The Welsh actress went to the prestigious RADA and says her time at the drama school ‘was kind of like abuse for two and a half years’
Joanna Page had never lived away from home before moving to London, and the experience was brutal.(Image: Ian West/PA Wire)
Gavin and Stacey actress Joanna Page has revealed that moving to London as a student was a difficult period of her life. The actress moved to the big city to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) where she graduated in 1998. Many famous faces attended the prestigious school including her compatriot Sir Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston and Phoebe Waller-Bridge to name a few.
The Welsh actress who grew up in Swansea told Fearne Cotton on her Happy Place podcast that she was “so naïve and so innocent” when moving to London for university.
Joanna said that attending the school was brutal and that “it was kind of like abuse for two and a half years.” For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter.
Fearne opened the discussion about Joanna’s struggle at drama school saying: “You went from being an only child in Wales, cosy childhood, great relationship with your family and your relatives nearby, to RADA, which is a hardcore drama school, very famous drama school, loads of alumni have gone on to do incredible things in the acting world. But it was really quite traumatic, I hadn’t realised, for you.”
Joanna explained: “Oh my God, it was awful. I was obsessed with Kenneth Branagh, and I’d read his autobiography and I had this romantic view of what RADA would be like and I was just like, ‘oh my God it’s going to be wonderful.’
“The auditions had been amazing, everything had been great and I was so geared up and so ready for it and it was just awful. It was kind of like abuse for two and a half years because it was all very much for the (acting) method and Stanislavski but this is the only method you do for acting. ‘We don’t do anything else and if this doesn’t work and you can’t do it, you’re sh*t, you can’t act.’ It was just basically breaking us down but they don’t build you back up again and it was such a shock anyway to get to London.
“I was so naïve and so innocent, I just turned 18, I had never lived away from home before. The minute I got to the halls of residence, I’m locked in some fella’s room.”
Fearne replied that she couldn’t believe the story, as Joanna explained her horrible experience. The host asked: “So this is a random guy that went, ‘do you want to come into my room?”'”
The actress shared: “I went to the toilet and I was coming back and he said, ‘do you want to come in and have a look at my holiday photos?’ In my head I thought, ‘of course I don’t. I don’t know who you are’. But I was like ‘oh yes of course’, thinking I don’t want to be rude. I went back to his room and then he shut the door and he wouldn’t let me out. He said, ‘sit on the bed’, and I sat on the bed and then he started showing me these photos and he was like, ‘I was buying drugs here and then I was doing this here.’
“I just remember thinking ‘oh my God, what am I doing? I want to get out.’ And he turned the radio on really loud. I tried to get out and he said, ‘you can’t get out now, nobody can hear you.’
“Eventually he let me out and I ran back to my room, to my parents. I was so terrified and so naïve but I was open to learning and I wanted to be there but it was brutal. It was horrible.”
Despite her difficult time at the renowned drama school, Joanna found solace in others having a similar experiences.
She said: “They were really, really awful and what’s been nice is that I thought that that was just my experience. But since then, listening to what Daisy May Cooper has said, she was a good load of years after me and my God, her experience was kind of like the same as mine. Then also listening to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, when she talks about the same stuff and what they were like with her. It just makes me go, ‘Oh my God, it wasn’t just me then.’ It wasn’t just what happened to me. That’s basically what it was like there at that period in time.”
When asked by Fearne whether she thinks the school has improved since her time there, Joanna said: “I don’t know because I’ve never ever set foot back in there again, but it’s a degree course now, not just a diploma, and I know that lots of the teachers just aren’t there anymore.”
Happy Place with Fearne Cotton is available to listen to wherever you get your podcasts.