Marple: Towards Zero Interview

The following interview with Zoe is taken from the ITV Press Pack for Marple: Towards Zero.

“Kay is the feisty, flame-haired society it-girl of her time. She’s married to Neville and although she loves the fact that she is married to him, she is very insecure about his relationship with his first wife. She uses the fact that she is glamorous and that people are aware of her presence when she walks into a room, but I think that’s a façade for all the vulnerabilities underneath.

I think what attracted me was the opportunity to play at being slightly over the top and mischievous and bold. All of the characters are slightly more heightened and more colourful perhaps than in a more realistic drama. It was fun trying to play up certain aspects that might deceive the audience, but it’s important to keep truthful to your character so that, looking back, you never veered off the real point. The first question anyone asks you when you say you are doing a Marple is “are you the killer?” Half of you wants to be but, at the same time, if you are the killer you don’t get that glorious moment of shock and outrage at what someone else has done!

It’s appealing for actors to come in and do something different - they get this little capsule of time to play with a character. Plus the costumes are amazing. I had such fun dressing up - getting the high-heels and red lipstick on and slinking about. It was always full-on glamour with Kay - there wasn’t a single dowdy moment. The hair was a bit of a saga though. To get it that very, very flame red we had to put vegetable dyes on my hair, which would unfortunately wash out every time I washed it – there was always red running everywhere.

I always used to watch Marples on a Sunday night - I would try to guess the least likely person and then work out some elaborate story of how they could have done it. I sent all of my costume photos over to my gran, because I know she’ll watch it and love it. Although, essentially, it is about murder, it has a tremendous amount of fun to it – it isn’t going to leave you traumatised, mainly because you can see that all the actors are having fun doing it. Plus I think everyone has a secret yearning for Geraldine’s Miss Marple to be their granny.”