Speaking to the Radio Times Podcast, the actor, writer and director looks back on her career so far \u2013 and forward to what’s next. <\/p>
There seems to be very little that Dolly Wells can\u2019t do. She\u2019s played a vampire-hunting nun in Steven Moffat\u2019s Dracula, a woman locked in a basement with David Tennant in Inside Man<\/a> and an incompetent assistant in Sky comedy Doll & Em (co-written with her best friend, actor Emily Mortimer).<\/p>\n Now she has turned her hand to directing with BBC Three\u2019s A Good Girl\u2019s Guide to Murder<\/a>. Based on the bestselling book of the same name, it follows precocious teenager Pip (Emma Myers), who decides to investigate the unsolved murder of an older girl from her school.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was Emily who told me about the series,\u201d the 52-year-old explains over videocall from her home in Brooklyn. \u201cIt\u2019s made by the company that produced The Pursuit of Love \u2013 which she worked on. I remember her saying, \u2018They\u2019re looking for someone really interesting and I thought you should do it\u2019. I said, \u2018They\u2019re not going to want me!\u2019 It\u2019s hilarious. She\u2019s like a proud mum. She always thinks everybody would want me to do everything and they\u2019d be crazy not to.\u201d<\/p>\n But, it was indeed Wells whom they wanted and went with. It\u2019s shot beautifully \u2013 with a hint of Sex Education<\/a>. We\u2019re in a twee British town, with a slightly Americanised high school and teenagers getting up to more than you\u2019d like to think.<\/p>\n Wells was raised just off London\u2019s Kensington High Street, the youngest of six siblings. She was christened Dorothy Gatacre, but was always Dolly.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a horrible memory, from when I started school, of the headmistress holding me in her arms on stage in front of the whole school, saying this girl likes to be called \u2018Dolly\u2019 like it was a bad thing! She said, \u2018We\u2019re not going to allow that. She\u2019s going to be called Dorothy\u2019. I had to stay behind after class and learn how to write Dorothy, not Dolly.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to the full Radio Times Podcast<\/strong> with Dolly Wells here:<\/em><\/p>\n