Prime Suspect writer Lynda La Plante’s emotional bond with victims of crime

Author Lynda La Plante, 77, who is best known for writing Prime Suspect, tells us, in her own words, some of the lessons she’s learned in life….

I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished.

And Widows was my proudest achievement.

It’s because it was my first show – my career breakthrough, if you like – and it was made into a huge movie in 2018.

I remember sitting in the edit room when the series was finished, watching it play and I was in floods of tears. It was exactly the way I’d pictured it in my head.

Ann Mitchell, who played the lead as Dolly Rawlins, was superlative. You need talented actors to lift shows up a notch and I had that in Widows. And of course with Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.

I was quite new to TV writing when I met the biggest influence in my life, Verity Lambert. She was the television producer who oversaw the production of Widows back in the 1980s.

She taught me a great deal about telly writing. She was by far the most encouraging person in my life. There was such great energy about her, and she completely influenced the way I wrote my scripts for everything going forward.

Showing respect is vital.

Due to the nature of my work, I rely heavily on advice from all manner of people. From scientists to police officers, prisoners to crime victims – they all help me write the best novels possible.

I respect their advice so much that I rarely take any kind of dramatic licence. I’ll immediately change any inaccuracies that a professional points out.

I’d be hopeless as a police officer. Despite all the heavy duty crime writing I do, I get very emotional when talking to victims.

I don’t think people would believe how bereft I become by it all. Murder is such a sorrowful, horrendous thing – I just can’t understand it.

Kindness is imperative. I’ve always tried to treat others as I’d like to be treated and I’ve tried to teach my son Lorcan to do the same. He’s a very kind boy and I think that’s terribly important.

Don’t sign anything before taking legal advice.

I’ve made big mistakes and been taken advantage of at every stage in my career because I’ve been stupid and jumped into things blind. You have to fight for what you want and it’s all part of becoming a true professional in your field.

My first love was Marlon Brando.

I’ve been besotted by him for as long as I can remember.

I can’t name a time when I wasn’t deeply in love with him, even when he was old and bloated I didn’t care. He was the passion of my life.

As a child, I was dangerous with a pair of scissors. I’d cut curtains, clothes, hair – anything!

I gave a girl in my class a crew cut once – wrapped a kitchen cloth around her and just got to chopping. She never spoke to me again.

I miss my friends so much. I love to host huge dinner parties at my house and collect all the little anecdotes that come along with them. It’s something I’ve missed terribly since the lockdown.

Secrets behind my snapshot

This is me in Calamity Jane. I’d been cast as the lead because the director knew there was a great comedic level to the play and he thought I could bring that to Jane’s character.

However, he never really questioned whether or not I could sing. So when the musical director came in, an utterly objectionable man, he declared in a thick American accent, ‘I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done in that past, I just care about voices.’

He asked us all to sing individually and worked his way around the room shouting ‘baritone, soprano’, and so on to allocate voices.

When he finally got to me and heard me sing he simply said, ‘No voice’, and moved on.

He then reached this girl, who had the voice of an angel, and was awestruck by her. When she’d finished singing he said, ‘Ah! You must be Calamity Jane.’ I piped up and told him it was actually me playing the lead role and it gave him the shock of his life.

He put me down quite a lot and I lost faith in my abilities. Rehearsals came and went and I gradually took a back seat, allowing this girl to sing for me.

Then one day a young guy in the chorus came up to me and told me I had to take back control. He said if I let this go on I may as well walk away from the show altogether. I was so nervous, but he was a piano player and kindly offered to help me practise the songs.

We worked out the way I was most comfortable singing them and so, at the next rehearsal, I stood up to the musical director when he tried to sideline me.

I declared that I would be the one singing and that I was going to do it my way. It was the biggest learning curve I had as an actress.

It taught me to have that fearlessness you need to be great and the courage to stand up for yourself.

– Lynda’s latest DCI Jane Tennison novel, Blunt Force, is out now in hardback for £18.99, and e-book and audio. Buried, the first in a new series, is out September 17, 2020 in paperback for £8.99, and e-book and audio.