Blind ambition (From The Northern Echo)

Blind ambition

8:47am Saturday 13th December 2008

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ROLES like Mina Harker in ITV1’s forthcoming Saturday night series, Demons, don’t come along very often. How many times is an actor asked to play a blind concert pianist with vampirical tendencies?

Zoe Tapper doesn’t content herself with a regular role in Demons. She’s currently to be seen in the remake of Survivors on BBC1 and will be seen in ITV1’s film Affinity, scripted by Andrew Davies from the Sarah Waters novel, in the New Year.

Demons is billed as a contemporary spin on the legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, set in modern-day London. Philip Glenister, fresh from playing Gene Hunt in Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes, stars as a pursuer of ghosts and ghoulies in London. Tapper’s character, Mina Harker, comes from the Stoker novel, where she was forced to suck Dracula’s blood. Now she’s become mortal and joined the fight against “half-lives”.

She was conscious when playing a visually- impaired character of not wanting to do anything that would offend anyone.

The secret, she says, is the tone of the series with its slightly heightened, comic-book feel.

Mina is blind and has second sight.

Vampire blood still flows through her veins, causing her to have “very scary urges”. But not too scary, I assume, as Demons is earmarked for an early Saturday evening slot.

Tapper likes horror stories, but is “a bit of wimp and gets quite scared”. All the same, she found the courage to re-read Dracula to prepare for the series.

ASCENE in the first episode called for Tapper, as Mina, to play the piano on stage in front of hundreds of people at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

“That was quite a feeling,” she says.

“When I was younger I used to play the violin and played there, not on my own, but in an orchestra.”

She reckons the role of Mina is quite unlike anything she’s come across before.

“What’s great is that, having lived for over 100 years, she has all this history.

“On the one hand you see her fighting the half-lives with the rest of the gang, but she also has a fascinating back story, which is quite dark. So while she’s ultimately fighting for good, there’s always the chance she could be drawn to the other side.”

The actress gets involved in the action in Demons. For one scene, she had to kick Mackenzie Crook – playing the vampire Gladiolus Thrip – and grab him by the throat. She found it “great fun”, adding it made her feel strong and powerful.

Tapper is involved in more spine-chilling stuff in Affinity, as an enigmatic spiritualist who’s an inmate of Millbank, one of London’s most notorious Victorian gaols.

Serving time for the assault of a young girl through a malevolent spirit during a seance, she becomes intimately involved with Anna Madeley’s prison visitor, Margaret.

“I like to describe her as a feral cat,” says Tapper of Selina. “She has to live on her instincts to survive and is a bit of a lost soul, trapped between the spirit world and the earthly world, while not really belonging to either.”

Selina is at the heart of some of Affinity’s most atmospheric and supernatural scenes, and filming them created a strange atmosphere. “I was sitting in a dark room full of Romanian supporting artists, who, of course, had no idea of what I was saying, and there was incense burning,” recalls Tapper. “It really did create a vivid atmosphere where I thought we would summon up some sort of spirit. The atmosphere absolutely helped us to believe in what we were portraying.”

As part of her research, she visited a spirit medium, coming away quite bewildered and much more open-minded about the possibilities. “I shocked myself because, like Margaret, I’m quite a practical person and yet I can see how people can be drawn to that unknown world.”

She loves doing period dramas and previous roles have included Nell Gwynne in Stage Beauty and Mary Collins in A Harlot’s Progress.

“You can get passionate about them and you know it’ll be a challenge to uncover what makes them tick. There’s nothing more depressing as an actress than getting scripts which paint women in a very superficial or typical way.”

■ Survivors concludes on BBC1, Tuesday, 9pm.

■ Affinity is on ITV1, Dec 28, 9pm.

■ Demons begins on ITV1, Jan 3, 7.20pm.

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