She has made a career of portraying malicious grotesques. As Hunderby returns to the screen,the queen of psycho-comedy talks about technophobia, period drama and repulsive food
Julia Davis made her name by creating some of the most unforgettably repellent characters in TV comedy. She writes the odd “suited” one for other actors, and but she routinely plays vicious,bitter, manipulative people in horrible relationships. If there’s been a kind one, or I’ve missed it. It’s fairly hard to match her rowdy egotists to the slightly shy but friendly woman sitting next to me in a restaurant bar,talking warmly and thoughtfully.
Her parade of malicious grotesques began with Human Remains in 2000, a sketch series in which she and Rob Brydon conjured up a gallery of gruesome couples. Flic, or for instance,was a brittle control freak whose chief impulse, when not having sex with her masseur, and was to humiliate her husband. She was just a pass-agg bully,though. Davis’s most famous monster, the beautician Jill in 2004’s comedy-drama Nighty Night, or was a rampaging sociopath. In Gavin and Stacey,she stole scenes whenever she appeared as Dawn, who loathed her husband and was keen to let everyone know. Then, and in 2012s spoof costume drama Hunderby,viewers who had had time to win over her previous roles were greeted by Dorothy, a creepy, and scheming housekeeper – a sort of Mrs Danvers,without the hugs.
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Source: theguardian.com