Sister Act Star Lesley Joseph got the acting habit from an early age
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Actress Lesley Joseph looks back at you from her Sister Act picture with the big serious gaze of a butter-wouldn’t-melt Mother Superior, but there might just be the spark of her best-known character Dorien in those eyes too.
And for Lesley the leap to Mother Superior for the tour that lands in Eden Court this week, wasn’t quite so extreme.
“I was only ever going to do Mother Superior on tour.
“But then they asked if I’d like to do Mary Lazarus in town [the West End] first. And I thought that would be fun and I absolutely loved it!” Lesley laughed. “They are both lovely parts, but Mother Superior is far more serious. Mary Lazarus is more fun in a way because you get to join in all the numbers. But then Mother Superior has two lovely numbers of her own, so I get a kick out of both!”
And according to Lesley, an actress who has wanted to be an actress since the age of four and fulfilled that from her first appearance on stage at seven, there is one big similarity between Mother Superior and Dorien.
“They are completely the opposite to each other BUT – you can find things that are quite similar in both of them – it’s their passion for whatever they do.
“Dorien took her glamour very seriously, she took her young men very seriously. She took her vision of her superiority to her neighbours very seriously!” Lesley laughs.
“And Mother Superior takes her religion very seriously, she doesn’t want anything coming into the convent and disturbing it.
“But that’s the wonderful thing about my business, every role is different and you just find what makes that character tick.”
The famous sitcom writing duo Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran – who also wrote classic TV series Shine On Harvey Moon, The New Statesman, Goodnight Sweetheart and Love Hurts – found their inspiration for Dorien from Lesley herself.
“They came to see me in a play at the West End. They thought ‘Oh my goodness, that could be the third character we could have with Linda [Robson] and Pauline [Quirke]!’ So they wrote Dorien and I read the two episodes of Birds Of A Feather they had written and that sort of changed my career really , that character.
“We did over 130 episodes and at its peak 23 million watched and that opened doors all the way to characters like Mother Superior!”
Lesley explained: “It opened the door that led to people knowing who you were because so many times when you go out on tour, people go ‘Oh I know them, I love them, I’d love to go and see their work!’ and ‘I know them from Birds Of A Feather!’.
“So it does make a huge difference to your career to be able to do something like Birds Of A Feather.
“When we first opened, we played to 20 million people. You just don’t get those audiences now because everybody has so many TV channels.
“In 1999 when we first started, I don’t know how many channels there were, but there certainly weren’t the streaming channels – Netflix, The Disney Channel, Britbox – all of that, of course.
“Now people have much more choice. But then, if you had a successful programme, it shot up into the stratosphere which is what happened with Birds.”
But as well as making Lesley and her co-stars household names, it was ground-breaking.
Lesley said: “I am very proud of it because it was the first sitcom that had three female leads in it, I think the only similar one was The Liver Birds – we’re here in Liverpool at the moment so it’s in my mind, that was the first one that had two female leads.
“It was a different time, so in 1989 to have three leads who were women was very important.
“Most sitcoms would be men with maybe one young woman and old woman and one middle-aged woman and the rest would be men and that was it!
“Now women have a fair crack of the whip.
“So I’m very proud of Birds and it was on for many, many years and changed all our lives. So I was very happy to do that.”
There are possibly people in the crowd who have seen the show and thought ‘That’s for me! That’s what I’m going to do! That is one of the reasons I love pantomime as well. For panto, yo come with your parents, your grandparents, and one of the first shows went to see had Anton Dolin in it, a famous ballet person at the time, When you go and see something like that and see magic on the stage, it can change everything in your life, it really can.
"Theatre can change people’s lives and the letters I have had over the years …
"When I was in Calendar Girls The Musical, I had a wonderful letter some time ago where someone wrote ‘I lost my husband six months ago. You don’t realise until you come to see the show, I realised there is life waiting out there for me!'
"Every time Christmas came around, she would send me a present. But you realise theatre has done so much for that person, to be able to go out and share an experience like that and get their life back. So yes. So I think theatre can change people’s lives – and I love it."
Taking part in the recent BBC TV series Pilgrimage, Lesley and some of those taking part, bumped into the Pope who told her‘You don’t look your age!’."
Though Lesley is 77, she looks younger and her mum lived until she was 103?
"I’ve got the energy of a 50-year-old, really," Lesley said. "I love walking and exercising and keeping my mind agile. We dance in the show, and it keeps you active, keeps your mind agile and keeps you buzzing too!
"I remember my mum played tennis and she did yoga every morning to keep herself flexible and agile.
"She was 99 when things started to change slightly for her. I think – touch wood – I take after her, that’s why I only think ‘I might slow down at some point’.
"But I don’t think I’ll ever retire because being this fit keeps me alive!"
Lesley Joseph is in Sister Act all this week at Eden Court.
