To many, Welsh actress Kimberley Nixon will best be known for her role as pharmacology student Josephine ‘Josie’ Jones in Channel 4 comedy-drama Fresh Meat. Speaking on WalesOnline’s podcast In The Spotlight, the 37-year-old, who was born in Bristol but raised in Pontypridd, described how she initially thought there was “no way” she’d land a role in the popular series.
“When I first got the Fresh Meat audition through, I thought that there was no way I’d get it because I’d done period dramas and never tried comedy before. I do have a secret love of British comedy, though, and that’s my own personal taste.
“When I got the chance to work with Sam [Bain] and Jesse [Armstrong] on Fresh Meat because they’d done Peep Show, which I was a huge fan of, I kind of went to the audition just to meet them. It got out of hand from there and my character Josie became Welsh.” Listen to the podcast with Kimberley below.
Read more: Welsh actress Kimberley Nixon shares honest reflection on suffering severe postnatal depression
Fresh Meat ran for four series (2011-2016) and was a huge success because of its accurate portrayal of university life. Kimberley said, however, that there was no way of telling whether people would like the show. “With the first series of Fresh Meat, we all kind of fell in love with each other a little bit and we just had the most amazing time."
She added: “We really put all our personalities into those characters. The chemistry between those six characters and the chemistry between us six actors felt like magic at the time. When we finished we were all bereft and then suddenly we thought, ‘Oh god it’s going on TV! Is anyone going to get it? Is it just funny to us?'
“Obviously it did go out and people reacted to it in exactly the same way that we did. I get messages all the time about how for some people, Fresh Meat is their comfort blanket. Out of all the things that I’ve done, it’s the one thing that really spans the age gap so there are people who are 18 but then there are also people who are in their 60s who think, ‘Wow that takes me back to being in uni'." You can get more showbiz news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Kimberley described how she and her fellow cast members - Zawe Ashton (Vod), Greg McHugh (Howard), Charlotte Ritchie (Oregon), Joe Thomas (Kingsley) and Jack Whitehall (JP) - keep in touch. “Our lives are so different now but I think that’s what happened when we first met, we all came from such different backgrounds and yet, that’s what made it work.
“We’ve got WhatsApp and we try to keep in regular contact. We try to do a meetup about once a year or at least once every two years. There was a Fresh Meat episode where revision for exams is getting too much and they eff’ it off and hire a barge so that’s what we did, we ‘effed it off and hired a barge. We all took a picnic and got drunk and had the day together and it was just the most wonderful time.”
Since 2020 Kimberley has played the role of Lush in BBC Wales comedy series The Tuckers, which tells the story of a close-knit family of larger-than-life, loveable rogues in the Welsh valleys. As to how she landed her role in the series, Kimberley recalled how she’d been working with creator and star Steve Speirs on a project for the Six Nations. “I’d done this comedy sketch with Steve and the referee Nigel Owen. After that, Steve just got in touch and was like, ‘There’s this part and she’s called Lush, completely over the top Valleys, will you come in and do it?’.
“So I went in and read for it and auditioned for it. I remember Steve texted me later that night saying that I’d got it. A few things came off the back of The Tuckers - I also did The Left Behind, Life and Death in the Warehouse and a Channel 4 drama called Consent.”
She added that she felt lucky filming the first two series of The Tuckers. “It was so jammy because it was like a 10 minute drive to work and it was my first job since having a baby. It was absolutely ideal and it just felt really natural to have a nice job at home with people I knew.
"For a very, very long time I never worked in Wales. I’ve always lived in Wales and I’ve never moved to London but my work was always in London or Manchester or everywhere else. Suddenly, the industry here literally picked up. We’ve got the most incredible scenery here in Wales. Within half-an-hour you’re in dense forest mountains or gorgeous coastal beaches or fantastic cities - there’s just these amazing locations.
“I love working with Welsh crews as especially with a Valleys crew on The Tuckers, there’s a short-hand of the culture, sense of humour and Valleys sensibility. I try to imagine if we’d have filmed The Tuckers in England with an English crew, recreating the Valleys, and it just wouldn’t have felt right.
Speaking of the response to the series, Kimberley said: “It’s scary when you’re making something in your hometown (the Valleys setting) with other Welsh actors and you know that it’ll go out in Wales primarily first because Welsh viewers will let you know what they think straight away. You sort of make it and hope you’re doing it justice.
“I think it’s because it came at the time of the pandemic. At the time, everything was so grim and horrible and it was just this half-an-hour of escapism - it’s lovely, lovely nonsense!”
Discussing her career in general, Kimberley said that acting was always her intended path but “only inwardly”. She explained: “I was the only one who knew it. I was always involved in school dramas and shows but a lot of the time, I was backstage or directing.
“I loved amazing films and performances and I’d watch them over and over again. I loved how people could tell stories and make you feel something. That’s why I love it when people tell me that Fresh Meat is their safe space because I know there are TV shows that do that for me and I feel very honoured that Fresh Meat does that for other people.
Kimberley explained how, nowadays, people “constantly” asked her for advice on how to get into the profession. She said that, despite this, she had limited advice to give to people. “I went to drama school in Cardiff and I live in Pontypridd so I was thrown into the wilderness of the acting industry in London and I had no idea what I was doing.
“You just wing it and you can’t possibly predict - When I left drama school, I couldn’t have predicted that four years later I’d get Fresh Meat. There’s no way of planning it and you just have to trust your instincts and what feels right to you. Just try and stay a nice person! I think that’s been one of my big goals. My only advice to people is to just be nice.
“It’s a tricky business and a brutal business but it can be wonderful - I’ve gotten to travel the world because of it. I went to a Valleys comp, I don’t have any connections in the business, I don’t come from money and I’ve literally got nothing going for me but I’ve had these amazing opportunities through acting.
“On the other hand, you’re always chasing the next job and you’re always trying to stay financially stable. You’re always trying to do jobs that mean something to you whilst paying the bills, which can be tricky.
“I remember leaving drama school and just wanting to work. I thought, ‘I want to go from job to job’ and I have done that but there are times where I haven’t. It gives you wonderful opportunities but it can be quite brutal.”
Kimberley added that she had always struggled with the “glossy” side of being an actor. “I’ve always loved making things - rehearsals and filming or whatever the process is - I often struggle with the press bit. I hate the red carpet and I’ve avoided it as much as I possibly can. That glossy side of being an actor is never why I wanted to get into it - It’s always been about that meat-on-the-bone stuff for me.”
Last year Kimberley started her own podcast, ‘Kimfluencing My Brain’, which has seen her open up about her experiences with perinatal OCD and OCD. Perinatal OCD is when people experience OCD during pregnancy or in the first year after giving birth. Speaking about this, Kimberley said: “When I went on Instagram and I was going through a tough time with postnatal mental health, I very tentatively started dipping my toe in honesty and just putting it out there.
"It came from being really upset one day - I had this tiny baby and I was in tears and I said to my husband, ‘Everyone else does it so easily, why is this so difficult for me?’ and he asked me what I meant by that. I said, ‘On Facebook, you see people with their new babies and they just look so breezy and have it all together’. He said, ‘If people look at your Facebook, they’d think exactly the same’ and it really stuck with me. I realised that the thing that made me so sad is that I’m part of the problem because I was posting [similar things on Facebook].
“I was really struggling, it went on for a long time and it didn’t seem to be lifting like everyone said that it would. The amount of shame and self-loathing that I was dumping on myself was overwhelming because not only did I become unwell after my baby, I wasn’t getting better fast enough.
“I had my baby during the pandemic and felt very isolated. There were no mother and baby groups and I don’t have colleagues in the way that you would if you work in the same place all the time. It was a very scary and isolating time and then suddenly, I started putting little bits out and I started getting the most amazing messages from people who felt the same.
“Motherhood in the Instagram age means that you’re supposed to have a full face of make-up after the birth and a gorgeous photo and tag all the baby’s clothes and six weeks later, you should be running half marathons and all these sorts of things. I wanted to be more honest about what the actual experience was like.” You can keep up to date with the latest TV and showbiz news by signing up to the newsletter here.
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