The stage and screen star Denise Gough has called upon prominent actors to be vigilant for fellow cast and crew members in an industry where misconduct remains rife.
Gough is set to reprise her role as an actor who has a breakdown in the play People, Places and Things which won her an Olivier award in 2016. It transferred from the National Theatre to the West End and New York, was one of the last decade’s most acclaimed stage performances and led to Gough’s high-profile roles on television. As a leading actor, the Irish star said she has a particular duty to look out for her colleagues.
“I’m deemed ‘important’ now so I get treated really well all the time,” said Gough. “But then around me I see people who aren’t considered important treated badly. I think that if you get into a position of any power at all, especially as an actor, if you are number one or two on the call sheet, you have a responsibility. I know you have to do your acting and everything but you also have to make sure that everyone is OK on your set. I don’t see enough of that. I see a lot of actors who get into positions of power, get distracted by the shiny things and don’t do anything to change the system.”
Gough said that, especially in film and television, she has continued to observe bad behaviour that is not just tolerated but even rewarded – although she is also “heartened by the younger generation who call stuff out”. However, actors are often warned that they are easily replaceable if they confront bad behaviour and she advised younger people to “find an ally from an older generation who can support you”. She added that, in her experience, “when you speak up, everybody hides – and that can be really depressing”.
In recent years there has been an increase in mental health support offered in an industry with a poor reputation for protecting its workers. Gough highlighted a new generation of producers, such as Wessex Grove, who partnered with the company Applause for Thought to facilitate mental health awareness for the cast and crew of the West End hit A Little Life, starring James Norton, which dealt with traumatic subject matter. Drama schools should now concentrate on training actors “to ask for their needs to be met” when they enter the industry, she added, stressing that misconduct did not solely affect actors. “It’s whole crews of people who need to be treated better. I would particularly highlight makeup artists who are treated incredibly badly a lot of the time.”
Born in Ennis, County Clare, Gough received a scholarship to study acting at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London. She had been performing on stage for almost a decade when she was nominated as outstanding newcomer at the Evening Standard theatre awards in 2012. After experiencing a run of rejections, sexism and demoralising treatment, she was on the verge of quitting acting, but then landed the life-changing role of Emma, an actor in rehab for addiction, in People, Places and Things, written by Duncan Macmillan and first co-produced by the National Theatre and Headlong in 2015.
“It was very hard for it to take so long to reach financial security, because I don’t come from money,” said Gough, who has since appeared in major TV series including The Fall, Guerrilla and, in the title role, Paula, written by Conor McPherson. Today’s emerging actors face the pressure of “getting famous very fast and that’s unsustainable,” she said. “I don’t envy young actors. I’m glad I came up when I did. I sort of wish I’d come up in the generation before [when] people took theatre really seriously.”
The new run of People, Places and Things, at Trafalgar theatre from May, is her first London theatre role since she was in Angels in America at the National Theatre in 2017. She starred as Portia Coughlan in a 2022 production of Marina Carr’s play at the Abbey theatre in Dublin. Her stage experience was particularly valuable for the Star Wars TV show Andor, in which “the language was so muscular and intense”. Dubbing the sci-fi series “theatre in space”, she said it had been an opportunity to work alongside great stage stars such as Kathryn Hunter and Fiona Shaw.
Her character in People, Places and Things was so rewarding that it cast a shadow over some of the projects she was subsequently offered. “What part do you play after that? I’d read parts and think: this isn’t even going to fill me up to my waist!” She has been itching to return to the character since last playing her at St Ann’s Warehouse in New York in 2017. It is a demanding part, yet Gough said: “You’d be amazed at how easy it is when the writing is that good. When the writing is bad, it’s hard work. In the theatre I’ve rarely had to do bad writing. I feel safe in the theatre and I’ve never felt safer – or more joyful – doing a play than People, Places and Things.”
In reprising the part, for a production that will again be directed by Jeremy Herrin, Gough follows in the footsteps of other actors who have been drawn back to the same role. Glenn Close was Norma Desmond in the 1994 Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard and again in London in 2016. Mark Rylance resumed his role as “Rooster” Byron in the West End in 2022, 13 years after first starring in Jerusalem at the Royal Court. There will come a point, said Gough, when she will consider herself too old to play Emma and she will hand the role over to another actor. And then? “I’ll play her mum.”
