Actor Katie Tyson Photo: Elizabeth Hoff/Bafta/Contour from Getty Images
When Katie Tyson won a Bafta last year for her move into Covid care home drama Help, viewers could be forgiven for thinking: «Where has she been?» The actress, who rose to fame as the star of Neil Jordan's 1986 film Mona Lisa and nearly made a hole in the screen as a single mother and prostitute in Gold Streak in the mid-1990s, appears to have slipped under the radar since then. . then.
“I didn’t feel forgotten,” she tells me when we meet for coffee in Soho. «I just didn't get the job.» It's part of being an actor, she insists. For those who have been paying attention, there have been roles as a clergywoman in ITV's late night series Night and Day, Deputy Headmistress Miss Gale in Grange Hill, Lady Bracknell on stage in The Importance of Being Earnest and many more, but perhaps not always those that her talent deserves.
One of the many joys of Boiling Point, a tense BBC One series including a four-part spin-off of the Bafta-nominated 2021 film, is the appearance of Tyson in a small role. She plays the less than supportive mother of restaurant chef Carly (Vinette Robinson). “Honey,” she tells her daughter when she’s presented with a test plate of Carly’s new entrée. «I love you, but if I eat this before breakfast, I'll throw up.»
«Boiling Point» is the first fruit from Matriarch, the production company created by actor Stephen Graham and his wife, actress Hannah Walters, who both appear in the drama. Tyson says her own character has sparked deep discussions. She claims that she is sick and demands time and attention from her daughter. “It’s a controversial and problematic issue when someone is sick, but at the same time it’s manipulative – are they squeezing out their illness? It had to be handled very carefully.”
There is nothing personally upsetting about Tyson. She is elegantly dressed, thoughtful and passionate. When she was younger, she says: «I would never give an interview to The Telegraph,» but she has found that «it's great to talk to people who have different views of you.» Studying English at Brunel University in west London later in life, she says, “taught me to open my mind to different points of view.”
However, she does have one problem: “I think some readers are using the word ‘woke’.” To me, it's as bad a term as a racial slur. The terms “woke” and “race card” offend me deeply.” In her opinion, Woke is used to “undermine” progressive ideas, and “the term ‘race card’ gets thrown in your face if you criticize anything. Even the term “white privilege” is very, very divisive. I'm not talking about sides.» For Tyson, the more important question is: “How can we all get along together?” In her opinion, this is due to being mixed race. “It's complicated: right now, many people of all colors are suffering financially and going hungry.”
She grew up in Toxteth, a central area of Liverpool that became synonymous with the 1981 riots. Her mother was a senior social worker and her father a lawyer in Trinidad. “My father did not live with us. He visited us from Trinidad from time to time, but I am still proud of his achievements.” She experienced racism as a child. “Some people called my mother “N-lover””; she was of Irish descent and «a great storyteller, I am indebted to her for knowing so much about my past»; She learned that Tyson's great-grandfather was an early member of Sinn Féin.
Young Katie didn't have the fashion accessories that other teenagers had, «which is what I craved… I wasn't cool. I wasn't a street smart guy. I was familiar with books from an early age. I was in a book club and books were delivered to me every three weeks. And my mom said poetry when we were out shopping — it was so awkward and I thought, “Why can't you just go play bingo like all the other moms?”
Golden Ring (from left): Barbara Dixon, Geraldine James, Samantha Morton, Katie Tyson (1995–1997). Photo: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo
Liverpool “wasn’t a multicultural city back then,” she says, “only Toxteth was. And there were two sides to Toxteth: one that was predominantly white and the other that was more mixed. I lived in a white area, and there was conflict… There were problems between Catholics and Protestants, then there was black and white, there were rides at night, there were juvenile delinquents.” She had just turned 16 when the riots broke out, but she was not on the streets. “I understood why it broke out, but there was some kind of drama all the time, I’m used to it.”
Still, she points out: “I had three discos a week that I could go to. I don't think you could say the same about kids these days. It was a rich tapestry. And there were no drugs then. In a sense, it was an idyll. I was at the Ordinary Youth Theater — it was a very inclusive place where, again, four nights a week we could go there after school. We were rocking — Dave Morrissey, Ian Hart — we were next to the amazing theater director Roger Hill.»
She graduated from the youth theater and moved to the Everyman main stage, performing in the Liverpool Blitz in 1983, performing the Vera Lynn standard, When They Sound the Last 'All Clear': “I felt very self-conscious because I had to wear a camisole.” Shortly afterwards she was invited to join the RSC and, at 18, became the second youngest member (after Dexter Fletcher) at that time. «I remember when I went to the RSC people said to me, 'Don't give up your accent, whatever you do, girl.' You know, there was a seriousness to them and I thought, 'Okay, this is important.' “I still love Liverpool,” she adds. Katie Tyson in the new BBC One series Boiling Point Author: James Stack
The Mona Lisa brought with it a jolt of fame. At the time, she was married to actor and comedian Craig Charles, with whom she had a son, Jack, in 1988. The high-profile relationship only increased the attention on her, but she says: “I loved it. Also. I have succeeded.» There was a brief flirtation with Hollywood, but “I didn’t trust America… and I didn’t have confidence then. I remember I just wanted to see my comrades. I had already been torn away from my friends to go to the RSC. And I thought: “When will I have youth?”
In 1994 she appeared in Antonia Bird and Jimmy McGovern's The Priest, and a year later in Kay Mellor's groundbreaking drama about women working in Bradford's red light district. “We were scared when Band of Gold first came out because we thought it was a taboo subject, how would people react?” Tyson remembers. “Then it was watched by 18 million viewers. Today this is unheard of.”
When she started looking for a role, she went to meet sex workers; “I met some wonderful people,” she tells me. She left with great respect for them. “I saw what they had to go through. I also dressed in a miniskirt and once walked down Bradford High Street with my hair down just to see how people would look at me. And I heard the women's looks of contempt and I thought, «Oh, this is what they face every day»; It’s hard to live in an environment where there’s so much hostility towards you.”
She doesn’t think casting should be limited in any way. “Colorblind in color, size and age would be good. Society is always ahead of the industry — there are women my age doing amazing things.» She founded her own production company, Brown Girl Films, in 2020 and has just produced a short film, Lilian, about the first black woman in the Royal Air Force, written by her partner, actor Cammy Darweish. She now has plans to make a feature film.
“We smile because we are two middle-aged people who are just starting a new career. But now many people do it.” It's good to have her back.
Boiling Point starts on BBC1 on October 1 at 9pm, with all episodes available on iPlayer
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