This is how it goes with Gemma Atkinson

By Mark Kebble on September 23rd 2010

When news spread around the Angel office that Gemma Atkinson was to be our cover star this month, it’s fair to say that most of the male population had their eyes out on stalks. From her time as a model – and a lingerie one at that – Gemma became a pin-up favourite and often featured prominently in FHM’s top 100 sexiest female poll.

Meeting her in a west London boozer, dressed down and at the end of a long day of rehearsals, she still looks radiant and throughout the interview draws admiring glances from the men around the bar. But this is a different Gemma Atkinson, one who has a steely determination to show that she should be equally at home on the stage as she is on many students’ walls.

When you pick up this issue of Angel, her run in This Is How It Goes will have begun at Upper Street’s King’s Head Theatre. Fresh off the back of a national tour of Calendar Girls, it’s another step in the right direction in her eyes. “I thought it would be a great showcase for me,” she says in her Mancunian twang. “It’s to show people that I am serious about wanting to act. I did Calendar Girls and that was with five amazing actresses, but I am the only female in This Is How It Goes, so it would be nice to stand out a bit more.”

Gemma has certainly picked a tough role to do just that – she happily admits that “the first couple of days [of rehearsals] were daunting, there’s so much dialogue”. A Neil LaBute play, This Is How It Goes is about a young man (Tom Greaves) who moves in with married couple Cody (Okezie Morro) and Belinda (played by Gemma), both of whom were in his class at school. The new housemate’s presence in the couple’s seemingly stable family life exposes deep uncomfortable truths about all three of them – but as the story is told through the eyes of the young man, how much of it is true?

“It’s a Neil LaBute play,” Gemma simply answers Angel’s question why this play was the next step for her. “He’s a genius.” Did she make a conscious decision to pick such a tricky play to perform in? “I have been offered other acting jobs, but I turned them down,” she nods. “If I don’t read the script and think ‘wow this is really good’, I don’t see the point of doing something half-heartedly. I have been offered roles that would give me good exposure, but if I am not going to enjoy it or feel like the character is right for me, I’m probably not going to do it justice.”

Gemma realises all eyes will be on her in the intimacy of the King’s Head Theatre, but she shrugs off any kind of nerves, stating the theatre is “ideal for a Neil LaBute play”, especially with the tale it tells. “I am sure people will enjoy it because everyone can relate to it in some way, every character has their own little story going on and every human being has been through something like that.”

High end stuff, which makes the next topic for discussion a little lower on the scale – or so it seemed. The week before Angel’s meeting with Gemma, she was out in West End celebrating the premiere of her new horror film, 13 Hours. Angel holds its hands up here and admits that on the face of it, it sounds terrible: a low budget horror, a UK one at that, with a man in a werewolf suit chasing a group of nubile young people around a house. We’ve seen too many bad American Werewolf in London imitators to think anything else. Having not seen the film, we can’t judge it – but it seems our pre-screening views aren’t alone. “I was really shocked with how good it looked,” Gemma smiles. “We had 18 days to shoot it, we didn’t even get the sound done then so that was done in the dub two months later, so I thought it would be really bad.”

Judging by the positive reviews so far, it appears anything but. “I hadn’t seen it prior to the premiere. We had a little screening for the cast, but I wanted to wait and see it with the public. It was amazing – people were whooping and clapping.” Does horror do it for her? “I like being scared. That sounds weird, but when I am watching a film and you are scared and the adrenaline is going... I like that feeling. For me, Jaws was petrifying. Not seeing the shark made it so scary. With 13 Hours, we didn’t have the money to have a proper werewolf suit, it was just a guy in an outfit. So Jonathan [Glendening, the director] said ‘let’s not show it’ and it was scarier because of that.”

The above are two very different examples of how Gemma’s career is progression and it’s amazing to think she is still only 25. It seems like an age ago that she made her debut in bright young thing, Hollyoaks, playing Lisa Hunter – she was only 14 at the time. “I wanted to work for the RSPCA,” she says on her career aspirations back then. “It was my mum who said to me would I like to do modelling. I’m very much a tomboy when I am not working, so it was difficult to say yes, I will have my hair done and make-up, but I am glad I did.”

It was through her child modelling work that her agency put her forward for Hollyoaks and so her acting career began, but she didn’t realise at the time what a break it was going to be. “I was 14, so it was more the thrill of working with James Redmond and Gary Lucy because me and all my friends fancied them – it was completely different when I met them!” she laughs. “It was exciting – I was in school, but I was on the tele.”

After six years on the hit show, she decided to leave – a decision that friends questioned – but by this time her modelling career was booming. She dated high profile names – including Cristiano Ronaldo – and her involvement in celebrity TV shows meant she was very much in the public eye. “I did I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Here [in 2007] because I wanted people to see who I was as a person.” Does she buy into celebrity culture? “I don’t go out a lot – I think I have been drunk five times this year. I have been asked to do the whole photo shoots at home, but I have never wanted to do that because you need to keep your personal life and career separate. Once you open that door and allow people to know what you do on Valentine’s Day, I think people expect more from you. And if the sh*t hits the fan and you moaned about the press, it wouldn’t make sense.”

With her new career direction now very much on a roll, she is fully prepared to come under scrutiny again – but her past experiences have seemingly left a mark. “My family, boyfriend [Liam Richards] and friends know the truth, so I don’t really care what anyone else thinks. People have said this industry has made me hard, but if I wasn’t I’d be a nervous wreck! You have got to take everything with a pinch of salt. I used to read things on blogs, some awful stuff, and it used to upset me. Whereas now I think it’s quite sweet that they have taken the time out to slag me off!”

This Is How It Goes runs until October 3. King’s Head Theatre, 115 Upper Street, N1 1QN; 020 7226 1916

This is how it goes with Gemma Atkinson

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