Actress Sheridan Smith says it “was the least I could do” to shave her head and her eyebrows to play her late friend, the cancer blogger Lisa Lynch in forthcoming BBC drama The C Word.
The star of Mrs Biggs and the forthcoming ITV drama biopic Cilla also said that shaving her head and having short hair was “empowering”.
Speaking at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, she surprised audiences when she removed a blonde wig during a session about television factual drama to reveal closely-cropped hair, saying: “My hair was wet-shaved and I took my eyebrows off. It’s the least I could do. I don’t have cancer, but now it’s this length.”
Smith “it was very emotional” filming the drama, which is based on a book of the same name and took five years to get commissioned but “the family wanted it made” after Lynch died last year having been in remission.
She said it was one of the toughest roles she has played so far, along with playing television presenter Cilla Black.
For the ITV drama she spent three months having singing lessons to sound more like Black but was keen to avoid making doing impressions as the drama focuses on the Blind Date host’s early musical years, before she became a television entertainment star.
“I took mannerisms and lots of bits and bobs but didn’t want to do an impression.”
However to make her look more like Black she wore false teeth, which writer Jeff Pope said sometimes he could hear during Smith’s singing.
Smith explained: “I had three months of research and watching everything and singing lessons to sound more like her and learn all the songs. We did it live to capture the emotion.
“We were singing live on the day which was terrifying, it was like beign naked in front of a whole crew … singing away to yourself. But there was no dubbing.”
Smith said she had dinner with Black and mutual friend Paul O’Grady and was so nervous “I was shaking”.
They got on well and Black went on to give Smith her phone number in case she wanted to check details about her life.
Smith said: “When you’re doing factual dramas you have such responsibility.
“The thing about factual drama, why I love doing it so much is that someone’s been through all that, it’s not fiction, you have a real responsibility to that family.”
“I was so nervous before the press launch. She’s so well-known.”
She said the hardest part was playing Black when she was young as there was no footage of that era: “I’m 33 and I’m running round like I’m a 17-year-old whacking my brother with my shoe. I found that quite weird because obviously there was no footage of what she was at home with her mum and dad or in The Cavern. It got easier the more I had to watch.”
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