Sharon Rooney flashes a brilliant smile and shouts a cheery hello while rifling through a clothes rail in a photographic studio. There is something immediately brighter, more luminous, about Rooney than the troubled teenager, Rae, she plays in E4’s cult comedy drama My Mad Fat Diary. Rae has problems with depression and is hung-up about her weight, but Rooney is comfortable in her own skin.
Except, she confides, she doesn’t like getting her photograph taken. She is relieved because a friend who works in the clothes industry has sent garments for her fashion shoot. Most seem blander than what she’s already wearing: a peppermint-green polka-dot blouse; a very short black pinafore with black over-knee suede boots; black, heavy-rimmed glasses that gleam through a curtain of glossy hair. She looks cute and kooky – like a sassy refugee from St Trinian’s.
There’s constant chat. Constant kidding. It turns out she’s from a Glasgow family who teased each other mercilessly when she was growing up. It takes a lot to make her angry, even more to make her cry. Throughout her childhood, Rooney performed nightly for her grandparents. Five o’clock was “show o’clock”. Being an only child she played every part, developing an impressive facility for accents. Her gran, who died last year, was the most important person in her childhood: “Sometimes you just click with someone, don’t you? You just idolise them. I wanted her to be happy and proud.” Ask how hard it was to lose such an influential figure and black humour pops up like a protective shield. “That’s the trouble with old people, isn’t it?” she says brightly. “They die on you.”
Rooney admits she , too, does “that Rae thing” of getting everyone on side by making them laugh. But beneath the humorous veneer, you sense something more poignant. Especially when she describes a moment at university, when one of her drama lecturers asked anyone who thought they weren’t castable, to stand up. Rooney, 5ft 11in and plus size, got to her feet. When she looked around, she was the only person standing.
“All my classmates were really pretty,” she explains now. “Lovely girls and they all looked really good and were the perfect size. Then there was me in the background, jumping about. I thought being castable meant you had to look a certain way, be a certain way. My lecturer said being castable was about being right for the job. She said: ‘Sometimes you will be perfect, but someone else just has the edge… That’s OK because one day you will have the edge.’ Being a stroppy 19-year-old, I said: ‘Yeah, yeah, one day I’ll have the edge.’ But she was right.”
Rooney received a Scottish Bafta nomination for best television actress for her performance as Rae. Now 26, she was also named in the 2013 Bafta breakthrough Brits list, an initiative to support the UK’s emerging talent. Yet until Mad Fat Diary, based on the 1990s diaries of author Rae Earl, she had been limited to working for Theatre in Education, a school-touring group, and was about to quit acting. “I said to my mum: ‘I don’t want to do this any more. It’s too hard. I’m not getting any decent parts and I don’t want to compromise who I am.’” What would she have done instead? “I wanted to be a nurse. I helped look after my gran when she was poorly and I always think there’s something really rewarding about helping people. That’s why Mad Fat Diary is so special.” Teenage viewers write to her about their problems – and Rooney has done a lot of research into mental health issues. “You’re not just making a TV show,” she says. “You’re helping people to see that life is good.”
When her agent called about the series, her heart sank. “I heard the title and was like oh God… really? I don’t want to do it.” But the script arrived and she was converted within half a page. “I phoned and went: ‘Yep, just kidding. I’ll go.’”
The recall process went on for months. Each time, she chose to audition with a comic scene. “Then something happened before my final audition and I thought, ‘Right, you can either go in there and show them what you can do or you can let [the part] go because you don’t want to show them you can be vulnerable.” Hesitation flits across Rooney’s expressive face, a reluctance, perhaps, to use tragedy for her own ends. “One of my friends passed away, literally, before I went in. She wasn’t very well and she just left before we thought she would.” Did Rooney consider not going in? “Of course. I wanted my mum. I wanted to go home and cry into a pillow. But when I had finished crying into a pillow, my friend still wouldn’t be there.”
She decided that not auditioning would have felt like betrayal: “My friend had banged on about this job. She said: ‘Don’t come back from London without it or I’ll be really annoyed.’ So I think in that moment, it felt like a Rae moment. Either do it or you are going to lose out.”
She says she was desperate to play Rae. “When I read the script I thought, this is such an important person. I am not reading this because of the way she looks, or because of her size, or because of anything other than she’s interesting. She’s funny, smart, clever. I like her and I would like her regardless of her problems. Ultimately, it’s the story of a girl, a girl with huge, big problems but the story of a girl. And it was the first time I had seen a story like that where I could play the lead. I didn’t have to change. I could do it as I was.”
In the series, Rae gets caught in humiliating situations: exposed in her underwear when a fire alarm goes off; stuck in a chute at a pool party. It’s Rooney’s body as well as Rae’s that gets exposed. How did she feel about that? “It’s you, at the end of the day,” she says simply. “When I got stuck in that chute there were loads of people about, and it was fine – but I think that’s because I am fine with me.” Rae struggles with body image because she has a mental illness, adds Rooney. “Also, Rae doesn’t have a close bond with her mum, whereas I did. I have never felt ‘not good enough’ with my family and friends around.”
Rooney says size has never bothered her. “I’ve always looked the same. I’ve just been bigger. It’s never been an issue, but I can see why in this industry it can be a nightmare. I think this show is helpful – Finn [Rae’s boyfriend] is not with her solely for the way she looks; he’s with her because she’s cool. People need to remember it’s not all about what size your clothes are – or what label. If I was a size 10 I would wake up and my gran still wouldn’t be here. My friend wouldn’t be here. I’d still have bills to pay. It wouldn’t make my life any better. I’d still have the same issues.” Is there pressure to change? “No. I have always known I wouldn’t play Cinderella,” she says, blithely. “I would play the fairy godmother or the ugly sister.” She smiles. “Even if I changed, I don’t think my personality would.”
She is like her dad, Rooney says: funny but with her head screwed on. When her gran was dying, she left the set of Two Doors Down, a comedy pilot that’s now, years later, being made into a series for the BBC. “The director sat me down and said, ‘Will you regret this if you don’t go?’ I said yes. She said, ‘Well you have our blessing.’ They were great about it, but I’d have gone even if they hadn’t been. I’d have gone even if I was working with Meryl Streep. Nothing is more important than your family – ever.”
She has a strong relationship with Rae Earl, the Diary’s author, but says she’s too lazy to write a diary herself. Besides, she’s too frightened someone would find it. Her need to make you laugh, her bubbly insouciance, suggests Rooney, wouldn’t want her comedic cover blown. Yet the vulnerability that made her think she was the only person in the room who wasn’t castable, the potential nursing career, the girl who puts her family before everything, all suggest more emotional depth.
She admits she’s under more pressure than ever with the final series of Mad Fat Diary because she wants to get it right for the fans who have supported her. But she’s already got work lined up on Stag, a dark comedy for the BBC about a stag weekend, starring Reece Shearsmith. Then there’s Mountain Goats, a sitcom about a family of mountain-rescue volunteers, but Rae has clearly been the life-changing part. That’s the one she talks affectionately of, that brought recognition when buying lip gloss in Boots. Post Rae, she still has to fight for jobs, she insists. Every actor does. The future? “I don’t know,” she says brightly. “I’ll just need to go out and find one.”
The final series of My Mad Fat Diary starts on E4 at 10pm on Monday 22 June
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