Natalie Gavin on the play ‘There Are No Beginnings’ and BBC's ‘Gentleman Jack’

Actress and University of Huddersfield drama graduate Natalie Gavin paid a visit to her former university to talk about her performance at the Leeds Playhouse in There Are No Beginnings and her love for costume dramas following her role in BBC One’s Gentleman Jack

NATALIE Gavin is a northern-born actress and a University of Huddersfield drama graduate whose onscreen acting career began when, in the second year of her drama degree, she was cast as Anna for the Channel Four hit show Shameless.

Following her onscreen debut, she was cast as Lou one of the main characters in the TV drama series Prisoner's Wives. Becky in the TV drama series The Syndicate came soon after as did the character Alma Capstick in Jericho, a period drama and television series.

More recently she appeared in Ackley Bridge as the character Nadine Murgatroyd and last year worked alongside the actress and leading lady of Gentleman Jack, Suranne Jones. Natalie played the character Alice Hardcastle in the period drama based on the real-life diaries of remarkable Regency landowner Anne Lister of Halifax's Shibden Hall. The series was written by the award-winning scriptwriter Sally Wainwright, who also wrote the BAFTA award-winning television series Happy Valley which starred Sarah Lancashire.

Prior to Gentleman Jack Natalie played police officer Tina Tranter in the hugely popular television crime drama series, Line of Duty.

“A beautifully nuanced piece of work”

Natalie spoke to us about her latest performance at the Leeds Playhouse where she appeared on stage alongside former Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh (aka Hayley, the Transgendered wife of Roy Trotter, cafe owner of Roy's Rolls) for the Charley Miles' play There Are No Beginnings.

The play opened with the Yorkshire Ripper’s first murder in 1975, an event which felt like it marked the beginning of the end of innocence, a time when mums stopped leaving their doors unlocked and allowing their children to play in the streets. There Are No Beginnings shows how the women who lived in and around the same areas as the victims of the Yorkshire Ripper & serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe were persecuted, no matter what their circumstances.

The four female lead characters, including Natalie as Helen, portray throughout the play their lives through the six years of the Ripper’s reign of terror. The moment Natalie's character realises that she is in fact a prostitute and her boyfriend is no boyfriend, but a pimp, is critiqued by The Stage “as a beautifully nuanced piece of work”.

Gentleman Jack

We also asked Natalie about her character Alice in the BBC One period drama Gentleman Jack written by the award-winning writer Sally Wainwright which is based on the real-life diaries of remarkable Regency landowner Anne Lister.

Natalie explained the thrill of performing in costume dramas and how they are the next best thing to actual time travel.  She said Yorkshire's historic landscape with its cobbled bridleways and natural scenery, allowed much of Gentleman Jack to be filmed completely on location in the actual grounds of Shibden Hall where the BBC One drama is based.

Finally, Natalie told us about her time as a drama student and why she holds such fond memories of studying at the University. She explained how her tutors encouraged her from the very beginning by recommending she put her degree on hold to concentrate on the start of her acting career and how, a few years later, she was then fully supported with her transition back into studying and once again becoming a student. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/9PdY6dxTfg0.