Natalie Cassidy, one of Britain’s most recognisable stars, is sunning herself in her garden in Hertfordshire. I, as is about to be proven, am sitting in a house of lies. “Whereabouts are you calling from, darling?” Cassidy asks. Islington, I tell her. “Ooh, I’m from Islington – tell me the road.” Um, I stutter, more near the Holloway Road end.
“Nope!” Cassidy exclaims. “See you’re saying you’re in Islington but you’re not, are you? Because you’re N7.” I may as well have just rocked up wearing a suit made of old Gail’s receipts. “Don’t worry, I understand why you do it. But, listen, if you’re not off Upper Street or Essex Road, you’re not Islington.”
Being lightly chastised by Sonia from EastEnders was never on my bucket list, but it’s thrilling in the moment, like being smacked in the face by a pot of jellied eels. It also feels right. Cassidy, 43, came of age alongside some of Britain’s most formidable stars, women like Barbara Windsor, Wendy Richard and June Brown, veterans who liked a ciggy break and a natter, who were as professional as could be yet took no prisoners. So, for Cassidy, there’s the EastEnders in her, but the Islington too – the Islington before the boomers and the gentrification and the, well, me. She’s got that grit.
Anyway, both because I mean it but also because I’m desperate to get Cassidy back on side, I tell her that she’s a bit of an icon – not only because of Sonia, the trumpet-playing, baby-stealing, periodically bisexual Albert Square institution she’s played on and off since 1993, but also her late-Noughties fitness DVDs, the spoofs she’s inspired (“I’m doing this now… hosin’ the bins out!” went comedian Morgana Robinson’s prolific impression) and her notoriously outré sense of style at the turn of the millennium. The last of which has made her one of the queens of hun culture, the internet meme factory that upholds the likes of Kim Woodburn, Gemma Collins and Kerry Katona’s Iceland King Prawn Ring as paradigms of camp, strength, and sheer unadulterated authenticity. If Natalie Cassidy isn’t a national treasure by this point, who is?
“I cringe at that, to be honest,” Cassidy laughs. “I just find it very hard to believe. I see myself as totally the same as everybody else.”
Me and June Brown would head out to Malaga for a holiday even though she was in her Seventies at that point. We’d just drink loads of red wine and smoke loads of fags
But she must notice that she’s treated with a certain affection. “I suppose you’re right,” she says. “I’ve been a part of people’s lives for a long time, so people do feel warmth towards me. Sonia wasn’t a villain, either, so I’ve never had any kind of rubbish, you know? People have always felt sorry for Sonia or championed Sonia, so I’ve been lucky there.”
This week Cassidy is starring in Netflix’s Alley Cats, a dirty/mawkish animated sitcom from Ricky Gervais that marks her most high-profile role since departing EastEnders last year. It’s very much in the Gervais wheelhouse, about street cats who swear and act appallingly, then reach for the tear ducts with monologues about death and abandonment. Gervais voices Gus, and Cassidy voices his elderly mum, who he’s grown distant from until it proves almost too late.
“I’d been playing the role down a bit, because it’s only small,” she says. “But having watched the whole series, I feel really proud of it. It’s quite a pivotal character.” She says she might have manifested it. “I’ve been a huge Ricky fan going back to The Office and I’ve always said I’d love to work with him. People have just looked at me like, ‘You’re bloody mad!’ But I had a gut feeling that it might happen.” She thinks he may have heard her talking about him on a podcast she appeared on, and voila. “He rang me up one morning just after I dropped the kids off at school [Cassidy has two daughters, aged 15 and nine], and my legs actually buckled in the kitchen. I couldn’t quite believe it.”
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She’d love to do more comedy. “I’m sort of on the periphery of that world,” she says, mentioning her cameos on Motherland and Diane Morgan’s Mandy. “It’s like I’m holding onto a window ledge but can’t quite get in the window. Maybe one day I’ll do it somehow.”
The odd thing is that Cassidy was recognised early on for her comedy chops. In fact she won an award for them as a child, at Islington’s Anna Scher Theatre, the celebrated arts school famous for training a raft of working-class talent, from Kathy Burke and Daniel Kaluuya to Pauline Quirke and Zawe Ashton. “I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have that place,” she says. “And I’m not talking about getting EastEnders and being famous and all that crap, but just developing a passion and a focus. That’s what Anna’s gave you.”
She was 10 years old when she was cast as Sonia Jackson – the little sister of Patsy Palmer’s Bianca and Dean Gaffney’s Robbie – after a writer and a casting director for EastEnders spotted her in an improv class. She was increasingly given proper material as time went on, Sonia famously getting pregnant at 15 in the midst of a torrid love triangle with curtain-haired twinklet Jamie Mitchell (Jack Ryder) and well-intentioned lunk Martin Fowler (James Alexandrou). It was one of the biggest storylines in the show’s history. Cassidy thinks it was luck that got her cast, but hard work that kept her hanging around.
“To keep that job for over 30 years, that’s about respect and professionalism, and being on time and treating people well, and understanding how a show like that runs,” she says. “You wouldn’t ever hear me moaning. It’s a factory, and if one cog goes out, it all falls apart. You can’t be late. You can’t stroll onto set not knowing your lines. All of these things matter. I think I earned and gained respect from how I behaved.”
open image in galleryAnd she was shown how to behave – and how to be brilliant – by her mentors, older actors who’d been around the block. Many of whom, she notes, are no longer with us. She says Wendy Richard, who played Pauline Fowler, taught her to always respect the crew (“I think she would have been very happy I ended up with a cameraman,” she laughs, of her partner of 12 years). Barbara Windsor taught her pure professionalism on a set, and “was such a powerhouse and a star, and unlike anyone I’ve ever met before or since – she had Marilyn Monroe’s kind of stardom”. And June Brown, aka Dot Cotton, was her “best friend”. “When I was 18 or 19, we’d head out to Malaga for a holiday even though she was in her Seventies at that point.”
Please tell me absolutely everything about this holiday, I insist.
“To be honest, we used to just drink loads of red wine and smoke loads of fags,” she cackles. “Just set the world to rights.”
Cassidy is quick to reinforce that these women were serious, dedicated actors, as if to pre-empt the way soap opera stars tend to get a bit flattened in the public eye. “June would put annotations all over her scripts, marking where she’d take a breath, where she’d pause,” she says. “She’d see every line like a song. She was a genius. June came into EastEnders when she was about 58, but she’d had a huge theatrical career before that, which people forget about. It’s a bit of a shame. But there you go.”
open image in galleryCassidy knows that she’ll always be seen as Sonia, but that she’ll never complain about it. “People come up to me to have a chat, take a picture, and I don’t resent any of it,” she says. “Why would I be bitter if people think Sonia’s all I’ve done? Or if all they do is mention the trumpet? I think that’s brilliant. Some people would be annoyed about that. They wouldn’t want to mention it. But I don’t think I’ve ever taken myself too seriously.” She loves Morgana Robinson’s impressions, too, she adds. “I’m a very glass-half-full person and I’ve got a thick skin, and I’ve never really cared what people think of me, or what gets written about me.”
Her only regret is the fitness stuff – Natalie Cassidy’s Then & Now Workout, unveiled to much fanfare in 2007, pocketed her £100,000, but also became an albatross she couldn’t get away from. “It was f***ing awful,” she says. “It was the worst decision I ever made, because it wasn’t me. And then when I put all the weight back on – and, remember, this was the time of Heat Magazine and Closer – the focus became about my body and my body image. I don’t think any woman in the public eye gets away from it. Look what’s just happened with Andy Burnham’s wife! But for a long time, because of that DVD, it was the thing everyone wanted to talk to me about.”
She’s incredibly unbothered about it all now. “I’ve been smaller, I’ve been bigger. I’ve been drinking loads of wine and eating burgers all summer. Yes, I could lose a few pounds, but I don’t worry about it. I’ll exercise more when it cools down a bit. Because you’ve got to live, haven’t you? And enjoy everything in moderation.”
open image in galleryIt’s a stance that more or less unlocks Cassidy’s appeal. That learned, practical, down-to-earth wisdom. And it’s always been reflected in her acting, too – even in the most extreme of circumstances on EastEnders, she played Sonia as resolutely human, in ways that tend to get overlooked. It’s never been particularly popular, but there’s something so important about seeing normality beamed back at you. She thinks it’s why her podcast, Life with Nat, has been so successful, too.
“We talk about the mundane things of life, because I think people want that,” she says. “It’s refreshing to see someone with no make-up talking about doing their washing. People don’t want to see perfection.” She says she got a voice note the other day from a listener, who told her that she is a carer for her ill mum, and puts on Cassidy’s podcast for her whenever she has to leave the house. “She said it’s like having the family round, that hum of company, and it makes people feel secure. And if I can do that, that’s my job done.”
Before we go, I quickly ask about a very important part of Natalie Cassidy mythology that does the rounds on social media every few months: a picture, from about 2001 or 2002, in which she is seen attending an event wearing a sheer blouse, a leather bra and a giant necklace reading “SEX”. It should be in the National Portrait Gallery, if we’re being honest. I asked about its availability to include as an illustration in this article, and I was told (quite genuinely) it was just too expensive. So you’re going to just have to imagine it, or Google it in a bit.
“The famous necklace!” Cassidy hoots. “I believe that photo was taken at Dean Gaffney’s birthday party.”
She has a certain fondness for it, she admits.
“I think I just wanted to be powerful!” she says. “And show that I could wear what I want and do what I want. It wasn’t quite ladette, where you’re 17 and downing pints, but it was just about showing off your confidence.”
It’s why it’s endured, I tell her.
“Well Hunsnet certainly won’t get rid of it,” Cassidy laughs. “I think that’ll be on file for eternity!”
‘Alley Cats’ is on Netflix from 7 August