Ahead of the new series of After The Floor, the actress tells of what’s in store for fans, her joy at getting ‘meatier’ roles, and opens up about dealing with grief after loss
Just 14 when she cut her teeth on Byker Grove, alongside Ant and Dec, Jill Halfpenny has since played a soap opera seductresses in both Corrie and EastEnders, she’s won Strictly and become a stalwart of gritty TV dramas. Currently starring in the thriller, Girl Taken, on streaming channel Paramount TV+, she is also returning to ITV mystery drama After The Flood for a second series on Sunday (18 Jan) playing DS Sam Bradley. And she will be starring alongside another former soap actress, Sally Lindsay, in a new thriller Number One Fan, coming soon on 5.
On playing the detective, Jill, 50, says: “I liked the cast, so when they asked me to join it was a really easy yes. I didn’t even have to think about it. Sam comes across as someone who is very easy to talk to and very warm and approachable, but I’m not sure whether that’s exactly who she is.
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“She’s been doing it for so long she knows how to be affable and how to play the game and how to fit into a new team. She might ask people about their lives, but they might not find much out about hers – she’s one of those people.”
The second series picks up with newly promoted detective Jo Marshall (Sophie Rundell) juggling a new baby and childcare arrangements with her estranged ex Pat (Matt Stokoe) and her mum – councillor Molly (Lorraine Ashbourne) – while at the same time trying to expose her corrupt boss, Sergeant Phil Mackie (Nicholas Gleaves).
The first episode of the six-part thriller opens with Jo, clearly baffled when a dead body is found in strange circumstances on the moors. DS Bradley, newly transferred to the area, joins her in trying to solve the murder. Jill says: “I’m often cast as the ‘everywoman’. I tend to play characters that are quite grounded and no-nonsense.
“I can identify with that. I don’t come with a lot of bells and whistles. I’m straight to the point. Maybe that’s just who I am, maybe that’s how I was brought up, but I like people who are really direct. It makes me feel comfortable.”
Fans of Jill’s will remember her from early roles like Coronation Street, which she joined in 1999 as nurse Rebecca Hopkins, whose affair with Martin Platt ended his marriage to Gail, and EastEnders (2002) when she played Kate Mitchell, an undercover policewoman introduced as a honeytrap for Phil Mitchell, whose cover was blown when she fell in love and married him.
But the actress, who won Strictly’s second series in 2004 and has starred in dramas like Waterloo Road, Wild at Heart, Three Girls and The Long Shadow, says until a decade ago a lot of her roles were “dull.” She says: “It gets quite dull when you’re a young 20 year-old, playing the secretary, or the girl in the village. That gets quite boring after a while.
“You do find yourself in your mid to late 20s, where you’re like ‘come on! Give me something!’ It’s a fact that it’s a bit harder for women, because there are less parts, so you find yourself competing for the good stuff. When I went to drama school, I really believed that I was going to be given all these amazing opportunities when I left and I was going to be able to play a girl from a council estate and then go on to play a Russian princess and then a Spanish dancer.
“Then I left drama school and people went ‘oh, no, no, no!’ We all get typecast into a certain type of role, so it’s lovely when somebody says ‘do you fancy playing something like this’ and it’s something different. Thankfully, as time has gone on, I’ve been given more to do and in the last ten years, people have started to write more interestingly for women, which has been great.
“I’m getting meatier roles, because writers are allowed to tell stories from the point of view of the woman and being allowed to tell stories that are a bit messier and more complex. So, the woman is not just the person that’s with the lead character.” In the last four years Jill has done brilliantly, appearing in gripping TV dramas including The Feud, The Holiday, The Drowning and The Cuckoo.
But while her professional life couldn’t be better, away from the cameras she has been through the mill. In 2017, her life was turned upside down when her partner Matt Janes, 43, died after suffering a heart attack at the gym. His death also triggered tragic memories of her father Colin’s death, aged 36, also after a heart attack, during a game of five-a-side football.
She shared her experiences of loss and grieving in her memoir, A Life Reimagined, published last year. She says: “I didn’t write the last page and think ‘oh my God, that’s better,’ because I was re-visiting a lot of feelings. “But my whole philosophy is not to run away from grief – to be brave enough to cry and stay in the discomfort. So, I talked about how I felt and I hope that helped some people.
“One of the reasons why we struggle when we lose people is because we don’t talk about the fact that we’re going to lose people – ‘shut up, don’t talk about that, no point in talking about it until they’re gone.’ Well, there is actually. It’s called preparation. What made me decide to write it was that I’d read a huge number of books about grief when I lost my partner. They were brilliant, but a lot of them were written from a professional’s point of view.
“I would have loved to have heard from a normal person who had lost someone and was speaking from a very personal point of view about how they dealt with it and what they went through. Even things like what you do when someone dies. All the paperwork, how you book a funeral. It’s all shrouded in secrecy. No-one knows until it’s happening to them. They’re like: ‘why didn’t anyone tell me this?’ It’s because we don’t talk about it.”
Now living by the sea in her native North East with her 17 year-old son Harvey, from her previous marriage to actor Craig Conway, she is dating marketing manager Ian McAllister. They met in 2023 and she says she is in a good place. She says: “You think about all of the years and all the pain and the tears and then suddenly I’m here today and I feel good.
“Life isn’t perfect, but I’m happy to be where I’m at. Life is random. I lost my dad and then I lost my partner. I’ve lost friends and other members of the family. It’s just a natural cycle of life. For some reason we have it in our heads that we should all live to a ripe old age, but some of us don’t. It’s not that it’s ok, but there’s no comfort for me in being angry or wishing it was different.
“The only comfort for me is acceptance. Then I can open my eyes and think there might be other things now. Because when you’re still angry you close yourself off to a life that could possibly be waiting for you.”
*After the Flood returns on Sunday, 18th January, airing weekly on Sundays and Mondays on ITV. All episodes are available on ITVX
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Source: Mirror
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