Susanna Dawson

"Gill Fowler"

Susanna Dawson Recalls the Role
of a Lifetime as Mark's First Wife

By Tim Wilson (Volume 5, Issue 2)

Susanna Dawson knew she'd taken on a unique acting challenge in the role of AIDS-stricken Gill in EastEnders. Dawson not only met that challenge by giving a brilliant performance, she went on to create a book and video derived from the experience. When I phoned her for this interview, however, Dawson was playing the decidedly upbeat roles of Mum and homemaker, on a day when the worst of life's tragedies involved her ten year old son's being unprepared for a school trip. It's the sort of lifestyle Gill could only dream of towards the end.

DAWSON -- I'm so sorry I wasn't in when you rang earlier. I had to go to my son's primary school because he left his shoes behind and they're all going on Spring Break for two and a half weeks.

WG -- He went to school wearing only his socks?

DAWSON -- No. Joe wasn't barefoot, either. He was in his trainers! (EDITOR'S NOTE -- We call them "sneakers" Over Here.) He'd forgotten to put his Doc Martens in his bag. Do you get Doc Martens over there?

WG -- Yes, indeed. I recently bought a pair in New York.

DAWSON -- Joe is very glad to be going on Spring Break. But I'm not so glad about the Doc Martens situation. I couldn't find him even though I scoured that entire school.

WG -- The Dreaded Shoe Phantom strikes again! Anyway, on to the subject of EastEnders...

DAWSON -- Oh, gosh. It seems like such a long time ago now, really.

WG -- But your association with the show and with Gill has continued over the years, with the book and video.

DAWSON -- It's a funny thing, isn't it? I played Gill in 1991 and 1992 and the book and video were created, produced and launched over the following two years.

WG -- And now The Walford Gazette has the book on offer to its subscribers in 1997.

DAWSON -- I think that's wonderful. Thank-you.

WG -- How did the book and video actually come into being?

DAWSON -- I was invited to attend a conference in London about AIDS and HIV education. The Princess Of Wales was supposed to speak, but this was the time of the infamous "Squidgy" tapes. Remember them?

WG -- Of course. Another publicity disaster for The House Of Windsor.

DAWSON -- Well, I was invited to speak, instead. It was at that conference that I launched the idea of using EastEnders' HIV storyline as a vehicle to educate young people. The British Medical Association, it turned out, had done a survey whereby they found that the Walford HIV story actually had the most impact on people going in for testing.

WG -- That's further proof that the soaps really can accomplish something when they tackle an important social issue with artistic integrity.

DAWSON -- Absolutely. Because they reach such large numbers of people and then get them talking about that particular issue the next day. EastEnders' impact was bigger than our government's health campaign. It had more impact than Freddy Mercury's death.

WG -- That's Freddy Mercury, lead singer of the rock group, Queen, who was probably the most visible public figure from Britain to die of AIDS.

DAWSON -- I believe he was. Anyway, I felt that there wasn't anything in the media which was really accessible to kids in the way of HIV Education. All that was there was crammed with heavy medical jargon and there was nothing written in language the kids could understand. It was all very technical stuff, really.

WG -- Not a good way to attract kids' attention.

DAWSON -- So then, at a later luncheon meeting which The Princess Of Wales did attend, she got totally behind my idea of a book and video for young people.

WG -- You and The Princess Of Wales had lunch together?

DAWSON -- Well, it wasn't just the two of us. I won't lay that claim to fame! There were others there. She was extremely encouraging about the project. She's well-known here for her interest in health issues and has often visited hospices to talk with patients with HIV.

WG -- I gather she brought her son, Prince William, to visit hospices as well. Besides you, did anyone else from EastEnders get involved?

DAWSON -- A year and a half later, when we did the actual launch of The Gill And Mark Story at Planet Hollywood in The West End, the whole of the EastEnders cast was there.

WG -- Which came first, the book or the video?

DAWSON -- They were produced simultaneously, more or less. We spent a year and a half raising the money to produce them and a further six months in production. It took about a year to write the book because it had to be thoroughly researched. The video itself took about three weeks to shoot.

WG -- Did the video primarily contain clips from EastEnders?

DAWSON -- No. It also included a great deal of interviews with HIV-positive people speaking about their experiences. One of them died on the day of our launch at Planet Hollywood, which was tragic. There are lots of EastEnders stars in it besides Todd Carty, plus quite a few young people talking about having sex for the first time, things like that. The intent was for it to have this fun, magazine-type style which would appeal to kids. I think we succeeded.

WG -- Had you known anyone with HIV before you began playing Gill?

DAWSON -- Yes. One of the reasons I was able to play the part was really down to the fact that a very, very close friend of mine was HIV-positive at the time. He allowed me to go with him to all of his doctors' appointments and he openly discussed his fears and emotions. He very much gave me an insight into HIV, because I was there during the various stages of his illness. When I first started playing the part, I did a lot of research with an organization called Positively Women, because I didn't know any women with HIV and in playing Gill I obviously had to make that connection. But, mainly, it was my closest friend who helped me with my role.

WG -- Was he a family friend, or someone you knew professionally.

DAWSON -- I knew him way back from drama school. I'm just reminded of something to do with him. It's funny the sentimental things you do. But, in one of my last episodes, Gill is holding a little Teddy Bear. It's the one he'd given me. I sort of creeped it into the scenes. He died the October before last, which was very rough. In a quite personal way, I'd made a decision that, when he went, that would be the end of my HIV work. I hope it isn't misunderstood, but -- between my playing Gill and my work with HIV patients and my friend -- that it had all begun to take over my life a little bit.

WG -- I'm sorry about your friend.

DAWSON -- Thank-you. I miss him a lot.

WG -- When Gill was brought onto the show, it was my understanding that her story with Mark would have a middle and an end. Although we didn't see them together in Newcastle, we would become involved in their love story for a finite period of time before they married and then Gill died.

DAWSON -- Yes. That was the intent. When the audience was introduced to Gill she was at a fairly progressive stage in her HIV illness. I think that what neither I nor the EastEnders team really anticipated was the major impact that storyline would have, long-term. There had never been an AIDS-related death in a soap before in Britain.

WG -- There had been two very minor storylines before that which dealt with HIV. The first was Young Barry's health scare and the second was when Den's fellow-inmate at Dickens Hill Prison, "Vic," found out he was HIV-positive. There was a particularly poignant scene between Vic and his wife when they discussed the subject, but that was that. After Den was released from prison, we never found out what happened to Vic.

DAWSON -- That was down to a change in producers, I think.

WG -- When you read for the part, were you told on the spot that Gill had HIV, would marry Mark and then die?

DAWSON -- No, not all that. Just that she was Positive. I'd been up for the show not too much earlier for ther role of Rachel Kominsky, which went to Jacquetta May. They told me I wasn't Jewish enough!

WG -- An actress friend recently told me that casting people are getting to be so Politically Correct that one turned her down for a role on the grounds that she was "Vertically Challenged." I guess that, nowadays, you would have been considered too "Judaically Challenged" for Rachel.

DAWSON -- (LAUGHING) Absolutely. Oy!!!

WG -- Coincidentally, in our last issue, Caroline Paterson told me that she had at first been up for your part on EastEnders.

DAWSON -- I didn't know that. I've never met Caroline, but I'd like to someday.

WG -- I hope you do. She's terrific. And she told me she admires your work.

DAWSON -- That's lovely to hear. I'm sure one thing we have in common is our feeling about Todd Carty. He's a dreamboat and a dream to work with.

WG -- That's pretty much what Caroline had to say.

DAWSON -- He's a great guy. Such a good actor and a nice person. And now, in real life, he's a Daddy! He'll be a brilliant Dad.

WG -- I'm glad to hear that the warmth he displays onscreen is genuine and not just "part of the job" if you know what I mean.

DAWSON -- I know what you mean. I don't think you can fake that, no matter what kind of actor you are. Todd certainly has range. But the essence of Mark is basically his warmth and decency. It shines through.

WG -- Initially, that storyline involved a lot of Gill and Mark pointing the finger at one another in terms of who infected who. Since they were both extremely sympathetic characters, I thought that was unneccessary.

DAWSON -- Yes. But it had to be explored at least a bit because it would be a natural question in people's minds. At first, it was implied that Gill had infected Mark. But, later on, there was a scene in which Gill told Mark that she'd slept with only three other men besides him and they'd all tested negative. The inference then was back on Mark. But, in real life, it's difficult to trace and I am glad it was kept vague on the show. Anyway, we've all been there, you know.

WG -- I've been told that there were considerable problems that you and your son personally faced when you were playing Gill.

DAWSON -- The experience of playing Gill proved to me that so many levels of prejudice still exist in this society. My son was about five or six at the time I was in EastEnders and he was treated very badly by the other kids at his school because they thought that, since the character had AIDS, then I had AIDS and therefore he was contaminated. They wouldn't play with him.

WG -- Couldn't their parents have set them straight?

DAWSON -- I'm afraid that more than a few of those parents must have had the same prejudices, judging by the way I was treated on the street and in public. Some people were intelligent and supportive and lovely but I also got spat at and shouted at and slapped. There was the time I was at the supermarket doing the shopping with Joe and this guy came up to us, tipped over the whole of the shopping trolley and yelled "Clear the store, clear the store! This store's contaminated. This girl's got AIDS!:" I remember thinking, "If this is what it's like for me, what is it like for someone sick with the disease as well as dealing with all this garbage?" It was an awful time in some ways. The tabloids didn't help, as you can imagine. They added fuel.

WG -- Did your son watch the show?

DAWSON -- He was a bit young to handle many of the stories on the show, much less the HIV story. Whenever I was on the telly he'd wander in and switch it off. He couldn't cope with it at all. Why should he? He was.......is a child. A child without any Doc Martens at the moment.

WG -- Still, I'm glad that's the only problem he's having at school these days.

DAWSON -- So am I, Tim, so am I.

WG -- With whom did you watch your final episodes -- the ones in which Gill married Mark and then died?

DAWSON -- Todd, actually, which was so sweet. He sent me flowers on the day we taped Gill's death.

WG -- That's classy. What was the atmosphere like on the hospital set when those episodes were done?

DAWSON -- The crew was enormously sensitive and respectful. We also had a medical team on the set all during the production of those episodes. They were important to me because they'd had experience with people in different stages of the illness. They advised me on how Gill would walk and how she'd breathe and they actually fought with the producers over the extra seconds which they knew Gill needed to complete her dying process. I suppose the upper powers would have preferred that she had died a quicker, more santitized death. There were big disagreements over that death scene. The medical team won out in the end, to their credit.

WG -- EastEnders, like most programs, does not necessarily tape its scenes in order. Was this true with that hospital death scene?

DAWSON -- Yes. For a change they were shot in order because the two episodes of that week concentrated only on Mark and Gill and Michelle and we were doing them away from Elstree. So when Gill died I was done with my work on the show. However, one scene that wasn't supposed to be shot in order was that beautiful scene in the park outside the hospital with Michelle and Mark. It was scheduled to be done on the Sunday before the Thursday when I taped my death scene. They all went down to the park to start taping and gave it a shot and Sue just said "Look, I'm sorry, but I can't do this scene yet. It's just not working." Because she hadn't yet done the scene where she said goodbye to Gill. You can imagine how much the crew was being paid in terms of weekend overtime. But the production team said "Okay. That's fine. We'll just pack it up and do this later." And that's exactly what they did!

WG -- Amazing.

DAWSON -- It was a great honor to wonderful performers like Sue and Todd that they did what they did. Isn't that rare? It's because everybody cared about the work. Sue's performance was so beautiful and so tender. She's a superb actress.

WG -- All the work on those episodes was superb.

DAWSON -- The viewing audience by then had really taken Gill to their hearts. Because she was really quite a normal girl-next-door type who they could identify with. She wasn't a particularly talented person with a particularly good job. She was a good, decent person and that's why the loss was deeply felt by everyone.

WG -- That was beautifully expressed. I'm getting all farklempt.

DAWSON -- Hello?! What's that!?

WG -- It's a Yiddish word that means to get emotional and teary.

DAWSON -- Oh. Well, don't do that. We've got an interview to do!

WG -- I'd like to backtrack a bit to Susanna Dawson: The Early Acting Years. What's your acting background?

DAWSON -- I trained at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama. I was in Gary Oldman's year.

WG -- Oh. Did you think that he was extremely talented and would go far?

DAWSON -- No! (BURSTS INTO GIGGLES.) I mean, we all loved him dearly but we had no idea that he would be the one to become famous. Gary's hero was Ian McKellen, so he used to act all his roles like McKellen. By that I mean he'd leave his mouth open a little bit after every sentence.

WG -- I never noticed that!

DAWSON -- It's true, you should watch him! Ian, I mean. Maybe he's stopped doing it by now. Anyway, I went on from there to do masses of theatre on the Rep circuit and lots of radio -- like the soap operas The Archers and Citizens. On The Archers, I played a rather upper-middle class character named Louise Danforth who was a friend of one of the lead characters, a total snob named Linda Snell. They were both snobs, really.

WG -- I've listened to Lynda on that program. She sounded like one of those Windsor women, Princess Anne or The Queen.

DAWSON -- That radio program is hugely popular. Wendy Richards is a card-carrying member of The Archers Fan Club.

WG -- You obviously have a talent for dialects. Gill was from Yorkshire, wasn't she?

DAWSON -- Yes, from a town called Shipley. I never found out whether it was real or fictitious. I've done other television as well, the usual shows like Casualty and The Bill.

WG -- I would assume that Gill is your favorite television character so far.

DAWSON -- Yes, in many ways.

WG -- It must have been sad to say good-bye to all that.

DAWSON -- Absolutely. Everybody was really lovely on that final day. They threw me a little party after I was all done and gave me a framed design of Gill's wedding dress. That was sweet of them.

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