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Sue Johnston is the type of actress who doesn’t usually get to see herself on screen, but for Ann Droid she did the opposite. The new sitcom is Diane Morgan and Sarah Kendall The 82-year-old is a recent widow whose son hires a charming robot named Linda (played with a twist by Morgan himself) to help him out. The results are initially false: Linda is a teenager – and therefore cheap – who has no sense of new trends and tries to entertain people by shooting them Cotton Eye Joe. However, the two soon become estranged. Johnston describes the play as “rich with humor and romance”. After watching it again, he found that “I forgot it was me – I don’t do this very often and I just enjoy it.”
Ann Droid is worth singing for its stories alone – they’re funny and heartwarming – but it’s clear that Johnston’s passion comes from somewhere else, too. “I’m so proud of Diane and I just want this to work he,” he says with emotion.” The pair met on the set of the Sky sitcom Rovers before Morgan made it big with Philomena Cunk and Motherland and kept in touch. We are all crazy about our dogs; we just made a deal.” He was very happy to meet again. “There’s a lot about Diane that reminds me of Caroline Aherne. They have a northern, straight-faced sense of humor. And they are wise.”
The down-to-earth humor, good manners and warmth that Johnston brought The Royle familyAherne’s art, both present and accurate in Ann Droid, too: I cried once in every episode. “There was only one Sue Johnston I wanted for the role,” says Morgan (hard evidence: she called her Sue). He’s obviously good at comedy but he’s also very sensitive to emotional issues. He is also very friendly, which helps. He is actually a perfect person.”
Playing Sue didn’t require a huge leap for Johnston. “There’s a lot of self-identity. Except I never had a husband – I had a husband and he died 100 years ago.” (She divorced the director David Pamenter, with whom she has a son.) Sue comes to appreciate Linda’s friendship, and Johnston very “realized loneliness. We first met Sue in the hospital after she fell; Johnston was with her last year. “Since then my son wants me to move near him, but I have no right to do anything.
Johnston doesn’t look like someone who is struggling to cope. Well-groomed and stylish in an emerald green Issey Miyake (a devoted Liverpool fan, he also wears a 97 pin in memory of those affected by the Hillsborough tragedy), the actor seems to be constantly working. Johnston entered the public consciousness as a troubled matriarch – first as Sheila Grant in Brookside, then Barbara in The Royle Family – before starring as psychiatrist Grace Foley in popular police dramas. Raising the Dead for 11 years. However, more recently, he has appeared in a number of popular films about the elderly, including Ben Wheatley’s Brexit comedy. Generation Zhow he played a retiree turned zombie, and True loveabout a group of old friends who have decided to help each other die.
Does he still have a lot of energy? “No,” he says bluntly, then laughs. When I’m at work and I feel good, I get up at 5 and go, but when I’m not working, I have a problem. The roles she was recently given must have been hard to resist – even more so than the kind grandmothers of old. Why are there so many animalistic, disgusting parts of actresses from the 70’s and 80’s these days? “I think it depends on the generation we were in,” says Johnston, who sees a transition from the 1960s to today’s popular culture. “It was almost a revolution in that we left the traditions that our parents grew up in. We were the ones who got little skirts and loud music and fought for a lot of things.”
Growing up nearby, Johnston spent some years at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, working for Beatles boss Brian Epstein (he was his assistant manager) and becoming close friends with Paul McCartney. We speak a few weeks after the latter released their critically acclaimed 20th studio album – yet more evidence that the band that left the mainstream is not being followed in the same way as their predecessors. “I saw Joan Collins being interviewed last night, she’s in her 90s and she’s the lead in her own movie,” marvels Johnston. “People don’t ignore the past.”
In TV terms, Johnston is right up there with the greats, but I think it would be scientifically impossible for him not to be a luvvie. Instead of working hard on his work, he describes the approach of work with “fear and fear. You can say that this lack of self-interest comes from his work; he was 38 years old when he became famous in Brookside in 1982. It was “surprising – suddenly I became famous. I didn’t want to be!” At that time he had been working as an actor for many years, including 11 years in theater and education. The experience of bringing plays to school children may also be why he is so convincing. “Kids see you—and they can say! That’s what makes a good play, right?”
In lesser hands, Ann Droid’s arc would have been a tough sell. Set several years in the future, it sees the dire predictions of AI come true: robots are destroying the job market, and Sue’s son Michael (Morgan’s Motherland co-star Paul Ready) is eventually replaced by machines. Yet he is so lazy, selfish and useless that it is hard to sympathize with him. This is a world where robots are loyal and selfless, while humans (Sue aside) are crushing disappointments.
Did filming Ann Droid make Johnston see our technology-driven future more clearly? He recently saw a video of robots running a race (“They moved exactly like Diane did!”) and found himself watching “with more love than I ever would have done before”. However, he is far from an AI representative. “I feel 50/50 about it. There is a danger that it could fall into the wrong hands because there are so many wrong hands at the moment.”
When he started, “you just kiss someone or hit someone, no one cares”. For one scene in Brookside, her on-screen husband Ricky Tomlinson (who also played the other half in The Royle Family) had to punch her in the face; when their characters fought they “just held each other”, he remembers with a shrug. “I think it’s better for people to be taken care of,” he explains quickly. “I’m not saying you should go back to fighting each other!”
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Honestly, those days are full of precious memories. In the middle they take The Royle familythe actors “didn’t leave the seats”. Instead of going to the trailers and the dressing rooms they are “joking and laughing – the crew”. Johnston describes himself as a “straight guy” and considered it a “privilege” to watch his teammates play around. “Ricky is a real winner, so are Craig (Cash) and Caroline.” On set they had a “nonsense corner”, where they had to stand if they laughed during a take or forgot their lines. In the end, the carpenters built a real structure like a cell “and then the torches (electricians) put a blue light on top of it”.
He still mourns the death of Aherne, who died of cancer in 2016very much. They were very close: in a 2011 memoir, Johnston wrote that “Caroline calls me her second mother”. After Aherne died, “Ricky had these paintings of him from an artist friend of ours. Mine is under the stairs, so when I come down every morning, I go ‘Morning!’ However, he describes this habit with such unspeakable sadness that I was left speechless for a while. “It’s bad,” he shakes his head.
In the book, Johnson also writes about his fear that the phone won’t stop after work. She recently produced James Graham’s epic drama Sherwood (she plays “an old-school woman – a war hero”) and says she has nothing else in the pipeline. Are they worried that the job is over? “Every player does that. When you finish the job you say: ‘Great, I can’t wait to sit on the sofa with the dog.’ And then two weeks later you think: ‘Oh, that could be my last job.’” As strange as it sounds, I believe him. Well, of course I do: it’s impossible not to believe Sue Johnston. This is why they don’t stay on the couch for long.
Ann Droid starts on 17 July at 9.30pm on BBC One.
