. When you are playing someone who is self-sufficient, it is what it is – there’s not much you need to do with it. But I saw Phil like a conductor of an orchestra, pulling something together.”

Her performance earned rave reviews, but unfortunately for Emma, not many people saw it first-hand. “Sometimes I do wish that Bloodlines came after Hotel Babylon,” she laments. “When it came out, no-one wanted to interview me. I was just a girl who had been on TV. It came out and it went, but c’est la vie. That is one thing I am grateful for with Hotel Babylon – it has given me a name. It was hard losing a role to someone who had a more famous face.”

Emma, who is still only 26, is in an intriguing position career-wise. The likes of Bloodlines and Hotel Babylon have put on her on the acting map, but she also realises now is an important time in her development. “At the beginning of this year I was getting new scripts through,” she explains, “play a posh bitch this, a posh madam that, but I turned them down. Sure it would have been nice money, but I need to hold out a bit now.”

Perhaps that explains why she took on the role of Tina in Chris Cottam and (Angel and North favourite) Rankin’s The Lives of the Saints in 2006. A modern-day fantasy set in a grim north London world, it wasn’t received well by many, but Emma won’t say a word against it. “The project was amazing,” she says. “That was minimum pay, but we were doing the job because we wanted to tell the story. It was Rankin and Chris’ first film project and I thought they did an amazing job. It was filmed on Green Lanes and it’s like a whole different culture there. It’s a bit like Brick Lane in the sense that it’s London, but totally different to the rest of the capital.”

As the wind continues to shriek against her rooftop windows, Emma is happy to let her career be swept away in interesting directions. “There are still massive goals and dreams to be achieved,” she says, “but I am really proud of what I have done so far.” Sit back, relax and enjoy the development of Anna Thornton-Wilton, but expect to see Emma in several different guises in the years to come.

Hotel Babylon is back on our screens every Tuesday at 9pm. See more of Emma at www.emmapierson.com