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29 October 2014
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Messiah
Maxine Peake in Messiah

Messiah IV - The Harrowing

Starts Sunday 28 August at 9.30pm on 91Èȱ¬ ONE



Maxine Peake as DS Vickie Clarke


Maxine Peake hasn't stopped working for the last three years.

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With her role as Veronica, the lairy and lovable neighbour in the hit Channel 4 drama Shameless, followed by the 91Èȱ¬ drama Faith and a stage play at the Royal Exchange, Peake is now back to work on the third series of Shameless and has never been happier.

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"With acting, it is always difficult to find time for a break because you never know when your next job is going to come up.

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"I love working and I've had such a great time working between television and theatre, but a holiday would be fantastic," she muses.

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Vickie is a new addition to the team and has been around for about six months. She is on her first assignment which is the investigation into Isabel Price's suicide.

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She sees some pretty gruesome sights, but despite all her retching and shaky hands, she takes it in her stride.

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"Vickie has to remove a ring from a corpse's hand and is shaking in her boots, but she just gets on with it.

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"Police work is always what Vickie wanted to do and she is particularly ambitious. She is a fast-track kid but we haven't seen her confidence emerge yet.

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"There is a bit of tension between Vickie and Duncan. She charges in at times and rubs him up the wrong way but he is protective of her. She's a bit of an upstart and a maverick who trusts her intuition," she says.

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This is Peake's first role as a police officer but she didn't have to look too far for inspiration.

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"My older sister Lisa has been a policewoman for about 14 years in Manchester city centre. So when I was about 15 I would go and wait for a lift in one of Bootle Street's interview rooms.

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"I've been out with Lisa and her work colleagues so I'm familiar with the whole set-up.

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"She's not like Vickie, although she did do some undercover work in licensing for a while, but I didn't really have to call her up and ask advice all the time," she explains.

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"I do expect she will get quite a bit of stick at work because of me playing a DS and I'm sure they will all be quite vocal in telling me what I did wrong - but I don't mind."

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Despite having a sister in the force, Peake never wanted to be a police officer herself and in fact when Lisa broke the news to the family she was nervous that her grandfather, a lifelong union man, would be upset.

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"I remember being embarrassed by the fact that she was going to join up - but I soon saw a whole different side to the police force.

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"There isn't the same respect for the police that there used to be and what Lisa and her colleagues go through, particularly on a Saturday night in Manchester, is appalling. I have huge admiration for her," she adds.

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"She's been punched and kicked and had takeaway food chucked in her face, and dealing with drunken people at the weekends is just a nightmare. I don't know how she does it without losing her temper.

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"That's not to say I made it easy for her when she was joining up," she laughs.

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"I remember they sent a sergeant round to the house to interview the family and I had an African awareness pendant on, trainers with an anarchy sign drawn on and a CND badge.

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"I was a right little rebel. He just ignored my attempts at anarchy and carried on chatting to us."

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Peake has been overwhelmed at the success of Shameless and how it has touched people, particularly in the North West.

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"I would be walking along the street and people would stop me to congratulate me on the drama - from men in suits with briefcases to little old ladies and bin-men. They all seemed to love it.

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"The success of Shameless really took all of us by surprise because initially we didn't know what we had on our hands. It was a different style of acting and it was made very quickly on a pretty small budget and not like anything I remember seeing on telly.

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"But with Paul Abbott's work you always know you have a gem."

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Despite being one of the UK's hardest-working television actresses, Peake doesn't hanker after the Hollywood lifestyle or trappings of fame.

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"I would love to do a good gritty British movie of some kind but there are so few about. I also would love to do more theatre - I used to prefer theatre because you had six weeks' rehearsal and then if you cocked it up one night you always had the next to get it right again, but I really enjoy telly now.

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"Television, ironically, used to make me more nervous than theatre - but I feel I'm getting the hang of it."

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Ironic coming from the girl who hasn't had a break from television acting for the last three years!


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