CONNIE NIELSEN

CLOSE TO ME tomorrow, 9pm, Channel 4

1I play Jo Harding, who can’t remember the past year after falling down the stairs at home. We had doctors on set advising on Jo’s recovery process but they said she would have been resting most of the time – which isn’t great for drama! Besides, Jo doesn’t feel like resting, she wants to find out what happened to her.

2

The easiest scenes to film were the ones where Jo is showing love and affection towards her two children because I have a family of five boys whom I adore. I find myself using so many superlatives to describe them and I really missed them as we were filming in England and they were at school in our home country, Denmark.

3

The sessions we had with intimacy co-ordinators were almost like therapy, they were so enlightening and instructive. But also essential. The last thing I, or the actors playing my character’s young lovers, wanted was to feel awkward during such scenes.

4

We filmed out of sequence, so the cuts and bruises Jo suffered in her fall had to be lessened or enhanced, depending where in the story we were. It took a lot of organising, but the brilliant makeup team eventually got the whole process down to an hour and a half.

5

The Hardings’ futuristic house (above) was in Hastings – we wanted to create this comfortable, luxurious landscape where you couldn’t imagine wicked things happening. There were other beautiful locations including Windsor and Eastbourne – and I loved it! I want to take a holiday on the south coast soon.