Susie Blake won’t appear in the Mrs. Brown’s Boys Christmas special this year.
The actress plays the uptight Hillary Nicholson who is the constant thorn in the side of Mrs. Brown as Maria Brown’s mother.
This year the former Coronation Street star will be too busy touring with new play Murder in the Dark, and she will be on stage in Dublin the week Mrs. Brown is filming in BBC Glasgow.
Read more: Where’s Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ Gary Hollywood now? Family tragedy, welcoming baby and speaking out
Susie told RSVP Live: “They are very welcoming and there are lots of hugs all around. It is a very special and precious job to me and I feel so privileged to be part of it.
“Being part of that big family is wonderful. I was hoping to do the Christmas shows as well, but I won’t be in them.
“I think they are filming the scenes while I am here at The Gaiety in Dublin. I will watch with bated breath to see what he does and I hope he doesn’t recast me.”
Susie loves taking on the role of Hillary, who is always the “baddie” of the BBC show.
She said: “Given my Irish background I had to make it very clear to Brendan O’Carroll that he always makes the baddies English. He always does it. He just gave me an old fashioned look that suggested, yes the English are baddies [laughs]”
(Image: Pamela Raith)
Could her character be killed off? She joked: “It would have to be a dream so I could come back.”
Susie praised Mrs. Brown’s Boys star and creator Brendan O’Carroll and she has one rule to obey on set, she cannot laugh.
She said: “He is very gentle with me, and I think that is why I am so fond of him. He doesn’t ever do anything less than encourage me, praise me and make life easy for me.
“The rest of the cast are allowed to laugh, but he knows I can’t laugh.
“If Hilary let the mask slip it wouldn’t work with the cast. He encourages me to go quite far. It can be very hard to keep that sense of sobriety when everyone else is pranking each other around you.”
Susie is set to take to the stage in The Gaiety Theatre alongside former Casualty and Strictly Come Dancing star Tom Chambers for Murder in the Dark.
She said: “The Gaiety is an absolutely magical theatre. I was here about five years ago playing Miss Marple and I have been dying to get back.
“It is always lovely to be in Dublin, I have relations here in Dublin so I sometimes visit them.”
A car crash on a lonely road brings famous but troubled singer Danny Sierra and his extended family to an isolated holiday cottage in rural England. From the moment they arrive, a sequence of inexplicable events begins to occur… and then the lights go out.
Susie dished: “I play an ambiguous character, I wouldn’t say a ‘baddie’ as such, but certainly ambiguous.
It is a horror thriller. There are ghosts and things that go bump in the night, but also a lot of humour, which we hadn’t realised when we were rehearsing.
“The show is quite complicated on a technical level and there are a lot of conversations. It is a jigsaw puzzle that all fits together. The audience makes their feelings clear with their gaps and nervous laughter and that makes it clear to us on stage what we need to give them.”
Murder in the Dark, directed by Philip Franks, opens at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre from 10 -14 October 2023.
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