An Interview with Actress, Jessica Martin

Roger Crow chats to actress, singer and illustrator Jessica Martin, star of stage hit Young Frankenstein.

Tell us about your role in Young Frankenstein, and how did you get involved?
I saw the film many years ago. So I am a child of the late sixties and seventies, and I do remember seeing Young Frankenstein. I mean, I love Mel Brooks. He’s a genius because of so many things. One of the most surprising things about Young Frankenstein and The Producers musical is that the book, music and lyrics are all written by Mel Brooks, and they’re wonderful. It’s one of the very few roles in my career that I haven’t auditioned for. But when I say I haven’t auditioned, I have auditioned because all through one’s life as an actor, everything you do is a showcase for something down the line. And in my showcase was the fact that I had done two pantomimes for our fantastic director, Nick Winston. Two pantomimes at the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre. We went through all these different permutations, what the villain should be like. ‘Should she be a posh sort of female version of the self-appointed evil local country squire?’ When we did that she just sounded like a nice sort of, almost like a Joanna Lumley.

Tell us about the show for those who know nothing about the story and its inspiration.
It’s not a direct spoof of the original Mary Shelley, but what it is, it’s like a sequel. So the story begins with the grandson of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a New York based, very serious professor of medicine and he’s giving a lecture. And in the middle of the lecture, he is given this mysterious letter to say that he has inherited the estate of his grandfather, Victor Frankenstein. And anyway, he goes to Transylvania, and he meets all these crazy characters along the way.

Jessica Martin as Frau Blucher
image: Mark Senior

“Regaling each other with stories”

Many Doctor Who fans will know you from a few projects, starting with a 1988 adventure…
Well, Doctor Who was again, something that just kind of manifested out of nowhere. It was on its last legs when I did it. Sylvester McCoy was the seventh Doctor; the fans were getting restless and they were trying to sort of dictate how Doctor Who should be. And the producer, John Nathan Turner… he’s like Louis B. Mayer now. He just is like a legendary icon of the Doctor Who history. And he had a wonderful sort of broad-minded thinking outside of the box, excuse the pun, a way of casting the shows. I was called in to audition for, I just saw on paper, it was the character of Mags… she is a girl who has been kidnapped from planet, and she has a very special skill. Anyway, VERY special skill. Sorry to give you the plot spoilers if you haven’t seen ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’. My skill is that when I go out into the circus spotlight, I turn into a werewolf.

And there were quite a few familiar faces in that adventure.
Yes, it was a star-studded roster of people. Peggy Mount was in it. She was playing a flower-seller on this planet. Christopher Guard, he and his brother were child stars. He was playing Bellboy, this sort of hippy-type character. Daniel Peacock, who was a very sort of cool actor. He was playing a thuggish character. Sophie Aldred, who is a friend of mine to this day, she was Ace, the companion, and we were both literally two days apart in birthdays. And there was the boy, Gian Sammarco, who had been a big star in The Diary of Adrian Mole. He was about to leave the biz. Chris Jury, who’d been in Lovejoy. He played Deadbeat, and the wonderful, TP McKenna, a very, very grand Irish actor. He wasn’t as famous as Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris, but he could have been. He played this character called The Captain, and he and Sylvester McCoy were just like peas in a pod, and they’d be regaling each other with stories of the theatre and people they’d work with, and so on.

Were you the voice in a David Tennant episode as well?
Yes. I was the voice of the Queen in ‘Voyage of the Damned’. I get fans coming to the conventions with a little screenshot, because it wasn’t me appearing as the Queen; you only saw the back of the Queen, but they’ve got a picture of the Queen in the show and want my autograph because they know that I did the voice.

‘Young Frankenstein’ can be seen at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester until November 30, and then moves to Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse until January 3
The full versions of this two-part interview can be found at podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/nostalgiahhh & shows.acast.com/nostalgiahhh
Top image: Nick James

Roger Crow( Writer )

Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
crowsfeat.com; nostalgiahhh film podcast

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