Interview with Daisy Haggard who plays Janet Campbell in BBC One’s Boat Story

Daisy Haggard is a BAFTA-nominated British actor and writer. With a fantastic career spanning over two decades, Daisy has been featured in multiple well-known productions and franchises across theatre, film, and television. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and has since dominated the stage and screen appearing in some of the most successful comedies and series of the last twenty years. As the creator of comedy-drama, Back to Life, Daisy co-wrote, featured and Executive Produced the series to critical acclaim. Since 2020, Daisy has also starred in Breeders alongside Martin Freeman, which saw her nominated for Best Female Comedy Performance at the 2021 BAFTA Awards. Daisy will next be seen and has just wrapped on Season 4 of Breeders.

Daisy has appeared in several television comedies including Episodes alongside Matt LeBlanc, Green Wing, and Uncle. Other on-screen credits include Psychoville, The Persuasionists, Parents, Hilda, Doctor Who, Ballot Monkeys, Ashes to Ashes, Sense & Sensibility, and Hang Ups. Her theatre credits include the title character in Becky Shaw (Almedia), Consent (Royal National), The Importance of Being Ernest (Theatre Royal), The UN Inspector (National), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Master & Margarita (Chichester Festival), The Dwarfs (National/Tricycle), and Shop Floor (Union).

What drew you to this project?

Jack and Harry contacted me, saying they may have written a part for me and sent me the script for Boat Story. When I read it, I really hoped they had written the part for me, because it was the most brilliantly inventive and imaginative show. It was also such a lovely, interesting character with a strong moral dilemma at the centre of the story. When I read it, I was desperate to play her and delighted when I was allowed to.

How did you feel when you first read the script?

The things that interested me most about the script, was that I love things that jump around tonally in the sense that they don’t commit; it doesn’t have to just be one thing. It’s allowed to be funny, dark and moving. I thought they’d really captured and nailed a very original tone that felt very integrated in all the scripts. It was characterful, really dark at times and people are going to be quite shocked. I have to close my eyes when I watch some of it. But also had this emotional heart and then loads of humour, I found it very exciting.

How would you describe Janet?

Janet is somebody who at the heart, is a really good person. She’s kind, but she’s had a really tough time. As we start the show, she plummets to her lowest ebb, and she’s placed in a situation where she makes a decision that I don’t think she would have made at another point in her life. She’s at rock bottom, she’s forced into a situation where a decision comes out of her that she otherwise wouldn’t have made. However, I think she’s fundamentally an ordinary and rather good person who’s placed in a very extraordinary situation.

Themes of morality come up in the series, do you think that Janet is a good person?

She makes a bad decision that is chaotic and catastrophic, but I don’t think she’s a bad person. She’s driven to the edge and then makes a shocking and dangerous decision that is very much not a moral decision. People can make mistakes, right? She was at a very weak point, and she was led into making a decision that was a mistake. Fundamentally, she’s a good egg. There’s no way that she would have made that decision if Samuel was not there. She would have called the police immediately, cried and then walked away.

Does Janet trust Samuel, how does she initially feel about him?

Janet doesn’t trust Samuel when she first meets him, she makes this decision with him in the moment, then she spends quite a lot of the series looking at him and thinking what has she done? It’s like jumping into the deep end with somebody that you don’t know at all; I think that she thinks he’s a bit of an idiot. She certainly talks to him like he is. Janet veers between finding him irritating and not trusting him and thinking that she’s probably made the worst mistake to jump into a situation with somebody who is intrinsically a bit shifty.

How has your experience been during filming, do have a favourite moment?

It was a brilliant experience. We had four fantastic directors. We had the two brothers, Jack and Harry, Alice Troughton, and Daniel Nettheim.

How have you found filming in Yorkshire, what do you think this location brings to the story?

Shooting it in Yorkshire was beautiful. It’s such a lovely place and eating fish and chips on my lunch break was a high point! I really enjoyed it as a job. I found it really liberating, oddly, walking around with no makeup and blue hair, in a big pair of comfy boots and a huge jacket. I found the whole experience really fun, inventive and inspiring. I really enjoyed it.

There’s such a beauty to Yorkshire. It’s stunning and there’s something about the bleak beauty of a winter, being on the beach and the wind just stripping you. There’s something about that and the story that I think really, really works. I love Yorkshire, I think it’s stunning.

What can audiences look forward to the most about Boat Story?

Expect the unexpected from this show, that’s what excites me about it. It doesn’t feel like anything else I’ve seen; it feels truly original. Don’t expect anything, apart from not knowing what to expect, in a really fun way. It takes you on a crazy ride and you’re never going to be able to guess where you’re going; I think that’s what I loved about it. I love when something is written like that, but you know that they know where they’re going. It’s got this confidence, but you’re always kept at the edge of your seat thinking what’s going to happen next. It’s pretty tense.

Have you ever made a wild life-changing decision?

I haven’t… I once stole a penny sweet when I was a little child, I took it and put it in my mouth and then returned it. That was probably worse than if I’d eaten it. That’s the wildest thing I’ve ever done. I realised I wasn’t very good at those kinds of decisions – I’m definitely not cut out for a life of crime; I would be awful. When I was little, I used to confess things I’d done at home to policemen when I was walking down the street; my mum would hurry me along and tell me it was fine.

When two strangers discover a haul of illegal drugs on a washed-up boat, luck soon turns to misfortune as they become the targets of a vengeful mob boss, his hitman and the police.

At its heart, Boat Story is an action-thriller about two ordinary people whom the world has turned its back on, and whether they’re willing – or desperate enough – to do something crazy to get what they want in life. Pushed to the very edge, can they trust each other and get away with their lives and the money?

Boat Story embodies twists and turns with character-driven, surprising storytelling. Off-beat humour contrasts with high-octane action sequences against the spectacular backdrop of the beautiful, windswept Yorkshire coastline.

Boat Story comes to BBC One and BBC iPlayer from Sunday 19 November at 9pm