Smoggie Queens star Alexandra Mardell: Brenda Blethyn helped launch my career with role in Vera
Leeds-born Smoggie Queens and WAR actress Alexandra Mardell tells Laura Reid how Brenda Blethyn launched her career.
Mardell is known for playing Emma Brooker in the ITV show, which she starred in from 2018 to 2022. As well as short-term relationship with David, her storylines included surviving a roof collapse at a local factory, discovering Steve McDonald was her biological father, and running over an elderly man in her car. "Corrie is a real school for actors,” says 33-year-old Mardell, looking back. “You learn so much on that job because it’s so quick...Working with that team was just incredible…They take you in as one of their own and you’re all friends v ery quickly. It’s like a big family.”
After leaving the show, Mardell won a Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special, provided the voice for one of the characters in children’s programme Fireman Sam, and over the last two years, has starred as Lucinda in the BBC cult comedy Smoggie Queens. She’s also made a return to theatre, playing the lead role in Willy Russell's Educating Rita at Leicester Curve until tomorrow, and can currently be seen on screens in the Sky legal drama WAR. “It’s been a lovely busy year,” says the actor, now based in Merseyside. “And there’s a couple more things that I can’t say yet, but will appear soon I’m sure,” she teases.
“I always had a feeling that acting was what I wanted to do and just jumped onto the right path,” Mardell says. She has Brenda Blethyn to thank for it all, the 80-year-old actor who starred as Vera for 14 seasons until the show of the same name ended last year. Her performance as the unconventional, abrasive and disheveled detective was a global hit and the series sold to over 180 countries and territories worldwide.
Like Mardell, Blethyn is an alumni of the Guildford School of Acting. “After graduating, me and a couple of friends weren’t auditioning for the things we had hoped to be auditioning for so we set up a theatre company and wrote a couple of plays,” says Mardell. “We self-funded and put a show on in London, at an old pub in Angel. We invited Brenda Blethyn to come along – she was part of the alumni of GSA and had shown to be quite supportive of graduates in her career. She turned up to this little pub in Angel and came to watch our play. We were so surprised.
"She absolutely loved it, took our contact details and the next thing I got an audition through for Vera. Brenda had asked me to come and audition for this part. It was my first TV audition and I got the part, my first TV job, playing Kelly in Vera…Brenda really looked after me as a graduate actor not really knowing what I was doing. I learnt so much from that job...She’s lovely, such a kind woman and an incredible actor. I put it all down to Brenda.”
She’s one of a growing number of actors that Mardell has worked alongside - a list that now also includes Dominic West and Sienna Miller, who play the leading roles in WAR. The show follows two prestigious rival law firms, Cathcarts and Taylor & Byrne, as they go head-to-head in the divorce case of the century.
"I think when people hear the words legal drama they might think ‘oh it could be a bit dull’ but this is not like that at all. It’s so fun, so sassy, there’s a few bits of comedy in it as well,” Mardell says. “The cast is incredible. The premise of the show is that there are two law firms that at war with each other and it did feel a little bit like that on set as well. We do all get on but it is very much divided into these two teams and when we cross paths it’s like ‘oh, the other side!’,” she laughs.
Much of her work has been in television but Educating Rita was a return to the stage – “and with a beast of a play too” she notes. Crafted by playwright Willy Russell, it’s a show for only two actors and is set entirely in the office of an Open University tutor. “There’s a lot of talking,” says Mardell, who has been starring alongside Dominic Mafham. “In TV, you don’t often get chance to rehearse. We get a little bit of practice but it’s more focused on where you’re going to stand for the camera lens and things like that - you don’t really get to do too much in depth with the emotional side of it.
"With this, we had so much time, just the two of us, a three-week rehearsal process so we could really dig deep into the emotional scenes - and the funny ones as well, trying them out in a different way to get the most laughs. And I do really enjoy having that time to go more in-depth into things.”
Mardell says she’d love to do a gritty drama, but whatever comes her way next, “you cannot be bored in this industry,” she reflects. “You just have to be spontaneous and go with the flow. There’s always so much to learn all the time - not just your lines but researching to different characters, finding out about different people and backgrounds. There’s always something different to do, you’re not just in one box.”
So many more of the industry’s opportunities are now in the North too, she says. Her show Smoggie Queens, set and filmed in Middlesborough, follows a gang of friends who are fiercely proud of their Northern town and their small pocket of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s been recommissioned for a third series for the BBC, with Mardell set to return as Lucinda, a character that she describes as “lavish, lavender and loyal” and “unashamedly extra”. "That's really exciting. I’m so excited to get the gang back together and be silly,” she says.
- War is available to watch on Sky and NOW. The first two seasons of Smoggie Queens are available on BBC iPlayer.