Anna Friel on lighting obsession, The F Ward, Pushing Daisies hopes
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- Anna Friel stars as Dr Gloria Wall in Australian medical drama The F Ward, studying real surgeries and consulting with two female surgeons on maternity leave who told her the field is "very male-dominated" and a woman "has to be" assertive to survive.
- Friel brings a bag of lightbulbs to every filming location, citing her obsession with 1880-1920 arts and crafts period lighting — including Vaseline glass made with uranium — which she calls the closest pre-electricity ambience to candlelight.
- Friel wishes Pushing Daisies could return nearly 20 years after its cancellation, calling creator Bryan Fuller "a very wonderful, clever, brilliant man" and her character Chuck "so rich and full of positivity."
- Friel met former partner David Thewlis on a "best of British" trip to Cannes, approaching him because "he's northern like me" — the pair then exchanged weekly gifts for a full year.
- Friel named her daughter Gracie partly after WWII-era singer Gracie Fields, recalling a fan who compiled every Fields newspaper cutting from the 1940s into a book for her.
- Friel learns her lines in the bath, blowing up script pages and sticking them around the room until she's memorised each chunk, calling the method "a good shout" for exam revision too.
Why it matters: For Pushing Daisies fans still mourning the 2007 cancellation, Friel's explicit call for creator Bryan Fuller to reassemble the original cast is a notable on-the-record signal from the actress herself, while The F Ward gives Australian streamer Stan a high-profile international lead for its medical drama slate.
