In a field of its own

Actress reaps rewards of radio drama

EMERALD O’HANRAHAN talks about the fun of being in Radio 4’s long-running soap The Archers and how she has dug deep into her faith to face real-life challenges

Interview by Emily Bright

FOR 70 years, listeners of Radio 4’s

drama The Archers have followed the peaks and troughs of life in the fictional farming village of Ambridge.

First broadcast on 1 January 1951 to spread farming tips on boosting productivity amid food shortages and rationing, The Archers became a staple for millions of listeners. It has now aired more than 19,000 episodes, making it the world’s longest-running serial drama. After having its schedule hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, the programme recently began broadcasting five episodes a week and hopes to return to its yield of six a week as soon as it is safe to do so.

Emerald O’Hanrahan plays Emma Grundy in the show, a mother and wife who works in the village’s tearooms. Having been an ‘avid listener’ herself, Emerald describes the programme as an amazing institution.

‘I love it,’ she says. ‘It feels informal and like a family once you’re inside it. Sometimes you’re having so much fun. You do your prep work at home with the scripts, and then – in normal times – you turn up for a read-through in the green room and then do each scene.

‘It’s easy to forget that there are millions of listeners all over the world. You do have to forget about that, because otherwise it would be cripplingly nerve-racking!’

Ploughing through plotlines for 70 years is no mean feat. Emerald shares her view on how the drama – billed as an everyday story of country folk – has been able to reap radio acclaim.

‘A lot of TV soaps have to be heightened, and something has to happen, with the whole denouement in a couple of months. Whereas The Archers can drop little seeds which can slow

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It’s easy to forget that there are millions of listeners

Emerald O’Hanrahan

burn. It’s very real.

‘The Archers is close to life, and the characters can feel like members of your family, members of your community.’

Emerald sees radio drama as being distinct from TV and film in that listeners can make pictures in their mind’s eye which are ‘far better than any budget could dream up’.

She adds that audiences can also stumble across ‘little masterpieces and one-off jewels’ in the Radio 3 and Radio 4 schedules that can ‘deal with taboos and things you wouldn’t necessarily think about or examine otherwise’. Emerald’s Ambridge adventure began in 2010, when she received a phone call. ‘One of the executive producers at The Archers said that they were looking to recast Emma Grundy,’ she recalls. ‘She sent me a couple of omnibus programmes on CD, and I listened to them non-stop for a couple of weeks.’

After an audition in London, Emerald landed the job, taking over the reins from Felicity Jones.

She sums up Emma Grundy as a woman with ‘a wild past’, but who is now very committed to her family, her kids and her village.

‘I love how she says everything as it is yet how emotionally intelligent she is, helping people when they’re low,’ Emerald says. ‘And I love how she strives for the best in all spheres.’

Emma has been through the mill over the years, navigating a love triangle, divorce, witnessing a traumatic accident and facing financial hardship.

Emerald remarks: ‘A standout storyline for me was when Emma and her husband Ed were saving for their own home for so long. Then it all fell apart in quite a spectacular way. Everything was crumbling, and Emma had a breakdown. I just thought that whole storyline was so beautifully written.

‘A few years before that, we had a food-bank storyline. Emma was dealing with tough decisions about whether she would eat or whether her children would. Again, that was handled so well. The writers and the runners of the show talked

to charities to make sure that everything was properly backed up and based in reality.’

Emerald is no stranger to real-life drama, having gone through a family illness and bereavement that would alter her perspective on life. Over the years, she has had an evolving relationship with her Christian faith. She grew up as a Catholic, but she drifted away from the church as a teenager.

‘I would always go into churches and light candles and go to Mass at big times of the year,’ she remembers. ‘But I didn’t feel connected to the community.’

So Emerald found a spiritual home elsewhere.

‘What kept my connection to faith and God was Quakerism. I used to go to Quaker meetings quite a lot, and I loved their gentle, non-pressuring, doing good things, welcoming people and being quiet.

‘That quietude allows the Holy Spirit to move you to do what needs to be done. And I loved that direct experience with the Spirit that I got there.’

A few years ago, she returned to her Catholic roots.

‘The catalyst for that was my dad getting very sick,’ she says. ‘He was Catholic. When he was very sick – unfortunately he passed away from the illness – he became so sure of his faith, and how it was not about anything except Jesus and love. And that was incredibly powerful.

‘We had a lot of conversations about faith. His approach to dying and living with that illness was so inspiring.’

During that period, Emerald felt that she and her father were supported and comforted by God. From that time onwards, her belief in God blossomed, and she began attending a church. Her faith has also anchored her through the stresses and strains of the pandemic. When the Covid-19 outbreak began, Emerald and her husband, actor Martin Delaney, decided to create their own prayer space around a bookshelf in their living room. ‘As soon as the pandemic happened, we removed books from the middle shelf, and put things that meant a lot to us on it, and two prayer cushions in front of it.

‘It kept us going all through lockdown, having a space that we could go to every day – individually and together – to pray, read the Bible and live-stream Mass when we could.

For Emerald, it offered ‘a sacred space that we could be in. I enjoyed the

quietness, anchoring and connecting to God.’ Particular passages of Scripture stood out to her in the early days of the pandemic. ‘Back then, everything felt so scary, and I read a lot of psalms. I’d always loved the Book of Psalms. Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”, is beautiful. At our wedding, we had a psalm about “coming to the Lord, shouting with cries of joy”. I enjoyed the ‘But I’d never found so much meaning in the Psalms as I did last year. I turned to quietness and connecting the anguished ones that I think I’d tried to avoid in the past.’ The Psalms channelled how she was to God feeling. ‘I was so afraid but also angry,’ she says. ‘I felt people were not being looked after properly, and people I knew in the NHS were struggling. During that time, it was brilliant to find songs that were thousands of years old, where people had been feeling the same and crying out to God. ‘And that’s what the Bible can do,’ says the actress who week by week explores the highs and lows of everyday life in radio’s longest-running drama. ‘It puts words to how you feel.’