Kitchen sink drama

With half her hair in curlers, a padded jacket over a drab Fifties dress and a pair of sheepskin boots that owe more to comfort than style, she’s not exactly the picture of glamour.

This is one of Britain’s hottest young actresses, who won armfuls of glittering awards for her role as iconic Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, but she couldn’t be happier playing a dowdy young housewife.

Billie stars in Kay Mellor’s new TV drama, A Passionate Woman. And, as Kay reveals, she practically walked over hot coals to get the role.

“To be honest I didn’t go out to get Billie, but she got hold of the script and was desperate for the part,” says Kay. “She came to Leeds for a meeting and said she’d go dark for the role and have dialect coaching. Initially there was resistance from me because she’s not a northerner, but when I saw how much trouble she’d gone to, I thought ‘what kind of person is this?’. She walked in the room, as nervous as any actress. She was shaking. I said, ‘Are you okay?’ and she said ‘I really want this part.’ “I was really moved by Billie’s audition; she blew me away. There wasn’t a trace of a southern accent. Earlier today we shot a scene where she was supposed to move really quickly, but she stopped to carefully get some coal. She said, ‘That’s what Betty would do, she needs coal to heat the baby.’ She really knows the character. You can tell why she’s where she is as an actress.”

Kay wrote A Passionate Woman after her mother dropped a bombshell while doing the washing-up one day.

“She told me she’d had an affair with a Polish man before I was born, when she and my dad lived in a poorer area of Leeds,” says Kay. “The affair ended when her married lover was suddenly killed. She’d kept this secret for 30 years. It was extraordinary to hear her say she still loved this man. She turned to me and said, ‘You won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’.”

More than a decade later, Kay’s play, A Passionate Woman, was staged at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. The play, about a middle-aged woman looking back on a tragic affair, was based on her mother’s revelations.

“She saw it four times before she realised it was her story!” smiles Kay. “She was proud in the end. She was telling everyone, ‘that’s about me, you know’.”

Now A Passionate Woman has been made into a TV drama, written and co-directed by Kay. Starring Sue Johnston and Billie Piper, the two-part series has been filmed at locations including Bradford city centre, St Luke’s Hospital and King’s Hall, Ilkley.

Leeds-born screenwriter Kay makes a point of using regional locations. One of her most memorable TV dramas, Band Of Gold, about prostitutes in Bradford, was filmed in the city; Playing the Field, about a women’s football team, was partly shot at Bradford City Football Club; and The Chase, a family drama set in a vets’ practice, was filmed in Otley.

“Bradford still has great vistas and the old cobbled streets we wanted for A Passionate Woman, which is essentially a period drama,” says Kay. “St Luke’s Hospital and the Ilkley Winter Gardens were the kind of buildings we wanted.

“Filming in Leeds was more challenging because the views have changed so much, with lots of modern structures. Finding locations for the 1950s was particularly hard.

“Most of my work is contemporary but with this drama it was important to get the feel of another era. We filmed some of it not far from where it really happened. The exterior of the tenement block was filmed at Hyde Park in Leeds.”

The drama begins in 1985 when Betty Stephenson, played by Sue Johnston, hides in her attic on her son’s wedding day, reflecting on her past. The action flashes back to the 1950s when the younger Betty (Billie) embarks on an affair with a charismatic Polish neighbour.

“Ten years after my mum told me about her affair, my younger brother was getting married. I looked at mum and there was the same pain on her face,” says Kay. “I knew these two periods of her life were intrinsically linked. She had an amazing connection with my brother and was heartbroken that he was getting married. She felt she had nothing to live for.

“My parents divorced when I was young. When I asked mum why she married my dad, she’d say ‘because he was a good dancer’. That was how she was – she never mentioned love. Yet here she was, on her son’s wedding day, with this affair still haunting her. I felt compelled to write about it.”

Kay’s play transferred to the West End and New York, attracting the attention of film companies.

“Nobody would give me a guarantee that it wouldn’t be written by anyone else. It was something so personal to me – can you imagine if someone else took it on?” says Kay. “It was very important that it was set in Yorkshire. I feared it would become Cher or Meryl Streep on a rooftop in Detroit. I’m sure they’re fabulous, but they’re not Betty. No amount of money would make me change my mind.

“Now, with the BBC and Screen Yorkshire’s support, it’s the project I want it to be. Three years ago, mum died. Re-visiting this is like having her back with me.”

I meet Kay on the set of A Passionate Woman. She points out a rooftop where Betty sits, contemplating her life. “That’s where Sue Johnston had to sit for days, shooting the scene,” says Kay. “It was uncanny how much Sue became like my mum; she had the same mannerisms and way of speaking. I didn’t tell her because I thought it would unnerve her. Huge elements of the drama are taken from real life; the scene where Betty is washing-up and starts talking about her affair is almost word-for-word what mum told me.”

Kay shows me tenement rooms built for the set by Skipton art designer Grant Montgomery. “He did a fantastic job,” she says. Everything is authentic, right down to willow pattern tea cups, the knitting pattern lying on an armchair and the wooden play pen in the middle of the room. A bird cage sits in the corner.

“There’s a caged bird metaphor running throughout the drama,” says Kay. “It’s about a woman who can’t escape her life, and goes from passion to the depths of despair. Betty lives here with her husband and baby. It’s where she meets Craze, the Polish man living downstairs. She sends signals to him on the radiogram, playing a particular record, then meeting him in the hallway.

“I lived in a tenement like this as a baby. Mum said condensation ran down the walls through holes in the ceiling. Life was about keeping warm and dry.”

The house where Betty later lives with husband Donald, played by Alun Armstrong (and his son, Joe, in the Fifties scenes) is an impressive set, with a bay window overlooking a suburban street scene.

“The fire and oven really work – you can cook a meal on it,” says Kay. “This is the lounge, where Betty learns her son is getting married and moving to Australia.”

The drama – to be broadcast later this year on BBC1, followed by an international cinema release – stars several Bradford actors, including Andrew Lee Potts, John Duttine, Anthony Lewis and Rachel Leskovac.

Regional film agency Screen Yorkshire invested £250,000 in the production, made by Leeds-based Rollem Productions, and helped secure crew and locations.

“What Screen Yorkshire is doing is wonderful,” says Kay, who makes a point of using local locations and actors for her dramas. “This region is my first port of call for actors. It’s important to me. I don’t see the point of going to London, I’m not inspired by anything there, other than the theatre.

“My inspiration comes from family, friends and just listening to people. I always say if you set off from the top of Leeds Market and you haven’t got a story by the time you reach the bottom, you’re not a writer.

“These are scary times for this industry. You only have to look at the cuts at Yorkshire Television to see that. All I can do is try and keep making dramas up here.”

I watch a scene being shot, several times, in the murky tenement rooms. Billie takes off her boots and slips on some Fifties heels, ready for the cry of “Action!”.

She walks into the room, closing the door behind her.

What happens behind that closed door? Tune in to A Passionate Woman later this year to find out…