‘Suddenly I was a celebrity. I didn’t want to be!’ Sue Johnston on fame, loneliness and her new robot pal
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Sue Johnston, 82, plays a recent widow in the new BBC sitcom Ann Droid, premiering 17 July at 9:30pm on BBC One, after she had a fall last year and recognized 'the loneliness that creeps in when you're old and you're on your own'
- Writer Diane Morgan also plays the humanoid robot Linda and named the central character Sue after Johnston, saying 'there was only ever Sue Johnston that I wanted for this role' — Johnston says 'there's a lot of self-recognition in it'
- Johnston says the show made her forget she was watching herself on screen — something she 'very rarely' experiences — and describes it as 'rich with humour and love'; the interviewer cried at least once per episode
- The sitcom's dystopian AI premise sees robots decimating the job market, with Johnston's on-screen son made redundant by a machine, though she says of real-world AI she is '50/50' because 'there's a lot of wrong hands around at the moment'
- Johnston, who shot to fame aged 38 in Brookside in 1982, calls the experience 'a shock — suddenly I was a celebrity. I didn't want to be!' — and every actor, she adds, fears the phone will never ring again after a job
- Johnston still greets a painting of late Royle Family co-star Caroline Aherne every morning at the bottom of her stairs; Aherne died of cancer in 2016 and Johnston compares Morgan's northern humour to Aherne's
- Johnston is appearing in a string of prestige TV roles for older actors including Ben Wheatley's comedy-horror Generation Z (a pensioner turned zombie) and Truelove, about old friends helping each other die
Why it matters: At 82, Johnston — one of British TV's defining matriarchs since Brookside and The Royle Family — is landing some of her edgiest work in decades, including a zombie role and an AI-dystopia sitcom, evidence of a casting shift she credits to 'the generation we were' that 'broke out of the traditions.' Ann Droid's robot-decimates-jobs premise lands while real anxieties about AI displacement are running high, and Johnston says she is herself '50/50' on the technology.
Ask SkimNews
