With her 60th birthday on the horizon, the actor Tamsin Greig is embracing new challenges and says that she has no plans to retire. "I can't see that ever being a part of my experience," she tells HELLO!. "Every time I take a new job, it's like taking on a new challenge." The Olivier Award-winning star, best known for Green Wing, Episodes, Black Books and Friday Night Dinner, is in one of the lead roles in the BBC drama Riot Women, about a group of menopausal women who form a punk rock band.
"I never thought, 'Maybe I would like to learn an instrument and form a band,'" says Tamsin, who got to grips with playing bass guitar for her role as divorced police officer Holly. "I wouldn't dare think that way. But then this work turns up, and I go, 'Oh, I can do that.' That was really thrilling."
© Drama Republic Ltd / Helen WilliamsHer two grown-up sons, Jakob and Nathanael, are both musical. "My sons have both been in bands, and it's a little bit embarrassing when your mum starts picking up your bass," says the TV star who also has a daughter, Roxie, with her husband, the actor Richard Leaf. "One of my sons was helpful by showing me how the instrument worked, with the strings and tuning. But he didn’t ever take it off me and go, 'No, like this', because I think that would have destroyed me."
"Although, when I got sent a bass guitar from the production, my son instantly picked it up and started playing it, and I felt a little bit, 'Oh no, don't do that, because now it wants to be played really well,'" jokes the star. "So now it's all spoilt."
She adds: "But it wasn't. It helped me hear the sound of the instrument, which was really brilliant. Then I took it over, and it just sounded like a baby hippopotamus stamping on it."
The drama comes from the Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright, who came up with the idea ten years ago when she was in her early fifties and learnt that her mother had dementia. "A few things start piling on when you get to a certain age," Sally recently told HELLO!. "You're often at the height of your career, so you've got a lot of responsibility at work, and the big thing for me was my mum had started to get dementia. You have stuff to deal with that you didn't quite anticipate. You have to get tough as you get older to deal with what comes your way and it often coincides with the menopause."
What midlife looks like for Tamsin
In Riot Women, which also stars The Thick of It's Joanna Scanlan and Sherwood's Lorraine Ashbourne, Tamsin's character is coping with her mother's dementia diagnosis. In reality, midlife looked very different for Tamsin, who previously starred in the 2020 drama Belgravia. "My parents died when I was in my thirties, when my children were very little," she explains, saying she has a "greater awe" for people who are juggling the menopause with having ageing parents and adult children, with "their own issues and needs and complications".
© Drama Republic Ltd / Helen Williams"I just feel so grateful that these things come my way."
"There was a very quiet part of myself that would look and think: 'I'm very grateful that my parents left the departure lounge when I was young.' Because I don't know how people survive menopause and help young adults, who we really can't help because we don’t have their experience of the internet, of social media, of a global pandemic when you're a youngster, and with the increase of elderly parents. I don't quite know how I would have coped with all of that."
Future plans
Unlike her on-screen counterpart, who is on the verge of retirement, Tamsin isn't interested in a life without work. "Because of the work that I've always done, when it says on forms, 'When do you expect to retire?' I'm like, 'Well, what do you mean?' I don’t expect to retire."
© Photo: Getty ImagesShe says that there was "no way on God's good Earth" that she would have starred in a musical before she appeared in the 2015 West End adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's Oscar-nominated film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, for which she earned her third Olivier Award nomination. "I'm in awe of people who do that work, because it's so hard."
Reflecting on her latest role, Tamsin says she's grateful for the challenge. "Being in a band requires so much of you, so being given these experiences and just seeing what's possible at whatever age, I just feel so grateful that these things come my way."
All episodes of Riot Women are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
