ANGELA Black star Joanne Froggatt has revealed how Spice Girl Mel B helped her prepare for her traumatic new role.
Joanne, 41, plays the titular Angela in the ITV drama, a woman who appears to have an idyllic life; a house in suburban London, days working volunteer shifts at a dogs home, two beautiful sons and a charming, hard-working husband – Olivier.
However, beneath this façade of charmed domesticity, Angela is a victim of domestic violence. Olivier (Michiel Huisman) is controlling and brutal; but Angela loves him and he’s the father of her children.
Despite threatening to leave him many times, she’s never been able to, but then a private investigator arrives and smashes her already strained domestic life to pieces as she reveals Olivier’s deepest secrets.
Speaking about her latest role, Joanne – who won much acclaim for her role in fellow ITV drama Liar – revealed the tools she had used to prepare.
She told The Celeb Report’s TV Mag: “For Angela I did a lot of research. Women’s Aid were incredible at supporting us and painting me in the right direction with research material.
“They suggested to me that I read a book by Mandy Thomas called You Can’t Run. It is one of the most harrowing accounts of domestic violence and honest and incredibly moving and affecting.
“I was really grateful to them to have pointed me in the right direction of Mandy’s book.”
Joanne also read celebrity books detailing their respective traumas, including Spice Girl Mel B, who documented her own experiences of domestic abuse.
Joanne said: “I read Katie Piper’s book Beautiful about the attack on her a short relationship. I read Melanie B’s book Brutally Honest. All of these women told their stories really courageously.
“It’s so intimate and personal and the emotions that go along with all of these situations whether they be psychological or physical, obviously everyone’s situation is very individual to them, but the bravery it takes to talk about those intimate emotions and the emotion of feeling shame and all these things, I was just blown away by their honesty.”
Angela Black begins on Sunday, October 10 at 9pm on ITV. TV Mag is available free every Saturday, only in The Celeb Report.
