Viewers who feel shaken by hard-hitting new BBC1 drama Dark Money should spare a thought for the cast.
The four-part series kicked off with powerless parents Manny and Sam Mensah accepting a pay-off to keep quiet about the abuse of their child-actor son Isaac by a predatory Hollywood VIP.
The harrowing plot made for disturbing viewing – and playing the roles really put the actors’ emotions through the wringer.
Jill Halfpenny, who plays mum Sam, said the scenes referencing child abuse were so traumatic to film that she felt “depleted” at the end of each day.
The former EastEnders actress, 43, said: “At the end of a day like that, you’re so exhausted from crying that your face is like a dried-up leaf. You just want to literally flop on the bed or the sofa.
“Your body doesn’t know that what it went through isn’t real, so your body has felt the trauma.
“So even though you’re telling your brain, ‘I’m acting’, your body still feels like it’s been through something traumatic.
“There isn’t really a point in a show like that where it’s like, ‘Oh, should we all go for pizza tonight? Do you fancy having a drink?’.
“I’m just depleted completely. You just have to keep the end goal in sight, with something like this.”
Mum-of-one Jill stars alongside Babou Ceesay as husband Manny and Max Fincham as child star Isaac in the series which returns with episode 2 tonight at 9pm.
She praised writer Levi David Addai for creating believable, flawed characters such as Sam.
Jill – who played Phil Mitchell’s wife Kate in EastEnders alongside actor Steve McFadden – told the Series Linked TV podcast: “I’ve been doing telly for 30 years now and people have this idea that women have to be likeable all the time on TV.
“I’ve had directors say to me in the past, ‘Can you just soften it a bit? Can you make her a bit more likable?’
“I find it really annoying and I find it really patronising. We’re all very complicated, complex human beings.
“We all make decisions in our lives where we look back and think, “Was that me? Was that the person that I am now?
“The thing that I loved about Sam is, yeah, she makes some decisions which, when you’re watching you’re probably thinking, ‘Oh Sam, please’.
“But that’s real. That is what being a human being is.”
