Alison Steadman plays Jenny Evans. She admits she felt choked with emotion when she read the script.
“From my character’s point of view, some of the scenes were very painful. Even at the first reading I was quite choked and moved by it, because you do just feel for people who are in this awful situation.
“Like all good dramas there are amusing bits in Who Gets the Dog? The comedy comes from the lawyers and their antics.
“Jenny suddenly finds herself in the offices of very high-powered lawyers in a frighteningly huge glass office building. That would be quite intimidating to anybody. She’s reached a crisis point in her life, and all around her are these young, cool, confident lawyers who couldn’t give a monkey’s about her feelings because they’re just looking for the dollar signs in a divorce case.”
Alison plays Jenny, a hard-working mother and dedicated midwife at a local hospital.
“The great thing about what Guy Hibbert has written is that it is a piece about real people – people and situations who viewers will be able to identify with.
“Jenny is a very hard-working and committed kind of person, so when these awful things happen to her she is so vulnerable, and it is a terrific blow to her when she finds out that her husband wants a divorce.
“But at the same time she is not whiter than white. She is a totally believable character because she has made mistakes in her marriage herself. She is also guilty of having had an affair. So it’s very real and that is what attracted me.
“You can see absolutely how these two very normal, nice, sincere, hard-working people suddenly get swept up in this awful kind of marriage difficulty and the way other people take advantage of that situation and take advantage of their good nature.
“We all know that lawyers are there to get people into court and win cases. Not all, but some very young lawyers in big firms just want to make a lot of money and to succeed, and to succeed means winning the case for their client. Sometimes I think that leads them in the wrong direction.”
The family dog, Bounder, is the source of much heated debate in the divorce wrangle. Alison was delighted to be working with the docile dog who did everything she was asked.
“Bounder was just adorable. I love dogs. I used to have a dog which looked very similar to Bounder. My dog was 15 and a half, and he died a couple of years ago. So I loved working with Bounder - she was gorgeous.
“When we did the publicity shoot with her, they wanted her to sit on a cushion on a box behind us. But she wouldn’t stay. I realised it was because she didn’t feel stable on the cushion. The cushion was wobbly and she felt she was falling off all the time. She couldn’t stay even if she wanted to, so we found her something else to stand on and she was as good as gold.
Alison says that despite the painful and poignant moments, Who Gets the Dog? is a feel-good film.
“Without giving too much away, the film does have a happy ending for the characters, so that’s great. That’s not to say all their problems are solved, but they get another chance.”
