Teen dream gives Anna a starring role
Mar 9 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal
DAVID WHETSTONE talks to a North East actress whose starring role in a new BBC comedy could be a case of life imitating art.
In 2008 she was in a production of Mack and Mabel which spawned the girl group The Tootsie Rollers, of which she is a member.
She has also had a brush with TV although it wasn’t the kind of role fame-mad youngsters like Gemma Collinge dream of.
“It was an episode of Holby City and my character had been in a car crash and was badly burned. I was three hours in make-up and you couldn’t even tell it was me but I did get four lines when I came out of a coma.”
The Gemma Factor was first made as a BBC pilot with Anna auditioning for a different role before she was offered the leading part of Gemma.
“It got pretty good feedback so the BBC decided they wanted to commission it for a series, which meant everyone had to re-audition.”
Filming took place last summer in and around Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, where The Gemma Factor is set. It gave Anna the chance to draw on her repertoire of accents.
“Gemma wants to be famous before she’s 21 and the fact that she can’t sing, dance or act doesn’t seem to be a problem for her,” says Anna.
“I don’t know about my friends but I reckon a lot of girls these days just want to be a Wag (a footballer’s wife or girlfriend) or get their 15 minutes’ of fame.
“People don’t seem to think they have to have talent or work hard to be successful. It’s just today’s society and that’s what Gemma’s like. She just wants to be in Heat magazine.”
Anna, possibly on the brink of celebrity herself, is thrilled that The Gemma Factor also features another North East actor, 25-year-old Ross Adams, from Shotley Bridge, who plays Jeff, “Gemma’s stylist and gay best friend”.
Ross trained in Salford and he and Anna have become good friends in real life.
Although she is now based in London, Anna’s parents - Ian, a lawyer, and Jill, a marketing consultant - still live in the North East, at Felton, near Alnwick.
They and Anna’s two sisters will no doubt swell tonight’s audience. The Gemma Factor, also starring Nigel Havers, is on BBC Three at 10.30pm.
At school I always wanted to be a singer and was always in the school play and the choir
