It was a hot Friday morning in July when I woke up to a WhatsApp from an unsaved number.
“Hi Natalie, nice to meet you, I’m Barak, the producer of The 90s,” the message read in Hebrew. “I’d like to speak to you about Margaret’s role”. In my sleepy haze I thought he was talking about a 90s club night in a few weeks' time.
“Can I call you back?” I asked. “I’m about to do a Zoom with my family in England.”
“Sure,” he said. “Happy zooming.”
At 1pm, after a strong coffee and a missed call from the same number, I phoned back. Barak, it turned out, wasn’t a club promoter wanting names for a guest list. He was in fact a TV producer, working on a new season of Israel’s most popular sitcom, The 1980s, now called The 1990s, which tells the life story of Israeli stand-up comedian and all-round national treasure, Shalom Assayag.
I shifted in my seat.
“Are you in Tel Aviv?” Barak asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you have plans to go anywhere in the next three months?”
“No,” I said. “Israel just put England on the red list so I’m here for the foreseeable.”
“Great!” he said. “The part is yours. Now I have to get back to cooking meatballs for my family. Shabbat shalom.”
Nothing is meant to happen in Israel on a Friday morning, but had I just had the biggest break of my career? I’ve been in TV shows here plus plenty of commercials but nothing this big or mainstream.
The phone rang again. It was Tali, my agent since 2016. “Are you ready to be recognised in the street?” she asked excitedly. “This show is HUGE. Mazeltov!”
I had submitted an audition two months earlier but totally forgotten about it. Margaret, while British, was meant to be 50 — she is the mother of a 23-year-old aerobics teacher called Becky, who joins the show as the fiancée of a young Shalom Assayag in 1993. I remember thinking I was too old for Becky and too young for Margaret. But I got my ring-light and tripod out and filmed a quick clip in front of my sea-blue bedroom wall. At a heart-wrenching moment where I was meant to hug my daughter at the mikveh, I hugged myself instead, just as I had on FaceTime with my niece Maya during lockdown.
Something must have worked, because weeks later I was filming the same scene in a dilapidated mikveh near Savyon, except my daughter was now played by long-limbed, six-foot-tall Israeli actress Ofri Laski, who is so beautiful I’m flattered to think anyone might imagine I could give birth to her.
My first day on set was hilarious and startling in equal measure — I had absolutely no idea what was going on. A taxi picked me up at 4.30am and drove me to a disused high-school in Lod. This was our unit base for the production, and with just a handful of working air conditioners in the sprawling building and two outside toilets, it was a long way from Downton Abbey.
Inside the old school gym was a carefully constructed set straight out of the 1990s. The props were authentic (Discmans, answering machines, the first brick-like mobile phones), and costumes were bright.
I knew from Google that my co-workers were famous faces in the Israeli comedy scene, but I didn’t know who any of them were. I quickly had to learn two sets of names. Ofer Shechter plays Gidi; Shlomi Koriat plays Mordi. Evelin Hagoel plays Moroccan-Israeli mother and queen of the family, Lilian. And most confusingly of all, Daniel Assayag, 29, plays his father Shalom Assayag in his youth, while Shalom himself plays his father, Prosper, in middle age. Everyone spoke Hebrew at 400 miles an hour with some Moroccan thrown in for good measure. Even small parts, like that of local gangsters Penso and Halabi, were played by big-name Israeli actors (Moris Cohen and Herzl Tobey respectively). Everyone was brilliant at both acting and improvisation.
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With co-star Bobby Lax (Natalie Blenford)
I was warmly welcomed from the moment I arrived, yet there was some cause for concern in the make-up department, with Tanya the lead make-up artist declaring “You’re not old enough!” when she set eyes on me. We played around with foundations, eventually settling on Estée Lauder Double-Wear to control my skin in 90-degree heat and I worked with the wardrobe director to define a look for Margaret: florals and bright colours were in; black was out. After one scene with my hair down, it was pinned up, a look that apparently aged me a tiny bit.
For the next month, my life was a whirlwind of early starts, late finishes and hastily learned dialogue. When I told Israeli people that I would be appearing in The 1990s, they looked at me with a mix of admiration and wonder. How did you get the part? they all asked. How does it feel to be in such a mainstream show?
The answer is: pretty incredible. Last Thursday, straight after the evening news on Channel 13, our first episode went live. I had been the unofficial star of that week’s pre-show trailer, which excitedly declared “The English are coming!” and showed me eating the henna paste from Shalom and Becky’s Hina celebration and declaring “That is delicious!” It was a culture clash comedy moment, complete with bright colours and eccentricity, which is what Bobby Lax (who plays my husband, Edward) and I were there to provide. I now have four more episodes to go before the season ends.
Will TV stardom change my Israeli life? Well I did just get recognised by the owner of my local café, so that was exciting. But in all honesty, I’d love it if this show helped pave the way into more Israeli productions. Because it’s certainly a difficult industry to break into if you’re a new immigrant. Whatever the future brings, it’s been an honour to bring British manners and multiple plot lines centred on Marmite to Tirat HaCarmel in the 1990s.
It also proves you should never totally ignore those calls from unknown numbers: you never know what could be waiting for you on the other end of the line.
“The 1990s”/ “Shnot HaTishim” is now showing on Channel 13, Israel. For more information about the show (in Hebrew) 13tv.co.il/featured-series/1990s/
