The Witches
The Pale Horse is the home of three rumoured witches in a tiny village called Much Deeping.
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Rita, Sheila and Kathy on The Witches
Writer Sarah Phelps has deliberately steered clear of stereotypical witches. What do you love about your characters?
Rita: My character is a strong woman, she’s lived a lot, she observes people and she enjoys being with the other witches. Nothing surprises her.
Kathy: There’s a timeless quality to these three women. I asked Sarah (Phelps) how long the women had lived together for. She said, "a decade or 500 years".
Sheila: There’s an assuredness to the way in which they move and observe people, which is quite forensic. They can see very deep into people. We’ve all found our little corners that we occupy, and we move as a trio, but neither are we a monolith either.
Kathy: We have our different gifts and strengths but we operate as one unit in our self-sufficient world.
How was it working with Rufus? How do your characters collide?
Rita: Working with Rufus was great and brought in another element to our world.
Kathy: We exist very much in our own world, but Rufus’s character comes crashing into that. As characters we’re intrigued by, and curious of, the outside world. These people come to us, we don’t invite them.
There鈥檚 a timeless quality to these three women. I asked Sarah how long the women had lived together for. She said, "a decade or 500 years".
How do the witches impact on the community?
Sheila: The witches are very much at the centre of this community so we exert this gravitational pull on everyone else towards us. We are constantly surveying everyone and everything, that’s one of our gifts. We have to be able to sense everything at the same time.
Rita: We stand back and observe.
How do you think the show will feel different to a usual whodunit?
Rita: This is really different from the other Christie’s I’ve read before. I’ve been in an Agatha Christie called The Sittaford Mystery, which I enjoyed, but The Pale Horse has a real sense of intrigue and the jigsaw pieces fitting together. This one is almost like a one-off.
