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Mother of all auditions: How death stare sealed Anna Maxwell Martin role as misfit mum

© Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media via Getty ImagesAnna Maxwell Martin.
Anna Maxwell Martin.

As a busy working mother, Anna Maxwell Martin knows how difficult it can be.

She’s returning in the second series of parenting sitcom Motherland, and she’s only too aware of how difficult, uncomfortable and, as the first series demonstrated, funny it can be.

The pressure on parents, though, might just be all in the head.

“Do we create it or is it really, truly there?” she said. “Is it social media? Or is it our generation putting too much pressure on ourselves?

“I don’t think my mum really gave a damn!

“We didn’t have playdates, did we?!

“You do need your people, especially if you’re working.

“God, I sound like Julia taking advantage of all her friends, but you do need friends to pick up your kids!”

With a string of drama performances to her name – The Bletchley Circle, Philomena and Bleak House, for which she won a BAFTA – Anna had never been in a comedy role before the first series of Motherland.

For her audition, she deliberately stood dead-eyed, staring at the writers – something which could have backfired but instead impressed writer and show’s creator Sharon Horgan.

“This woman is just a brilliant physical comedy performer, it just gave us more things to throw at her,” said writer Sharon, who also penned and starred in acclaimed Channel 4 comedy Catastrophe, and HBO series Divorce.

“She does look like a mental patient. We thought people had to see that.

“We just wanted to represent what it’s like to find yourself in that situation as a new parent and not necessarily have that much in common with the other women, and occasionally men, at school.

“Sometimes it can be as scary as an adult starting school as it is for the kids – you’ve got to find your tribe.

“We wanted to put together this group of characters who became a little misfitty cell.”

Sharon said her own experience of being a mum was “terrifying”.

“I think generally that’s what I find funny,” she added.

“People in difficult situations trying to find their way out of it. Those were the stories we wanted to tell.”

She recalled spotting a group of other mothers from her child’s school having a picnic in a park that she hadn’t been invited to.

“I thought, ‘What have I ever done…? Apart from slink in and out as quickly as physically possible and then write a sitcom about it!”


Motherland begins on BBC2 on Tuesday night at 10pm