Sheridan Smith was born to showpeople, Colin and Marilyn, who toured as a musical duo on the pub circuit around Epworth in Lincolnshire. But you start to think, if you own something, how can that hurt? If anything, I should be more honest, because if it helps other people, hearing this, that’s a good thing.” At the end of the interview I circle back, to ask if she’s OK with it all being in print. While Trevor snores on her lap, Smith sits and talks – about the events that led to her collapse, how it felt to experience it from the inside, the ways in which she hopes other people will benefit from her speaking honestly about it.Ī couple of times Smith says things that, she admits, she hasn’t told close family members. Blessed with an orchestral Lincolnshire accent, and the instant likability that helped supercharge her rise in the first place, she’s a born storyteller – an arm-toucher, someone who says she feels freer talking about her difficulties now that a combination of proper treatment, a stable romantic relationship and rewarding work has helped steady her. He said, ‘No, you see, you’re answering my questions honestly.’ And I said, ‘But you asked.’”įiddling with the straw in her soft drink, and stroking her dog, Smith veers on to more personal ground. I’m sat with this guy, I’m in my early 20s.
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“Back when I started on TV, they sent me on a course, to teach me how to behave in interviews, like they do with politicians. But honestly? Smith, by her own admission, has never been much good at upselling her work. And alongside that, Smith has recorded an album of original songs, on the back of a covers record she released last year before touring a one-woman show around the UK. There’s Cleaning Up, a six-part ITV drama about a cleaner (Smith) who struggles with an addiction to online gambling. Officially we’re meeting to talk over a couple of new projects. And in my head I’m thinking, my God, the parallels.
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And when I heard all that about my great-grandfather, I’m sat there on TV saying, ‘Oh! Really! That’s so interesting.’ But you can see the tears start rolling down my face. Or as she puts it: “Not being honest with anyone about how much I was struggling, with drink, with my mental health. Her appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? predated all this, and at the time she was keeping a public lid on her problems. After a cruel joke told about her at the Bafta award ceremony, inferring she was a drunk, Smith posted a slew of sweary, boozy, much-regretted tweets. And to be fair to Smith I do know a lot of it, because there was a period in 2016 when you couldn’t avoid the coverage of her downward spiral – the missed curtain calls, the disgruntled audiences. Sometimes when famous people have been knocked around a bit by the tabloids, they assume you know all the particulars of their worst times. He’s turned on the gas taps at home, and he’s stood there with a lighted match, telling the police to go away…” Smith pauses, smiling wryly, letting the irony sink in. “We get to the end and I’m hearing that his wife has left him. “All these beautiful links that I couldn’t wait to tell my family about.”īut her great-grandfather’s life story soured as it went on. “I was loving hearing about him,” she remembers. On Who Do You Think You Are? she learned she had a great-grandfather who was also a talented performer, a pioneer on the banjo. Her name on a bill could sell out a show, and she was about to appear on screen as Cilla Black in a highly praised ITV biopic. Back then, Smith’s life in showbusiness looked – on the surface, anyway – a roaring success. A few years ago, she was asked to appear on Who Do You Think You Are?, the TV show on which celebrities have their ancestry traced in order to learn deeper truths about themselves. She settles at a table (puppy on the lap of her jeans, sleeves rolled to reveal forearm tattoos, blond hair tied back) and offers up an example. Cleaning up crap in front of a crowd? Smith has been through worse. As for Smith – her 37 years rich with incident, a performer counted among the most gifted in the West End, an Olivier winner and a Bafta best actor who more recently went through an acute and very public breakdown – she just shrugs. Everyone is sympathetic poor Trev, obviously convinced he has created a public relations crisis for his owner, is now straining on his leash to hide among the pot plants. S heridan Smith arrives at the restaurant with a handsome new pet in tow, a grey puppy called Trevor who draws such a crowd of cooing admirers it takes a while before anybody notices the animal has laid a long, coy turd in the doorway.