Not many interviews begin with your subject telling you, gently and warmly, how they’ve mastered being unapproachable. But here is Tamsin Greig, on Zoom in the Donmar Warehouse’s rehearsal rooms, telling me how this behaviour begins as soon as she’s left the house every morning.
“I get up at 6.30 to walk the dog so that I can get out and be in the air to start turning my words over in my head. People who see me know not to come near me because I’m always muttering to myself.” Then she gets the tube (“a good place to learn my lines”), but admits she gets recognised – unsurprisingly, given her classic roles in so many shows, from Black Books to Green Wing, Episodes to Friday Night Dinner. “But when I’m not speaking I have quite an angry face” – she raises her eyebrows slightly, impishly, as she says this – “which I use to my advantage.”
