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‘I love being both a character in The Archers and a student at Bristol Uni’
Two years ago, I got a text from my agent asking if I would like to be on The Archers.
It was 7pm. I was standing in a darkened Krispy Kreme store, knackered after a long shift flogging doughnuts and fending off irritable customers. I was in a rut in my life: stuck in a job that I disliked but feeling unqualified to do anything else.
So when my phone buzzed and I saw that text message, it felt like a guardian angel reaching over and saying: “Fancy stepping into the bright lights of showbiz, mate?”.
is needed now More than ever
Now in January 2021, I’ve finally got used to the idea that I play Mia Grundy, the half-angelic, half-hormonal stepdaughter of Will the gamekeeper.
Mia has had a bumpy ride. She lost her mother to sepsis aged 12, and became a young carer while her stepfather withdrew into his grief.
A lot of Archers actors have a connection with Bristol. Emerald O’Hanrahan, who plays Emma Grundy, trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, while Barry Farrimond, who plays her on-air husband Ed, currently lives in the city. Photo: BBC
I’ve been a fan of The Archers since the coercive control storyline hooked me in in 2015, and had been hearing it in the background for years before that. So it was bizarre to walk into the green room for the first time and meet the actors whose voices I had been listening to since childhood.
Of course, every one of them looked entirely different from how I’d imagined them.
The Archers may be recorded in the West Midlands, but it has a good share of Bristol connections.
A number of cast members have trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, including Tim Bentinck (David Archer), Emerald O’Hanrahan (Emma Grundy) and John Telfer (Alan Franks), who now teaches there. Ryan Kelly (Jazzer McCreary) was the school’s first blind student.
There’s a real community to The Archers. In a standard acting job, you can be thrown into a room with 20 other people, work with them for a day or a month, and then never see them again. I struggle with the lack of continuity.
But the beauty of The Archers is that people stick around – for 70 years, sometimes.
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We get a cast and crew newsletter every month (called The Incider), which shares news of births, deaths, book deals and new jobs. There are social catch-ups and Christmas parties. We even had a celebration for June Spencer’s 100th birthday. June plays Peggy Woolley, and has been in the show right from the pilot episode in 1950.
Ironically, I was offered the role on The Archers just as I decided to give up professional acting.
I’d had some good luck over the years. A stint as a child actor at the Royal Shakespeare Company put big ideas into my head, and I got to work with Bryony Lavery’s beautiful script for The Lovely Bones with the Birmingham Rep.
But in late 2018, I’d had a run of unpleasant experiences. I was falling out of love with acting, and falling in love with a man who spun my head in the direction of politics and journalism.
Molly Pipe (left) had some early luck as a child actor at the RSC. Photo: Molly Pipe
I threw the towel in at Krispy Kreme shortly after receiving that text in December 2018. I moved down to the South West and started a degree in social policy and politics at the University of Bristol.
I don’t do much acting any more: I can find the pseudo-psychology of rehearsal room warm-up games cloying; hate the ultra-competitive culture that means everyone has to market themselves all the time.
But The Archers is my exception. It’s not cloying or competitive. I find it welcoming and lighthearted, and the work is good.
My day-to-day life now is interesting but intense. I spend hours reading about prisons or homelessness or food poverty – the sort of difficult topics that are the lot of the social policy student. I love what I’m doing and I don’t feel stuck any more.
But it’s nice, every so often, to put my BBC pass in my bag, jump on a train (in non-pandemic times at least) and become Mia Grundy for an afternoon.
Molly Pipe plays Mia Grundy in The Archers, is a student at the University of Bristol and is completing a work placement as a journalist with Bristol24/7
Main photo: BBC
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