Interview with Shirley Henderson (Annie)

Tell us a little bit about Annie Campbell…

She's very much changing. She has an illness and she's starting to see things in a different way, starting to have memories of things that she's maybe shut away, as well as hallucinations – things that are real and things that aren’t. There’s another Annie we get to see that was from ‘before’ and we get an insight into her past. She was the same, but there are different sides to her; she's got a real journey in this series. 

Who is Annie at Summerwater with?

She's with her husband David - played by Dougray Scott - and he's trying to deal with the new Annie, plus the memory of the old one as well. He's juggling a lot, but this is a place they go to often and they’ve been doing it for a long time. It used to be a fun place; there were lots of things happening there. Fun, dancing, hanging out, drinking, meeting people. It's gradually faded as time's gone on - new people are coming. Some people we know, and some people we don't know. A lot of younger people, and we're classed as the older ones. The ones with the history here, more history than anybody else and little bits of that come out with Annie and David throughout the series. 

How would you describe the Summerwater world?

It's like a breeze that's coming around you and a memory of something that you can't quite figure out what it is. It's a shiver, a fear of something but you don’t know what - a clawing feeling from the past and you can't tell if it's discomfort or if it's a welcoming thing. The stories for different people come out in different ways. Some things are answered; some things are never answered. It's an uncomfortable place, but it's also a place that draws people because it is also comfortable. It allows you to be something other than what maybe you should be. It brings things out in people and it's full of life, but it's also quite dead. You feel something bad has happened. But did something bad happen?

What sets Summerwater apart from other Scottish-set dramas? 

It’s like the wild, the woods and things. I like the idea of the log cabins and that we're all bunched together, but we're also living very different lives within that. It's stories within stories and an ensemble piece. There's no one person that's leading this. It dips in and out and people are watching each other. There's a lot of people watching in this, thinking they know what's going on across the road, but not quite knowing what's going on. They’re always glancing at each other.

Do you have any particular holiday memories?

Whenever I hear holidays, I immediately think of Butlins as that's where we used to go. Dodgems and the poke of chips at the end of the night. That's my comfort. The journey always felt like a ten-hour drive! But it was the biggest and most exciting journey. Before that, we used to go always up to Amoree. It's beautiful and we still go there.