Fresh Meat star Zawe Ashton has a problem with “strong women” on screen – or rather, the phrase itself.
The actress, who plays party animal Vod in the E4 comedy, explained that she avoided using the phrase to refer to female characters “because it’s not about being strong, it’s also about being vulnerable and funny.”
The 30-year-old actress added: ”For me, the banner I want to wave, in terms of jump-starting writers of any gender, is just to make female protagonists as complex as their male counterparts.”
Zawe stars in new comedy Not Safe For Work as disillusioned Katherine, a newly divorced woman who has been shunted to Northampton to work in a new civil service department.
Katherine is a complex character: “She’s someone who has found herself dislocated from her own life.”
Zawe added: “Her marriage has failed, she’s lost a child and her career has been stalled by the budget cuts within her department in the civil service, the Immigration Pathway Team. She has essentially become an immigrant in her own life.
“She desperately wants to do something to help people who feel displaced, while simultaneously trying to work out exactly where she now belongs.”
Not Safe For Work starts on Channel 4 on Tuesday, June 30.
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