Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

straight over.

‘Lis wants to do it, don’t you, Lis?’

‘Er, yeah, Paddy, whatever.’

From my point of view, the future of the Women’s Liberation Movement would not hinge on whether or not I fired this shot but the gun expert admitted, ‘Paddy really wants you to fire this gun because they think a girl can’t do it.’ How it looked to the outside world was obviously important to her. I really couldn’t care either way. All I wanted to know was whether she needed it played straight or for laughs. The answer was straight – although the end result was debatable.

I was put in this recess in the wall and handed the weapon. I’d never fired a gun before, never even held one. And this was a bloody big thing. I was shown how to hold it, how to look like I’m taking aim, and how to fire – all in the space of ten minutes. That was the extent of my training. Where were those interminable rehearsals when you needed them?

Then Paddy called, ‘Action!’ and I fired.

God – the noise! I swear I was deaf for three hours. Why the hell didn’t anyone warn me? Where were my earplugs? The gun let off this awesome explosion and of course it just reverberated off the tiny stone enclave. It was awful. As I put the gun down and walked off, I could see people talking to me but they looked like they were miming. I just went away and hid.

But it’s easy to forget Paddy did some impressive things as well. I was working out my response to seeing Sutekh (an evil Ostirian who planned to destroy all life in the Universe) when she just stopped me. ‘I’d like to show you something at Ealing,’ she said.

Oh God, I thought. What do I need to go over there for? But off we went.

When we got to the studios Paddy sat me down in front of a screen and played a series of pre-records she’d already filmed with Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh. At one point I totally leapt out of my seat – much to Paddy’s delight.

‘Right,’ she barked. ‘That’s the one we’ll use.’

For once I appreciated that attention to detail and I was grateful to her for seeking my input.

*   *   *

People often cite Pyramids as one of their favourites and I’ve lost count of the thirty-and forty-somethings that tell me they genuinely hid behind the sofa in 1975 when the Mummies came out. If they only knew what we’d gone through to get there! Not only did we all struggle to get on with Paddy, I know Robert had an ordeal pulling the scripts together in time. In the end I think he wrote so much new material to add to Lewis Greifer’s draft that they shared the pseudonymous credit ‘Stephen Harris’. The pressure really was on with this one.

Location work commenced at the end of April – a week after Revenge of the Cybermen debuted on BBC1 and with the Mary Whitehouse furore still raging. The location in question was Stargrove Manor in East End, Hampshire – one of several properties owned by Mick Jagger at the time. It sounds glam, but I can promise you that when you’ve stalked every inch of a building’s perimeter for take after take, it loses much of its celebrity allure.

At least I could wear normal clothes. I felt really sorry for the guys in the Mummy costumes. Something about the design wasn’t right – no one was comfortable inside them. I think it must have been torture stomping around the woods as they had to. At one point Tom had to put one on and that didn’t go well at all. I wasn’t there but I could hear his voice being raised because something wasn’t right. It wasn’t a happy day by any means.

*   *   *

There are a couple of continuity notes from Pyramids which I wonder if people have spotted. One minor detail still makes me smile. Sarah had a nice collection of jewellery but for once I’d decided to wear a piece of my own, this beautiful jade ring.

There’s a scene where I’m knocking like mad on the door. With Paddy in charge, I couldn’t just do it once, could I? My hand was soon killing me from the various retakes, so I found myself shifting my weight. By the time Paddy said I could stop I thought my hand was going to fall off. Honestly, it was throbbing in agony. As I rubbed some life back into my fingers, though, I noticed my ring was missing its jade stone. I scrabbled around on the floor for a few minutes but no joy. But I didn’t dare say anything to Paddy, of course. If they know it’s gone, I’ll be doing reshoots all day, I thought.

So if you watch Pyramids I think you can see my ring is there one minute and gone the next – then back again. It’s not a major catastrophe, but I know it would crucify Paddy to realise she’d missed this.

For us time was always such a rare commodity that you really had to let a lot of things go, even if they weren’t 100 per cent perfect. There’s a scene in Pyramids where an extra almost stumbles over – and we still kept it in. Generally we’d try to get away with the odd pickup shot if something wasn’t quite right. So, for example, in Pyramids, you might be walking down a corridor, knocking. Then you get the call: ‘Hang on, hang on, nobody move, hold it there!’ Depending on where they think it went awry, you can either go back and do the walk again, or do the knock again with that hand. Mostly we just tried to get through the whole scene with as few backward steps as possible.

Sometimes we’d have stop takes: ‘OK, we’re going to stop that scene halfway through so when you get to that point, just stop. We’ll alter some of the props then you carry on.’ Generally, though, we filmed entire scenes in one go.

In Pyramids, Sarah ends up trapped in a bell jar but they couldn’t put a bell jar over me. It would have been such a waste of manpower to lift it. The way around it was to put it on afterwards with CSO. So we began the scene, I reached my mark then the shout came: ‘Freeze!’ I couldn’t move or I’d have arms outside the jar. I don’t know how long I was playing statues but it seemed like forever. Then the First’s voice rang out, narrating the final version’s action: ‘Bell jar going on, bell jar over, not long now, bell jar in place – and you can move!’

When I finally broke my pose there was a cheer from the gantry because I hadn’t moved. That was nice.

It’s so different – so much better – these days. Time is still the one commodity you never have enough of, but so little is left to chance. On The Sarah Jane Adventures we film multiple angles of every