'I full expect we'll be performing at Glastonbury': Tamsin Greig on new punk drama Riot Women

Tamsin Greig is supposed to answer the questions. But the star of BBC One’s Riot Women begins with one of her own. “What’s your unadulterated unfiltered, unmediated initial response? Come on, be brave.”

So I tell her: I love Riot Women, I say. I love the whole idea of it, what it’s saying, whose voices it’s amplifying, that it’s written by Sally Wainwright, and that it’s starring all of you guys. Seriously, what’s not to love? Better still, it’s all true.

The series focuses on five women, each dealing with some combination of the menopause, complex relationships with kids and partners, aging parents, career disappointments, dating catastrophes, imminent retirement, decades of unresolved trauma, and feeling invisible or unloveable. When they form a punk band, they express their rage – while building a supportive community. It is funny, sharply observed, features some of the finest and writing acting you will ever see.. In short, it’s classic Sally Wainwright.

Actors pick up many skills during a lifetime of work. Sometimes a role might call for horse-riding or fencing, some elementary carpentry, a working knowledge of police procedure, using a LIghtsaber or perhaps learning the basics of heart surgery. For Riot Women, Greig had to learn the bass guitar. It was quite a spiritual undertaking.

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“It was an intense time,” says Greig, who stars alongside Joanna Scanlon, Rosalie Craig, Lorraine Ashbourne and Amelia Bullmore.

“I was rehearsing for a play that I did in Bath which then transferred to London – so I would go and rehearse that for eight hours a day, come home, have some dinner, then do hours of bass practice.

“I feel that I’ve pushed potential dementia away by creating new neural pathways and I’ve always loved learning new stuff, doing things with different parts of your body. And then we started playing together in rehearsals as a band…”

And this is where the magic happens. As thousands have found before them, forming a band, playing music together, creating and performing songs, is a kind of sorcery. A joyous, beautiful, creative joint enterprise. And, as in Riot Women, a space where outside stresses are drowned out by noise and passion and energy and focus on the music.

“It was indescribably thrilling,” recalls Greig. “When we got in a room together it would drain me of saliva. I was so overawed that we were doing it and it sounded OK.

“Sally was allowing women to take a space that’s unexpected. And also be louder than they’re allowed to be. Being in a band was sort of miraculous. It was beautiful. Unbelievably wonderful – where your heart starts operating like it’s going much faster and much slower all at the same time. Where you’re just in this kind of groove.”

Life imitated art, with the actors forming deep bonds as they formed their fictional band of sisters.

“When you’re in a room with people doing something new and creative, there is an unexpected communion,” says Greig. “You know you’re in the presence of brilliance around those sorts of actors, because you know their work. So to see Lorraine Ashbourne turning up, having learnt the drums in, like, seconds, is really annoying but totally awe-inspiring.”

The series is making a big noise. And rightly so. How often does a series centre women over 50, their lives, their big issues, the menopause, let alone have them respond to life’s complexities by forming a punk band and shouting “give me HRT, give me HRT” at the top of their lungs?

All of the future members of Riot Women are facing struggles at home or work or both. Holly, played by Greig, is on the verge of retiring after years as a police officer – but still involved in the force, determined to rid it of bad men hiding behind their police uniform. There is also an eye-opening date with young Jojo, played by Richard Fleeshman.

So how much did Greig, star of Green Wing, Friday Night Dinners and The Archers, need to read beyond the words ‘new Sally Wainwright drama’ before signing on the dotted line?

“I got an email, and the subject was Confidential: Sally Wainwright Project and I threw the phone across the room because I was so excited,” says Greig.

“And at the same time, I was so afraid that it was a scam. The writing is so sublime. We have come to a point in television where it can be reductive and people say so little. But Sally’s writing allows people to use a lot of words – and every word she chooses is brilliant.”

The experience more than lived up to Greig’s expectations.

“Sally is such an adept perceiver of the precision and detail of people. It’s like her superpower. And it is propelled by a by a curiosity that leans into the peculiarity, the oddness and the extraordinary beauty of human beings.

“So she’s done all the work already. You just have to be brave enough to allow yourself to surface in that material. I would read stuff and go, yep, yep, yep. But she was really up for playing. If I threw in a quip in one scene, she’d say, that’s funny, leave that in. And I would be going, ‘No no, no, no, you’re Sally Wainwright, I was just pissing about.’

“Writing can be such a solitary business. So when she is in this group of creative people, there is a wonderful energy about her, a kind of giddiness that is infectious.”

Following a direction from Wainwright, Greig based her character’s on-stage persona on Chrissie Hynde. The punk energy that suffuses the series and the songs is perfect for the series.

“Punk is very funny. It really holds that space to be unexpectedly contradictory which is where a lot of humour can reside,” explains Greig. “And that’s what’s so brilliant about Sally’s script. It could just be drum-banging, going listen to us, our lives are terrible. But it’s not. It’s that our lives are difficult and absolutely fucking hilarious. They look unsurvivable, but these women survive and they thrive.”

Riot Women could return. It should return. There is so much more to come from the lives of the women in this band. And Greig has high hopes for them, if they find a little more time to rehearse and play together.

“I fully expect that we will be performing at Glastonbury next year,” she grins. “So make sure that the BBC recommission it, please…”

Riot Women is on BBC One on Sunday nights and is available on iPlayer.

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