'I think what would Ma do? Ma would punch them in the face.' Why Julie Graham loves playing a matriarch

Julie Graham in This City is Ours, the BBC crime drama set in Liverpool and Marbella | James Stack/Left Bank/Sony Pictures

If you’ve been bingeing This City is Ours you’ll be familiar with Scottish actor Julie Graham as Elaine Phelan, matriarch of the Liverpudlian crime dynasty which is tearing itself and each other apart in the tense eight-part BBC crime drama. She’s already a popular face on screen from her role as Ma Hardacre, another tough as old boots matriarch, in Channel 5’s period drama The Hardacres.

Julie Graham in This City is Ours | James Stack/Left Bank/Sony Pictures

In real life Graham is very different, relaxed and laid back, smiling as she sits in her light-filled kitchen in the heart of the family home in Brighton where she raised her now grown up daughters and lives with husband, Belgian skydiving instructor Davy Croket and Border Terrier Striker.

“I’m not like Elaine,” she says. “I suppose the only thing we have in common is that we both run the family,” she says and laughs. “But big matriarch parts are always great fun.”

The gangster drama from Stephen Butchard (the Good Mothers), directed by BAFTA award-winning Saul Dibb (The Sailsbury Poisonings), John Hayes (Nightsleeper) and Eshref Reybrouck (Undercover), made by Left Bank Pictures for BBC also starts BAFTA award-winner Sean Bean as gang leader Ronnie Phelan, James Nelson-Joyce (Bird, A Thousand Blows) Hannah Onslow (Empire of Light), Jack McMulley (Hijack) and Saoirse-Monica Jackson (Derry Girls).

So where did Graham’s inspiration for getting into character as Elaine come from?

Julie Graham at The Women in Film and TV Awards, London, 2022 | PA

“I spent a lot of time in Liverpool when I was in my twenties and met a lot of matriarchal women who were very much the centre and heart of the family. What they said went, and they held everything together. So I base a lot of Elaine on those women.

“Also I was brought up in a matriarchal family. My mum was a single parent who provided everything, and all my aunties who I used to hang out with, were all in charge. They all had a great sense of humour and nothing got done without them. It’s a working class thing - women are very much at the heart of the family, what they say goes.”

Graham also studied documentaries on Liverpool crime families and “the way people conduct themselves” and immersed herself in the accent.

“I would strike up conversations with the waiters and waitresses in the hotel I was staying in or people in shops. You can surround yourself with that accent all the time and people watching is my favourite thing. Also we had a great voice coach, and the scouse soundman was brilliant, helping out.”

“Once you get the accent of a character it falls into place. Liverpool’s very musical and lyrical, and with Ma Hardcastle it was broad Yorkshire, which is a brilliant accent for just saying what you mean. I love doing Yorkshire. Obviously I love doing my own accent as well. But there’s something about Yorkshire where you can push the boundaries a lot further than a lot of accents.”

The cast of This City Is Ours | BBC

For Graham, the key to getting under the thick skin of Elaine was to splash it with lashings of ‘her’ perfume Chloe - floral, elegant and intense -climb into her stilettos and designer outfits, and go.

“I always have a different perfume for characters,” she says. “I think it’s really important. With Elaine I wanted quite an old fashioned perfume, and Chloe suited her.”

On the subject of perfume, what did she choose for Ma Hardacre?

“Oh nothing. If anything, she smells of fish. She’s always being told to wash her face or clean her hands, so short of rubbing herring on my neck I decided she didn’t have any. Maybe soap and water. But with her you’ve got amazing corsets and really gnarly shoes that give a certain gait and a specific walk.”

But enough of this heady discussion of fragrances and corsets, because as Graham is keen to point out, “90% of getting into character is the writing. If the writing’s on the page it makes your job so much easier and this was a joy.

“It’s exhausting being an older woman in this business - well, I suppose any business - because there are so many stereotypical roles of older women and usually they don’t have any agency. A lot of the time they’re not driving the narrative, they’re the foil to male protagonists and can be very one-dimensional: the battleaxe, the nagging woman, the poor downtrodden wife or grandmother. So when roles come along that are very well written, older characters that are tough and sexy or thought-provoking or driving the narrative, you grab a hold and run with them because they’re rare. I have to pay bills so I sometimes do jobs I’m not 100% fully on board with, but these jobs are great because you get to show off all your bells and whistles and it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable.”

What also made the experience more enjoyable was the first six weeks of filming taking place in Marbella - not that Liverpool doesn’t look great in this high-end, sleek production, but Graham is delighted when her work involves a sun lounger as a prop. She has previous in this area from her seasons in hit ITV comedy Benidorm from 2016-18.

“Yes, I took to it again like a duck to water. I have it written in my contract - ‘must have at least five scenes on a sun lounger in a warm country’,” she jokes. “There was another time when I was filming in Guadeloupe when I did Death in Paradise, and I thought this makes up for all the years of cold, muddy car parks in Scotland or the North of England that was my apprenticeship, so I felt I was getting payback.”

She also enjoyed the social element of an ensemble cast on location in the sun.

“We were all staying in the same place and would go out every night for dinner so became a really tight unit. And there were a couple of dancing scenes where we were thrown into the deep end so that bonded us as well.”

So sun, sand and Sean Bean, who plays husband Ronnie, the family top dog and bon vivant, who isn’t shy about getting on the dance floor in a family line dance, although his relationship with sunbeds turns out to be more conflicted.

“I’ve been a huge fan of his for years obviously - he’s brilliant,” says Graham. “But then to meet him and hang out with him and work with him… He’s all about the work, very focused, diligent, does his homework, likes to experiment, is very open to ideas and 100% there when you’re in scenes with him. He’s also just the sweetest man, a very nice, decent human being, and very, very, very funny. He’s quietly very, very funny, not flamboyant and show-offy like a lot of actors. I absolutely loved working with him.”

Sean Bean and Julie Graham as Ronnie and Elaine Phelan in BBC crime drama This City is Ours | James Stack/Left Bank/Sony Pictures

If This City is Ours starts off with sun loungers, villas and family line dances, things very quickly take a turn for the worse as the family struggles to preserve its drug empire and Elaine has to step up.

“She’s motivated by family and preserving the status quo,” says Graham. “She and Ronnie would like to step back from all the criminal behaviour so it’s about succession and she’s keen to have her son Jamie take over. She’s trying to play king maker.

“She’s not a Carmela Soprano, blissfully unaware. She’s very much Ronnie’s partner and they run the family business together. She’s a traditional, old-fashioned woman who likes her man to be in charge although she runs the businesses that launder the money. She wants to step back from that but it all goes horribly wrong.”

In her own life Graham, who was born in Glasgow and raised in Irvine, had a strong role model in her mother, the actor Betty Gillin. She was star of Scotland's first soap opera High Living and before she died of cancer when her daughter was 18, demonstrated how to get by in the profession. If you can see it you can be it applied to Graham and as well as watching her mother in variety and on stage, a trip to the Citizen’s Theatre in Glasgow around the age of 16 crystallised her ambition.

“With school we’d go to 7:84 theatre company’s shows, and then I went on my own to see Mary Stewart with Ann Mitchell (Eastenders, RSC) and I’ll never forget it. I remember getting chills down my spine and thinking I’d love to do that, have that effect. Even though my mum was an actor and I’d seen her in plays and pantos there was something about that theatre and that production, the grandeur and immediacy. I wanted to have that effect and be part of that story-telling. It felt magical. It was a bit of a light bulb moment.

Graham went on to work with Ann Mitchell who has inspired her in Mary Stewart and she gave her professional advice she’s never forgotten.

“She said ask people questions, always be curious, in the back of a taxi or sitting next to somebody on a bus, at a dinner party, because people always have the most incredible stories or something that’s happened to them which is remarkable and you can use that in your work.”

Her mother also had some robust work-related advice: “She said ‘turn up on time, learn your lines, make friends with the stage management or caterers or director of photography’, and she said ‘there’s always one c*** in the room - make sure it’s not you’.” She laughs.

As a single parent in a precarious profession Graham’s mother also stressed the need for a woman to have her own money and not be reliant on a man.

“That’s important,” says Graham. “Especially when you’ve got daughters, because you need to be able to say to them, having money is freedom, especially if you’re ever in a bad situation. Because we all know that with a lot of domestic violence money is used as a tool to keep women in their place.”

Deciding early that she wanted to act Graham landed a role in Taggart in 1986 followed by a film role in The Fruit Machine and has worked ever since, becoming best known for At Home with the Braithwaites (2000-2003), with Martin Clunes in hit ITV rom-com William and Mary (2003–2005), Benidorm (2016-18), where she met her husband during filming, and more recently in BBC’s crime drama Shetland as procurator fiscal Rhona Kelly and Channel 5 period drama The Hardacres.

“At Home with the Braithwaite’s opened a lot of doors for me. Without that I wouldn’t have got William and Mary. It’s really good fun playing characters like Megan who was such a monster. And of course the writing was Sally Wainwright. If I could go back and play one character I would revisit Megan because she’d be absolutely furious about getting old, she’d have all kinds of plastic surgery and boob jobs.”

Now in her late fifties, Graham herself feels no fury about ageing. In a good place, she’s positive about the future, both professionally and personally.

“I think life’s just getting better and better. It’s so nice to be able to say that to the younger generation because I was never told that - maybe it was shite being old then - but there are better health and expectations now and it’s great to say to younger people it’s f***ing great. I’m looking forward to my sixties for sure.”

Someone who loves her job, Graham finds it reinvigorating to step into someone else’s shoes.

Graham with Sean Bean in a scene from This City Is Ours | James Stack/Left Bank/Sony Pictures

“It’s really fun and immersive and keeps up your curiosity and sense of people. It keeps you youthful in a way because you’re always learning. If you feel as a performer that you have stopped learning then maybe you should just stop doing it. I think it keeps you eternally curious and open to the world.”

Graham also sees welcome changes on film sets compared to when she started out.

“I’d say Me Too changed things. There’s a lot less being patronised by older white male directors. They don’t call the shots in the way they used to and there are a lot more women on sets, although still not enough. There’s more diversity which is brilliant, still not enough, but it’s heading in the right direction. Some of my favourite jobs are female-led, whether that be with producers or directors or writers because there’s a different energy on a set. So long may that continue with more representation and parity. Younger actors, especially actresses, don’t put up with the shit we used to have to put up with and that’s a good thing. So things are heading in the right direction although it’s still a glacial pace.”

With a variety of roles in her acting CV Graham, which has she found the biggest challenge?

“Sometimes when you have to play grief, that can be really tricky and you have to protect yourself because you can’t go to the really dark places. Well, you do go to the dark places, and you’re going to draw on your experiences, and you’ve got to walk a delicate balance of telling the story without being self-indulgent. I find that challenging, in a good way. But it can be hard to shake off at the end of the day so you’ve got to make sure you’re surrounded by good people and you’ve got the tools to leave that at the door and go on with your life. You have to remember you’re playing a character, it’s not your own stuff. So it’s a tricky balance sometimes between staying in the moment and not letting it become self-indulgent or taking it into the lunch queue.”

There are other elements of characters that Graham would be happy to take a bit of into her life, Ma Hardacre’s skill with a robust rebuttal for instance.

“Yeah, definitely for sure, telling everyone to f*** off. You definitely take little bits of characters with you. And inject bits of yourself into those characters too, it’s a two way street. Yes, I think what would Ma do? Ma would punch them in the face.”

As well as performing in front of the camera, Graham has diversified into writing, making the comedy TV miniseries Dun Breedin’ during lockdown with her actor friends including Tracy-Ann Oberman, Denise Welch, Tamzin Outhwaite and Angela Griffiths, and is working on another script ‘along similar lines’ at the moment.

She also has unfulfilled ambitions in terms of acting roles to realise.

Julie Graham as Elaine Phelan in This City Is Ours | James Stack/Left Bank/Sony Pictures

“I’d like to play a toff. That would be fun. Be upstairs instead of downstairs. Or a pirate! I think I’d like to play a pirate, or a highway woman, someone like that. I’d love to do a swashbuckler!”

As for being a gangster wife in This City is Ours, Graham reckons Elaine’s story isn’t finished and hopes there will be a second series.

“There are definitely more stories there. We end on a bit of a cliffhanger so it’s definitely open to come back. I’d love to do it again. And I’m hoping for more Hardacres. But right now I’m just enjoying having a bit of time off at home.

With the sun shining outside her windows, we’re hoping she’s heading for a lounger outside.

The full series of This City Is Ours is available now on BBC iPlayer