Actress Ashley Jensen opens up on growing up in Annan

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Dumfriesshire actress Ashley Jensen has been speaking about growing up in the region and her love for the countryside.

On Sunday’s Love Your Weekend With Alan Titchmarsh, the 55-year-old – who was brought up in Annan – revealed how she made legendary Scottish comedian, Billy Connelly, laugh when she told him about earning her milkmaid badge in the Guides.

And, speaking of her upbringing, the former Annan Academy pupil, said: “I came from the countryside. I grew up in the south-west of Scotland in Dumfries and Galloway.

“It was a rural place. We use to get up in the morning and milk the cows, both by hand and by machine, and clean the cowsheds.”

She also revealed that she now lives in Somerset and is again loving having the countryside on her doorstep after an acting career that has seen her move from Annan to Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Los Angeles – in the Holywood Hills – and back to London again, before settling in her new south-west England home.

Ashley, who has a teenage son, Francis, spent many years in Los Angeles in popular ABC series Ugly Betty opposite America Ferreira, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award.

She’s had a long career and starred in many series and films, having worked for 16 years in the industry – including an appearance in the 2003 BBC drama Two Thousand Acres of Sky which was filmed in Dumfries and Galloway – before she shot to fame as Maggie in Extras in 2005, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s follow-up to The Office.

Since then she’s starred in key roles in films – including Christmas family favourite, Nativity, and many TV series - including sleuth Agatha Raisin – and has a string of acting awards.

It is her return for a second series in a leading role in the popular BBC murder-mystery drama, Shetland, which has again catapulted her into the limelight.

It is showing on Wednesdays and can be seen on BBC iPlayer.

She joined the show as Detective Ruth Calder last year following the departure of Douglas Henshall, who had spent almost a decade playing Jimmy Perez in seven series.

Her character left the island when she turned 18 and had spent the past 20 years working for the Met in London before being forced to return to pursue a young woman who witnessed a gangland murder.

In autumn and the series averaged seven million viewers. In Scotland, Shetland was the second biggest drama of the year behind Happy Valley.

Earlier this year, Ashley signed up for another two series and began filming series nine in April with Alison O’Donnell – who plays Alison ‘Tosh’ McIntosh – and the cast and crew.

And she has expressed a fondness for the rural setting, as much as the storylines, saying: “The Shetland Isles are breath-taking – without a doubt one of the most memorable and unique filming locations I’ve been to.”

Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama said: “Ashley and Alison’s partnership has taken Shetland from strength to strength and into new exciting territory, which combined with Paul Logue’s captivating scripts will mean there’s plenty more in store as we head back to the Isles.”

And, in Sunday’s chat with the much-loved gardener and author, she said: “The real star of the show is Shetland, to be honest.”

She said that filming, which takes place on the archipelago and around Scotland, lasted five months from the end of March to mid August and while last year the cameras rolled in a heatwave, this time she described “battling against the elements a little bit this year – very, very cold, wind and rain – pretty brutal. You can have four seasons in a day there.”

Shetland is originally based upon the novels of Ann Cleeves, and adapted by David Kane, and Ashley says she has plenty to thank the novelist as last year she wed actor and director, Kenny Doughty. He is best known for playing DS Aiden Healy in ITV’s crime drama, Vera – based on the Vera Stanhope series of novels by Ann Cleeves and produced by Silverprint Pictures.

Ashley also joked the earnings from Shetland were appreciated too: “Anne Cleeves paid for our greenhouse.”

In the new series, a double missing persons case blurs the line between the personal and the professional, as Calder and Tosh are drawn into a labyrinthine investigation.

When Tosh’s friend, Annie Bett, goes missing she suspects something is seriously wrong. Ruth Calder – now living and working full-time on Shetland – set out in search of Annie and her young son, Noah.

Meanwhile, at the station, Calder delves deeper into another case involving a deadly argument between two brothers. The missing persons investigation draws Tosh and Calder into a web of lies and when a bloodied person turns up at a remote garage, nothing can prepare the team for what lies ahead.

On the storyline, Ashley has said in a BBC interview: “There are many threads to the new series of Shetland. We jump back and forth in time – there’s a historical case, domestic relationships…there are so many different strands to the story and quite a lot of them are linked. It’s a very complex web this series.

“In fact, I decided that I wasn’t going to find out who the murderer was. So, for the first three episodes I felt like I was really in Calder’s shoes. I was looking at people through the character’s eyes thinking, “What are you giving me?”. Then I would leave a scene and quickly look back around again, just to see if somebody was doing something they shouldn’t have been behind the coppers’ backs after we’d gone.

“It added another element of fun for me. When I was playing the part, I wanted to be really present in every scene, to make myself look and listen to what people were saying, to see if I could solve the puzzle and ultimately, the crime.”

Ashley added: “I was very excited to be getting on the wee plane off to Shetland again with my half a cup of tea and my caramel wafer – half a cup of tea, because there’s often turbulence and you can’t get a full cup of tea because it’ll spill. Which I thought was quite funny.

“As soon as you touch down, Shetland kind of envelops you. It’s like nowhere I’ve ever been before. It’s a landscape that’s arresting and breathtaking. It’s just a real privilege to be able to go back there.to go back there, so I felt like I had to rush around buying Shetland jumpers and puffin poo and things like that, just in case.”

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