A Royal appointment

At the end of a hard day filming ITV1's 1960s hospital drama The Royal, the actresses remove their theatrical make-up and head home. Linda Armstrong, however, does the opposite. Off comes Sister Brigid's nun's habit and on goes the make-up.

"I'm thrilled to take off the wimple at the end of the day," she admits. "It's funny because everyone else takes their make-up off and I put it on because, of course, Sister Brigid doesn't wear any in the series."

She's not the only actress from The Royal who looks completely different off camera. You'd probably walk past most of them in the street because they're unrecognisable out of their period hospital uniform or nun's habit.

"There are some odd moments where people go, 'I know you' or 'Have I met you?' because I have the accent. They do recognise you in the most bizarre places. Taxi drivers say, 'Are you in The Royal?'," she says. "We get noticed more in Scarborough because people see us filming outside. In Leeds and Bradford we're hidden away in the hospital."

Newcomer Natalie Anderson, who arrives in the series as Nurse Stella Davenport, says: "Even the crew didn't know who I was at the wrap party. The make-up and hair for the character is so different to how I am normally."

Nurse Stella debuts in episode seven in what is Davenport's first major TV role since leaving drama school. Her nurse is transferred from a neighbouring hospital and her reputation precedes her. "She's bolshie and hot-headed," says the actress.

In the first episode she filmed, she had to look after a patient played by comedy veteran June Whitfield. "She has this tyrant of a daughter whom I don't get on with. There's quite a lot of shouting and being dragged into matron's office on the first day," says Davenport.

Sister Brigid, meanwhile, is befriending an Irish homeless drunk. "It evokes quite a lot of memories for her and she becomes almost like a mother to him," says Armstrong, whose other TV work includes the soaps EastEnders and Brookside.

"We show a bit more of Brigid's life back in the convent, where there's a little novice nun who runs around after her. She's one of the few nuns in that Order who go out and experience the world. Her two worlds collide when she meets the Irishman."

Sister Brigid also - heaven forbid - shows her knickers to the world in one episode after she's knocked off her bike in a road accident. Viewers will, we're promised, get a glimpse of her undergarments, which meant the wardrobe department had to go in search of authentic nun's underwear from the 1960s.

And The Royal seems to be taking a harder line than before by tackling the issue of abortion after student nurse Samantha Beaumont, played by Anna Madeley, discovers she's pregnant and sets about having a termination.

"It's quite a shock for her and she's never spoken about who the father might be," explains the actress. "She's not married and, at that time, it would have been incredibly hard for her to have the baby. But abortions were only legalised two years before that. Samantha's quite nave and the depth of feeling of people on each side of the argument is great.

"It was a lot of crying and there were some heavy days, but quite satisfying because you have to work so hard. Weirdly, it's fun to have a big storyline like that. I didn't get much chance to do research because of the schedule but did speak to people who've lived through that era. You can read about things in books but it's much more interesting if you speak to people."

Filming the current series on the Yorkshire coast over the past seven or eight months has been a headache because of persistent bad weather. The cast have been known to wear wet suits under their costumes to keep dry and warm. Zoie Kennedy, who plays Staff Nurse Taylor, recalls one icy day during the first series.

"We were filming on the Yorkshire Moors at the end of January and it was freezing. I had a wet suit on under my nurse's uniform, which made me feel about ten sizes bigger. In the space of about an hour-and-a-half we'd had rain, sleet, snow, hail. It was mad."

Paul Fox, back again as Dr Jeff Goodwin, and Scott Taylor, who joins the cast as ambulance man Frankie Robinson, had to venture into caves for one sequence in the new series. For Kennedy, caving was nothing new as she reveals that she went caving in Belize on her honeymoon. "There was a system of caves that were used for sacrifices to the rain god. We went into the caves for five hours and saw a calcified skeleton," she recalls.

The Royal film crew and actors had to be evacuated several times because heavy rain led to a dangerous rise in water levels inside the caves.

"It took one and a half hours to get in and set up the scenes. Then the rain came through. That's why our one day shoot extended to three days," says Taylor.

He's previously had roles in Coronation Street, Doctors and Sky One's soccer series Dream Team. "The Royal is one of the best jobs I've had," says the actor. "It's such good fun and there have been a lot of good laughs. In my previous role in Dream Team, I was covered in mud. Now by a complete contrast, I'm covered in blood."

* The Royal returns to ITV1 tomorrow at 8pm.

Published: 04/12/2004