October 11 Group Report

Meeting Nicola after the show

Lucy : After the play, we waited for Nicola at the top of the stairs. We congratulated Claudie and Tamzin on a wonderful performance when they appeared. Nicola was last to come up the stairs and we all moved towards the doors so we could talk to her as a group.

Kathy : Nicola looked a little surprised at how many of us there were but at the same time, she seemed to have been expecting us.

Anna : When Nicola appeared, I tried to stay calm and gave her a high five. I was on the phone to my mother at the time and she didn’t believe me when I said that I was standing next to Nicola, so I made Nicola speak to my mother on the phone.

Wendy : Initially, I was in shock that Nicola Walker was standing right smack bang in front of me. I just said hello and she also said hello, and I stood there thinking, you’re Nicola Walker! I soon realised she’s the most down to earth person you could meet and felt like she was chatting with us like she was one of our group.

Emily : There were many hellos and introductions and Nicola was given a gift bag from the group (wonderfully prepared by Liga). Nicola seemed overwhelmed by the gesture and eagerly hunted through her gift bag, pulling out things and seeing what was inside.

Presents for Nicola

Liga : I made Nicola a hand-made canvas, with a picture of Ruth and Harry on it which was surrounded by items which were meant to represent places on the grand tour which Harry and Ruth should have taken. We had all signed it on the back; Nicola spent some time looking at all the names, before seeing the word “adore” written on the front and saying “oh, I do adore him” (indicating Harry in the photo).

Gem : I made a scrapbook for Nicola about Ruth Evershed from Spooks Series 2 to 5, and Nicola spent time going through the pages and recalled the filming and lovely moments. It was great to see her smile as she remembered it all.

Wendy : I gave Nicola a DVD of one of Peter Firth’s old movies, “The Flipside of Dominic Hyde”. She laughed when she saw it. Apparently, Peter Firth kept telling her to watch it, as he is very proud of that film. Nicola hadn’t got round to it yet, so she was thankful for the gift. I also asked Nicola for Peter Firth’s phone number, but sadly, she didn’t give it to me.

Lucy : That was a “Play for Today” drama. Nicola started to reminisce those TV dramas from the 70s and 80s.

Anna : I gave Nicola a whole bunch of muffins and she joked that eating them, they would make her fat. Someone had also put in a bag of sweets, and Nicola said that her son, Harry, would enjoy those.

Kathy : I gave her a lot of American chocolate from an excellent chocolatier near my house. It included some New England specialties like pumpkin truffles, chocolate bark with dried cranberries, and also some chocolate covered pretzels and turtles with caramel and walnuts, including chocolate covered potato chips. Nicola joked that just the other night, “I had chocolate in one hand and some crisps in the other and I was eating them at the same time in order to create the experience of eating chocolate covered crisps.”

Emily : Nicola thanked everyone profusely for her gifts, which was very lovely of her. She said that there should be some sort of UK theatre deal where people from overseas should be given free trips to London to see plays. She seemed a bit bowled over that so many people from so many different countries would travel to see her in a play.

Kathy : I asked her if she could come to Broadway and she jokingly said yes in a very dead pan way and asked me if I could arrange it. I gave her one of my business cards. Since my day job has a connection with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I said to her, “if you ever want your son to study at MIT…” and she interrupted me and shouted “I do!!” 

Liga : At one point, the theatre’s security guards got a bit worried for Nicola’s sake and came over to ask if she was alright, and Nicola said she was ok. The other guard was curious as well and asked my husband Richard what was going on? “Is it her birthday?” he asked, and Richard told him : “No, actually it is…erm… her fan club.” Well those guards continued to keep an eye on us until we left. 

Comments about Spooks Series 10

Lucy : Nicola asked what we thought of Spooks Season 10 so far. We all gave a very enthusiastic response and she seemed pleased! We then somehow got onto the subject of the bench scene in episode 4 of Series 10 and mentioned that that we had been to St James’ park earlier on in the afternoon. I showed her a photo of us all at the bench they used in that episode for the Harry/Ruth scene and she was smiling and very interested in the photo. We told her how we had to move the bench (the cheek!) into position and she laughed and agreed that the bench had to be moved a few times because of the rain during filming. She asked if the pigeons were there again too!

Emily : We moved on to photos and Nicola seemed more than happy to have photos taken with her. She was the one that insisted on the group photo: “we have to have at least one group photo, yes!?”

Lucy : As the photos were being taken, Nicola joked that she was always seen in the same jacket in photos. I told her that it was a very nice jacket! I then said that Miranda Raison told me and Emily that she had Nicola’s black coat from episode 505. Nicola seemed confused, insisting that it would have been way too big for Miranda because she was “tiny”! Props were then mentioned and Nicola said how she still had clothes from the pre-exile series, including the puffy jacket from the episode 409 bus scene that has since sat in her wardrobe even though she knew she would never ever wear it.

Emily : After all this, we asked if she still had some time to sign some stuff for everyone (as we had already taken up a lot of her time) and she was more than happy to do it! I think pretty much everyone got something signed, from DVD covers to canvasses. She was very lovely and chatting away about Spooks as she signed.

Kathy : Just before Nicola left for the evening, she told me that she recognized my voice from somewhere. I reminded her that I’d met her in June when Spooks was filming in the streets of London, but she actually recognized my voice from the YouTube video my husband took of her and Peter Firth walking down the street. It was truly the Best Night Ever!

Liga : On our way out we passed Tamzin with her friends and I told her that she was brilliant tonight and asked her to take a picture with me. She was very happy to do that and said- “Its always a great pleasure to see Nicola Walker fans. So its you guys I have been tweeting to, right?” And we said, “yes its us”. She laughed and said, “Good job you all voted for Nicola in that poll regarding UK cult TV’s sexiest female. You must have pressed that button quite a lot!” We all laughed about that.

At the end of the evening, there were many VERY happy Spooks/Nicola fans.


 

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