13 minutes | Monday, 24 February 2025
Xan Phillips: You're listening to Southampton's Voice FM, my name is Xan, and welcome to Arts and Entertainment, and hot on the heels of the latest instalment of the acclaimed ITV series Grace, Superintendent Roy Grace is back in a brand new Peter James stage adaptation and world premiere of the best selling Picture You Dead.
Set in his hometown of Brighton, DCI Grace investigates a cold case that leads him to the secretive world of fine art. But beneath the respectable veneer lurks a dark underworld of deception and murder. With us, and hopefully shining more of a light on the story, is star of Stage and Screen, Jodie Steele.
Jodie, welcome to the show. How are you?
Jodie Steele: Hello, I'm really well. Thank you for having me.
Xan Phillips: That's a pleasure. And I always love a whodunit, but I find it one of the most difficult things to interview about because we, we can't give much away. So shall we just start with is this the first whodunit you've been whodunit you've been in?
Do you know?
Jodie Steele: It is. Apart from one that I can remember doing called Muckleberry Manor when I was 11 and I played the granddad.
Xan Phillips: The granddad at 11.
Jodie Steele: I remember, I do remember, bless my mother and father coming to watch things like that. But yeah, no, this is professionally the first Whodunit I've had the pleasure of being part of.
So, yeah.
Xan Phillips: So as an 11 year old acting as a granddad, is that when you really felt that you could act?
Jodie Steele: That was it. I thought, yeah, this is it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Play granddads in Whodunits next. Yeah, I knew from a young age for sure that I wanted. to be an actor. So yeah, I it's sometimes it is, well, not sometimes a lot of the time I'm still pinching myself, but it's, it's my life.
So, and I grew up watching shows at the Mayflower because I was born and bred in Basingstoke.
Xan Phillips: So what kind of shows, what kind of shows did you go to? Was it panto and a few others dancing, maybe the ballet?
Jodie Steele: We watched the So every year we saw a lot of musicals, and I do remember going to watch Kill a Mockingbird, which was, you know, high on the syllabus at GCSE back when I went to school.
Maybe it still is. And I remember walking into school Monday morning being like really cool that I had now seen the play live, you know. Yeah, I, I, I fell in love with theater because of the Mayflower. So it's cool to go back there and be the professional on the stage.
Xan Phillips: Have you, I mean, you've been quite a few shows that are toured. Have you been played at the Mayflower before?
Jodie Steele: Yeah, I have. I've done six there and I did Sherry in Rock of Ages there as well. So,
Xan Phillips: I would like to have seen that.
Jodie Steele: Oh, yeah. Good fun. That one's good fun. Yes. Yes.
Xan Phillips: No, I like, I like rock. It's good. Yes.
Jodie Steele: Oh, yeah. Oh, the jukebox music in that is just so good.
It was a joy to sing every night, but I don't have to sing in this, so.
Xan Phillips: Well, I mean, I want to know what you're going to do, but we can't because obviously sometimes it might give it away. So let's talk about your character. Who's, who's Jodie playing? And, what's her background, her backstory?
Jodie Steele: So, Roberta Kilgore, known as Bobby Kilgore as well, because big twist, but originally written as a man and I actually have a male understudy, which is really cool.
But we're, we're making her a total boss woman. And she is American. She's the only American in the play. She is very clever. She's very devious. She works with Stuart Piper who, let's just say, I don't want to give too much away, is the baddie. But, or I could, I could do this, but who ends up on top?
Is it Roberta or is it Stuart? So it, she's, she's definitely one of the most powerful characters in, in the show. Probably. In the end, probably the most scariest. And really causes some mischief.
Xan Phillips: Wonderful. That sounds like a great role to play.
Jodie Steele: It is a gift of a role, for sure. It's the kind of thing you sort of get your teeth into.
Xan Phillips: Yeah. Do you have to dig deep for that? Because you seem quite a pleasant person.
Jodie Steele: You know, I am a total marshmallow, but I always play the baddie. And the theme kind of started. When I originated Heather Chantler in Heathers, and that was
2018, and I've never looked back. I just, I just love playing baddies. Yeah. And I just, I don't know what it is. I'm worried that I'm giving off a certain vibe in audition rooms that I just switched. But yeah, I, I do. I, I love. doing something that's so far removed from myself. And I'm not afraid to go there.
Yeah, I love it. I love getting deep, deep into a role. Just slightly tapped, which this one most certainly, most certainly is.
Xan Phillips: So I mean, it's a great, it's a great question this, but let's say, and you don't have to answer it, but because it might give something away, but have you ever on stage murdered someone or been murdered?
Jodie Steele: Yes, I have been murdered on stage.
Xan Phillips: And was that easy to do? I mean, because to me that I mean, that's very hard to, act because that's like, you don't know what that's like. So,
Jodie Steele: well, you know, yes, it was odd. And but it was in a comedic way. So it kind of made people laugh. But yeah, I had to choke and then kind of like cough to death and then, and then physically fall to the floor. Although I am quite a physical actor, so I didn't, I didn't mind that challenge as much. But killing somebody on stage. No, I don't think I ever have in any role have I killed someone.
However, I am very highly trained in firearms. So that come in in useful.
Xan Phillips: Oh, very interesting. So a bit of loading and unloading maybe or pointing. Yes.
Jodie Steele: Perhaps.
Xan Phillips: Well, I've always, I've always admired the films where you see actors who just seem so natural at it when they just, you know, they got it all done. It's like they're talking and doing some loading, using the gun at the same time.
It's always, I love that.
Jodie Steele: Yeah, little details like that when you're, when you're playing roles, I think go a long, long way.
Xan Phillips: Yeah. But one more question about this. I mean, in the real world, are you a bit of a detective?
Jodie Steele: Do you know, I do love to know. What's really going on but only if someone tells me i'm way too busy to go dig in myself Way too busy as long as someone i'll try and ask that what's really going on there But if you know if they don't know there's no way i'd go Try and find out myself.
Too, too busy, too busy. So I, I think detectives are, yeah, a certain, certain kind of person. Very impressive. And of course, Roy Grace is one of the most infamous detectives we have in Britain. We have him in books, we have him on a TV series, we have him in plays. He's very loved in this country.
Xan Phillips: Well, yes, I mean, Peter James sold 23 million books. So, I mean, you just said you were really busy. I mean, have you been so busy that you haven't been able to read any of his books?
Jodie Steele: So don't tell anyone, but no, I haven't read a Peter James book. I have actually, in fact, read Picture You Dead once I got the role and found so, so much in that especially for my character, but my sister.
She is an avid reader she's definitely the more, you know, intellectual, academic one out of the two of us. She's the lawyer, I'm the actor, goes without saying. And she has every single one of Peter James books.
Xan Phillips: Wow. So how did she react when you told her you got the part?
Jodie Steele: She was like, the Peter James, the actual Peter James.
And I was like, yes. She was like, which one? And I said, I'll get you dead. And she was like, oh my God, one of my favorite. And I was like, fuck you.
So yeah, that was my, the most joyous moment. Has been telling her that I had the job because I knew she loved him so much.
Xan Phillips: So, but do you think this is, I mean, that's a really interesting point because there she is, she's read the book. She knows exactly what's going to happen. So do 23 million other people.
No, roughly. I mean, there's a lot of people have read it, but 23 million books sold, but of course, like your sister, she's got quite a few of them. Yeah. Will this draw them into the theater, even though they know. The ending.
Jodie Steele: Oh, for sure. Because I think in any sense of that, you know for instance, if we look at two plays in the West End right now, Cursed Child, I mean, I guess that's like a different story of Harry Potter and Stranger Things.
The calling is for the fan base, who know what that world is, but they want to see it live in front of them. How do they do that? You know, what are the characters like? And my character Did I say this before, that it was written as a man?
Xan Phillips: Yes, you did.
Jodie Steele: I did say that before.
Xan Phillips: And I remember it as well.
Jodie Steele: The brain, the brain is going to mush. So I think people who know this book, particularly this book, Picture You Dead, you do know it, but you don't know this version. And you know, we saw the set today. Oh my gosh, the design is just incredible. And everybody's takes on, on the characters. Maybe they're entirely different from what you had imagined when you were reading it.
So yeah, I think, I think it's actually even more fun if you haven't already read the book. Yes, I think that's is that is the it's the old school thing, isn't it? We we love a book that's been made into a movie. You've already read it and knows what you know what happens, but you want to go and see it on the screen.
Well, I think it's even cooler if you go and see it with, you know, humans in front of your face. So, yeah.
Xan Phillips: Yes, there is. It's like it's like bringing your imagination alive on stage, isn't it?
Jodie Steele: Exactly.
Xan Phillips: Yes. Well, I think you've made it sound very exciting, Jodie. And I'm, I'm, I'm in awe and also a little bit jealous that you're actually doing this.
I've never read any Peter James, but to, to be involved in something like this, a whodunit with detectives and
Jodie Steele: And you know, it's actually based, this book is Peter Met a real life art forger who's now an acclaimed copyist called David Henty. He met him and they kind of got chatting and David, you know, told him about his life and how he started fixing antiques for his dad when he was younger, and so learned the art of forgery.
So one of the characters in this book is based on a real forgerer that Peter James came across in his life. That is just pretty epic to me. And we met him at a press day. So I just could have sat and had him talk at me for hours. His life was insane. So, you know, just to know that it's based on something that really is happening, does happen, that human exists, and now it's on stage and in a book.
It's, yes, really epic.
Xan Phillips: That sounds fantastic. Well, the play itself, Picture You Dead, comes to the Mayflower Theatre on the 27th of February. You can buy your tickets at mayflower. org. uk. And all that leaves us to say is Jodie Steele, thank you very much for your company and break a leg.
Thank you.
When you get to Southampton.
I'll see you then.