Washing Up, Zoom Reads and a Tea Towel Dialect Coach: My Very Un-Glamorous Prep for the Role of a Lifetime

There's a certain type of acting prep the public imagines: sunlit rehearsal rooms, a costume rail with your name on it, a dialect coach sipping espresso while you perfect your vowels. What I actually had was a one-bed in South East London, a washing machine that sounds like a helicopter, and a deadline.

When I landed the biggest role of my career so far, the country was in one of those lovely in-between phases where nothing quite works. Studios were closed, coaches were booked solid, and my 'rehearsal space' was the three feet of carpet between the sofa and the telly. So I got creative. And honestly? Some of these hacks have permanently changed how I prepare. Consider this my gift to every actor currently learning lines in a shared kitchen while their flatmate microwaves fish.

The Zoom Table Read: Cheaper Than a Coach, More Chaotic Than You'd Think

First thing I did was rope five mates — all actors, all skint — into a weekly Zoom read. I bought the biscuits (posted them, obviously) and we'd run scenes every Sunday evening.

Was it professional? Absolutely not. One mate's wifi dropped every time his character had an emotional beat. Another insisted on doing the whole thing in a novelty hat. But here's the thing: hearing your lines bounce off real people, even chaotic people, teaches you more than weeks of muttering into a mirror. You learn where the laughs land, where the silences sit, and crucially, where you're over-acting like you're in a pantomime.

Tip: If you can't afford a coach, build a fake ensemble. Return the favour when their big break comes. It's the acting equivalent of a lending library.

Line Learning By Washing Up (Yes, Really)

My memory is terrible unless my hands are busy. So I taped my sides to the cupboard above the sink and learned entire scenes while attacking a frying pan.

There's actual science-adjacent logic here — movement anchors words. I now have lines burned into my brain that I associate with burnt-on chilli sauce, but I'll take it. Other tricks from my flat-bound toolkit:

• The tea towel method: wrote cue lines on a tea towel, hung it on the oven door. Glanced at it every time I made a brew. By week two I'd learned a scene's worth of dialogue through sheer passive exposure.
• Voice notes on the bus: recorded the other characters' lines with gaps for mine, played them back on the Number 63 like the world's saddest podcast.
• Accent in the shower: my dialect work happened almost entirely in the bathroom, because the echo makes you sound fancier and nobody can see your mouth doing something unnatural.

Building a Character Without a Costume Department

Normally a designer hands you a character's world on a hanger. This time I had to reverse-engineer it. I found one item — a scruffy green scarf from a charity shop in Peckham — that I decided my character would own. I wore it around the flat. It's remarkable how much a character's posture changes when they're wearing something they'd actually choose.

I also wrote her a diary. Three pages of her voice, her gripes, her opinions on Marmite. Total wanky actor behaviour? Possibly. Useful? Enormously.

The Day Before Shoot, In a Nutshell

Night before filming started, I sat in my kitchen with a cold cup of tea and thought: right, I've done everything I can. The lines were in. The accent held up when I ordered a takeaway in it (the man on the phone said 'lovely' in a way I've chosen to take as a compliment).

Here's what I'd tell anyone prepping from home: the lack of resources forces you back to the actual work — the words, the other person, the truth of a scene. No costume rail was ever going to do that for me.

Also, buy a decent tea towel. You'll thank me later.