For decades, the Queen Vic pub has been a staple of British life, as familiar to EastEnders viewers as their own local. Its landlady was famously played by one Jewish actress, Tracy-Ann Oberman. Now we can make that two.
Actress Harriet Thorpe has taken the mantle of the ultimate soap opera matriarch, and returned to her own real-life East End roots.
Harriet Thorpe with co-star Colin Salmon (Photo: BBC)
Following in the footsteps of the late Barbara Windsor and Oberman, Thorpe is at the centre of the action in Albert Square now that her character, Elaine Peacock, has been handed the keys of the nation’s most famous watering hole.
“I’m going back to the East End — it’s coming home… I’m going back to my heritage,” she says. Thorpe’s great-grandmother lived in the East End before the family moved to Ellis Island and then to New York, only to return with her mother when her father, the breadwinner, died.
Thorpe, who is best known for turns in the 1990s as Fleur in Absolutely Fabulous and Carole in The Brittas Empire, believes that it is the “extraordinary, strong women” of Jewish heritage who have most shaped her, and says they feed into her portrayal of the no-nonsense Elaine.
Thorpe with Shane Ritchie in EastEnders (Photo: BBC)
“It was the most wonderful moment of standing behind the bar and thinking ‘Elaine’s arrived’,” she says of her first day on set.
Back in Victorian London, Thorpe’s great-grandmother was not afraid to be one of the rare women who dared to ride a bicycle around London.
And, following in the family tradition of women going against the expectations of the times, her grandmother undertook a degree in her forties, while her mother, Gillian Freeman, wrote the ground-breaking novel The Leather Boys, about working-class biker boys who fell in love. It was published in 1961, when homosexuality was still illegal.
“She was this extraordinary, liberal visionary, and there for us as children always,” Thorpe recalls.
Thorpe with Kellie Bright in the soap (Photo: BBC)
Her father, Edward, was an actor, writer and dance critic for the Evening Standard newspaper and, while she credits both her parents for giving her and her sister, the actor Matilda Thorpe, “creative, artistic lives”, it is the strong women of her past to whom Thorpe turns for inspiration.
She adds: “It’s all about strong women who have a voice. That’s what drives me. I look back at my heritage, and the women who I’m directly related to, and how my mother went on women’s liberation marches with my dad.
"She had the most successful, vibrant, diverse, wonderful life, creating a voice for us today.”
Thorpe, who lives in north London, studied dance at the Royal Ballet School before training at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1979, where she met Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French.
To prepare for the role of Elaine, she looked back at the long line of actresses who’d inspired her, from Bette Davis to Helen Mirren, along with the characters she’d played before. These women helped to equip her with the confidence to take on the role.
“I’m thrilled to be playing Elaine…[She] is a liberal, strong woman who takes on some of the most terrifying people who bully and do terrible things to other people, and she’s not afraid,” Thorpe says.
Having raised her two children alone after splitting up with their father, Thorpe can identify with Elaine’s strength of character and forthright nature: “I brought up my kids on my own and in that sense, and because I trained as a dancer, it doesn’t matter if you feel pain; you keep going.
Harriet Thorpe outside the Queen Vic (Photo: BBC)
“My strapline for Elaine is: ‘Get off the pity party. Get on with it and get over it.’”
And don’t expect to catch Elaine behind the bar dressed demurely in pencil skirt and kitten heels.
Thorpe may be nearing retirement age, but she is seeking adventure for herself and Elaine, sartorially and more broadly in life: “I’m there in platform boots and faux-leather trousers. Elaine’s got balls!
“I’m going to be the women that we are today. We’re not diminished [or] set aside. I don’t think ‘I’m going to retire now’, I think ‘What’s next?’
“I’m going to keep working, and that’s what Elaine does. We don’t have to stop because we reach 66. This is a beginning.”
