Interview with Jill Halfpenny
Interview with Jill Halfpenny, who plays Sam Mensah in Dirty Mon£y.
Published: 5 July 2019
I like it when characters are messy, and I don’t like the idea of two people being in a relationship where one person is really sensible and the other not.
Can you introduce us to Dark Mon£y?
It's the story of the Mensah family and their son Isaac, who gets a role in a Hollywood movie. He goes over to LA to shoot the movie, but when he comes back he reveals to his parents that he has been abused by the producer - and everything starts to implode from there.
What attracted you to the role?
It was letting the audience see moment by moment what those people have to go through, and not just those things that we see on TV when someone walks out of a law court and is really happy or really sad. Let’s go all the way back to the very beginning and show the devastation that happens.
Tell us about your character.
I play Sam, who works in a bank. She is married to Manny and they have two children, Isaac and Jess, and she has a stepson Tyrone. She has an inner strength but she’s not necessarily the most gregarious person you would ever meet. I would say that her husband Manny leads the way, in the sense of if they were at a party he would be the life and soul and the one that wouldn’t want to leave.
Sam is a quieter, more thoughtful kind of woman, but if you crossed her she wouldn't be a pushover. Once she’s worked out what she wants to say she will say it - sometimes she just needs a bit of time to think things through. I don’t think she always trusts her intuition. She worries or she feels guilty that she isn’t doing the right thing.
Do you relate to your character?
I relate to how she feels like she’s going slightly mad because everyone around her seems to be reacting in a way that doesn’t make sense to her. I also relate to her in the fact that she makes some very questionable decisions, and I think that I’ve made questionable decisions in my life because I’m human and we all do.
I like it when characters are messy, and I don’t like the idea of two people being in a relationship where one person is really sensible and the other not. I think hopefully with Sam and Manny there’s a richness - there are some things that Sam does that viewers will be shocked about, and rightly so. I’ve never been in that position and I never want to be, but she’s certainly very human. I relate to people who mess up and are full of shame and guilt and remorse - although she’s also full of fight.
What has it been like to work with younger cast members?
It's been a delight actually, they're hilarious. Because the script was heavy and intense they needed that sense of fun when weren't shooting. Obviously we focused when we needed to, but from the get-go we tried to be friends, because that’s what people are like on set. It’s not about babying someone because they’re under 16, it’s about respecting the material and what we have to do.
And we needed to be able to communicate with each other like a real family - so as cheesy as it sounds, that’s how it felt when we were with them. They giggled and get told off and then we giggled with them and then blamed it on them. It’s just the usual things you get up to but I always like having them around, they’re just really really good. I’ve just been doing a scene with Isaac and Tyrone and it broke my heart, they’re just so good.
