Lady Button may never have existed! <\/p>
Ghosts co-creator and star Martha Howe-Douglas has revealed that she almost played the role of Alison in the BBC sitcom, which would have deprived the world of uptight Edwardian landowner Lady Fanny Button.<\/p>\n
The actor spoke exclusively to RadioTimes.com<\/a> around the launch of the official companion book Ghosts: The Button House Archives<\/a>, which expands the world of the show with hilarious in-universe historical documents.<\/p>\n Ghosts happens to be winding down on the exact date (Friday 10th November) that the creative team\u2019s previous show, Yonderland, reaches its 10th anniversary, so we asked Howe-Douglas about transitioning between the two very distinct projects.<\/p>\n She revealed that she almost slipped into the Alison role on Ghosts<\/a> \u2013 the comedic woman ultimately played by Charlotte Ritchie \u2013 as she had become used to performing a similar character on Yonderland.<\/p> \u201cFor me, personally, the transition from Yonderland to Ghosts was that I got back into playing \u2018character\u2019 because, obviously, in Yonderland I was the sort of Alison character,\u201d began Howe-Douglas.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd, because we did three years of that, that kind of felt like my natural\u2026 that\u2019s where I felt most at home at that point, which is crazy because we started on Horrible Histories, where we were playing all these mad characters.\u201d<\/p>\n She continued: \u201cSo when we were doing Ghosts and we were writing it, I was thinking, \u2018Should I just be the Alison character?\u2019 And the guys were like, \u2018No, you have to be a character, you have to come back and play with us\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause when I was the Alison character [in Yonderland], Debbie, I sort of lost that sense\u2026 they were all playing the mad characters. Although I played Imperatrix, she wasn\u2019t particularly zany.\u201d<\/p>\n For context, Yonderland followed Debbie, a stay-at-home mother from Birmingham, who is shocked to learn she is the saviour of the titular fantasy-inspired realm, which is inhabited by all manner of larger-than-life characters.<\/p>\n Her arch-nemesis soon became Imperatrix, a powerful and sinister figure tied to Debbie\u2019s own origins \u2013 hence why Howe-Douglas played both roles.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n The comic concluded: \u201cI think I was feeling a bit like, \u2018can I even do that again?\u2019 Because I\u2019d been out of that for so long, just playing a sort of straight woman \u2013 and then I played Fanny, and we all know how that ended up!<\/p>\n \u201cRidiculously extreme, but so much fun. I\u2019m so glad that they said that to me because maybe I\u2019d lost a bit of confidence about doing a \u2018character\u2019 again.\u201d<\/p>\n Ghosts seasons 1-5 are available to stream on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Comedy<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what\u2019s on.<\/strong><\/p>\n Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only \u00a310 \u2013\u00a0<\/b>subscribe now<\/a><\/b>\u00a0and celebrate the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who with a special issue of Radio Times. <\/b>For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to\u00a0<\/b>The Radio Times Podcast<\/a><\/b>.<\/b><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Lady Button may never have existed! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":39376,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2023\/11\/ghosts-star-martha-howe-douglas-reveals-she-almost-played-alison.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Lady Button may never have existed!","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/39375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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