It takes a lot to make Alice Lowe flinch. As an actor and writer who excels in playing loved-up sociopaths (Sightseers), pregnant widows on killing sprees (Prevenge) and murderous therapists (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch), Lowe, it’s fair to say, is at home in horror. And so it takes something truly awful – truly horrific, even – to frighten her. Like, say, learning from Take That’s Mark Owen that he and the rest of his band of Nineties dreamboats have seen videos of her grooving to their greatest hits. “You’re saying Take That have all watched me be really, really s*** at dancing?” Lowe cringes as she recalls Owen breaking the news to her recently.
For what it’s worth, “really s***” isn’t how I would describe it. “You only saw the best cuts!” the 46-year-old actor and filmmaker protests, sinking deeper into the sofa of the hotel room where we’re chatting. Indeed, only the best cuts made it past Take That’s quality control checks and into Greatest Days, a big screen adaptation of their 2017 jukebox musical. Owen, Gary Barlow and Howard Donald serve as executive producers – hence their interest in Lowe’s boogying capabilities.
