I Was Falling Apart... and I Didn’T Tell Anyone
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October 15, 2017 MUSEUMS TELEVISION POP BOOKS TRISTRAM HUNT: WHAT BACK TO THE 1980S: ONE DIRECTION’S NIALL THE HIDDEN LIFE OF THE V&A MEANS TODAY STRANGER THINGS 2 IS THE ONE TO WATCH MUHAMMAD ALI I WAS FALLING APART... AND I DIDN’T TELL ANYONE. SHERIDAN SMITH REVEALS ALL CONTENTS 15.10.2017 ARTS ‘The joy of Ali was his personality, and 4 at the heart of it Cover story was playfulness’ Sheridan Smith had it all — then it very publicly went Books, page 30 awry. As the stage and TV star prepares her comeback, she reveals her pain to Dan Cairns 6 Interview IMAGES LEN TRIEVNOR/GETTY Tristram Hunt quit parliament to head the V&A. But there’s plenty more politics to face, BOOKS 34 he tells Bryan Appleyard The Sunday Times 30 Bestsellers 8 Lead review Art The first biography of Ali DIGITAL EXTRAS Thomas Ruff’s photographs since his death weighs in as never fail to intrigue, says a champion heavyweight Waldemar Januszczak Bulletins 32 For the arts week ahead, and 12 Medicine recent highlights, sign up for Dance Niall Horan is 20 Surgery was “a filthy business our Culture Bulletin. For a As anniversary celebrations the latest member Critical list fraught with hidden dangers ” weekly digest of literary news, loom, ballet’s leading lights Our pick of the arts this week until Joseph Lister pioneered reviews and opinion, there’s salute Kenneth MacMillan of One Direction hygiene and antiseptics the Books Bulletin. Both can to go solo — and be found at thesundaytimes. 24 co.uk/bulletins 14 he is storming On record 36 Film The latest essential releases Poetry The Meyerowitz Stories return America, Lisa Instagram smash: Rupi Kaur Dustin Hoffman to his Jewish Verrico discovers is the world’s bestselling poet, Instagram roots. By Tom Shone TV & RADIO but is she any good? Follow us for the best visuals Pop, page 18 from the world of the arts — 16 41 40 @sundaytimesculture Television TV & Radio Fiction Just one more hit: Louis Wise The best guide to the week’s Tom Hanks heads our Cover Sheridan Smith. on telly’s addiction to drugs programmes short-story roundup Photograph by Alice Hawkins COVER STORY A public meltdown led to funny girl Sheridan Smith taking a break from showbiz. BACKShe returns with a new album ON — and the courage TRACK to speak out, she tells Dan Cairns n the garden of her local gastropub course. It was Smith’s reaction to the It was a pedestal that Smith — who Now in recovery, Smith spent a long in north London, Sheridan Smith posts that rang alarm bells. “ 2 words,” says she knows that when some people time self-medicating, and even longer is confronting her past. We have she tweeted. “F*** off ! Now slag me off hear her name, the main thing they staying silent about her troubles. repaired here for a ciggy. “My last papers! U have no idea what my dad will think about is “all the break-ups She didn’t feel she had the right to Ivice,” the 36-year-old confesses. means to me. F***. Off !” Another post and heartache and disastrous relation- speak up, she says. “All I could imagine “Everything else has gone. This read: “ Sat behind your computer u ships I’ve had” — was already being was people thinking , ‘You should be was a regular haunt of mine,” she little geek ... Come say your shit to my measured up for, long before the grateful. Get over yourself.’ But when continues. “Back in my drinking days.” face & let’s see what happens.” calamities of last year. The Bafta , two you have that degree of anxiety, you She says this in a tone of relief rather She has never been drunk on stage, Olivier awards, an OBE , acclaim for can’t just pull yourself together and you than regret, over a coff ee and some still Smith says. Ever. It was, if anything, playing another British icon in the can’t explain it. It just snowballs until water. Talking for the fi rst time about worse than that. “My life was falling television drama Cilla, gamely shaving it’s out of control. I didn’t want to talk the events of last year, when the wheels apart. And I didn’t tell anyone.” off her hair to play a woman with ter- about it at the time, because I just came spinning off , her father was Depression and anxiety weren’t sudden minal cancer in The C Word, wowing thought that’s exactly what people diagnosed with the cancer that would unwelcome guests, she admits. They’d us with her Hedda Gabler, confi rming would say — ‘What have you got to be eventually cost him his life, and Smith, been calling on her for years. And the her genius for musical theatre in Funny upset about?’ And I was totally grateful, her mind unravelling, took a two- worst trick they play, she stresses, is Girl and Legally Blonde — was there of course I was. month break from the West End pro- that perspective goes straight out of anything the girl couldn’t do? Well, yes, “But at the same time, I was totally duction of the musical Funny Girl, the the window. as it happens, there was. terrifi ed that I was going to come act ress spends much of our encounter “So you think , ‘That’s it, this is me. Smith says she had watched the suc- unstuck, that I couldn’t hold these either laughing or in tears. Often both. I’m unlovable, I’m inauthentic.’ And cess almost as if she w ere a detached feelings of insecurity in much longer There is a lot at stake. Her career, you can’t see that it will change. You observer, but hadn’t caught up with it, without it coming to a head. Which it obviously. Far more important, though, have to learn to shut the brain off , the made sense of it. “I wasn’t aligned with did last year. My dad getting cancer her mental wellbeing. Things got dark, voices, but I couldn’t. It was like a it at all. I never used to get that nervous triggered it , but it had been a long very dark, she says, describing what gang of cheerleaders, going , ‘You’re when I was younger. I was just wide- time coming. Things have been weird sounds very much like a breakdown. rubbish. Rubbish!’ Or a Greek chorus eyed, from up north, enjoying it all, a for years.” Now, as she re-enters the fray, with screaming, ‘You’re shit.’” jobbing actor doing Two Pints [of Lager Smith is relatively unusual at her her fi rst album set for releas e and an Who ’d be a cherished national and a Packet of Crisps], having a laugh. level in that she didn’t train for the job. ITV special due to be broadcast next fi gure, especially a female one? We It was Legally Blonde that changed A stint in the National Youth Music month, Smith is all too aware that have a long and inglorious tradition of every thing — it was the Theatre gave her an entrée that quickly she can’t aff ord to make the same raising them up, then stereotyping or fi rst time I’d been the led to professional work, when a mistakes again. Having worked pretty viciously pillorying them : Corrie’s Pat lead in a musical, and producer saw an NYMT production of much non-stop since she came down to Phoenix (tragically unlucky in love); it did incredibly well. Bugsy Malone at the Edinburgh Festival London from Lincolnshire as a 16-year- Barbara Windsor (ditto; friendship And from that Trevor and took it to London. old, the actor has been forced to with the Krays); Helen Mirren Nunn gets in touch, “At that point, I was working in a acknowledge that there is more to life (didn’t have children); Amy and the next thing I’m in burger van in Doncaster,” Smith recalls, than Baftas (she has one ), acclaim and Winehouse (what a voice, but a play with Sienna Miller, “and I was only going to move to regular employment. It’s a lesson she the drugs ; plus, died young). Dustin Hoff man sees it London for three months . I had no learnt in the cruellest possible way. and puts me in his fi lm. plans for anything after that. Then an When, in March 2016, Smith missed Breezy does it “ Then things started agent saw Bugsy Malone and took me a performance of Funny Girl following Sheridan Smith to go to another level, on. And that all sort of made the deci- her father’s diagnosis, social media as Fanny which I wasn’t... Sud- sion for me. I couldn’t have aff orded to pounced. It was a similar story the next Brice in denly I started suf- go the drama-school route. It had never month, when a performance of the Funny Girl fering from anxiety. crossed my mind. The agent got me show was abandoned after 15 minutes, I’m there on the set an audition for Into the Woods at the the producers citing “technical diffi - [of Quartet] with Donmar, which I got. And Damian culties”. Audience members present Dustin Hoff man, Lewis was my wolf. And I’ve been alleged that the actor had been slurring Maggie Smith and Michael down here ever since.” her words, the implication being Gambon, for God’s sake, and I Did she encounter snobbery as a that she was drunk.