Joanna Page was told 'you can't act - you're Welsh'

Joanna Page was speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival about her new autobiography

Gavin and Stacey star Joanna Page has said she was told at drama school that her performances were poor because she is Welsh.

Page, who played Stacey Shipman in the hit comedy, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in London where she says she was constantly told she could not act.

On her final visit to the school, a director's assistant told her he realised that she was not, in fact, a bad actress, but the problem was that she is Welsh, Page said.

"I couldn't believe it. I turned around and I walked out, and I have never, ever been back since," she told the Cheltenham Literary Festival on Monday.

"I'd left early to go and work at the Royal National Theatre and I was doing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and I came back because I wanted to do my three, which is when you do your monologues to get agents," she said.

"I had an agent by that point, but it was a point of principle, and I wanted to go back and I wanted to do my three."

The actress said a director's assistant came up to her and told her that "all these years" he thought she was a poor actress "but it's not that, it's that you're Welsh".

Page, who grew up in Swansea, also said during her career she had suffered "loads" of "MeToo moments" and said it was the "norm".

Joanna Page, pictured with Ruth Jones (right), on set filming the Gavin & Stacey Christmas Day special in Barry

"I remember one particular job I was doing on the telly and there was this one actor, and nobody liked working with him," she said.

"He was just very difficult to work with and was just so sort of smutty in everything he was saying, but you just had to get on with it.

"As a young female it's utterly terrifying and if somebody says stuff that is really inappropriate it is very difficult as a young woman to go, 'can we just stop filming?'"

Page, 48, who is married to fellow actor James Thornton, said an out-of-the-blue missed call from Gavin and Stacey co-writer James Corden tipped her off that the finale of the show was being made, meaning the 2019 Christmas special cliffhanger of Nessa's proposal to Smithy would be resolved.

Gavin & Stacey cast (L-R): Nessa, Stacey, Gwen, Gavin and Uncle Bryn

"I just thought, 'oh my God, it's happening, it's happening'. I was excited because I thought, 'I'm going to know if he says yes, I'm going to know if he says yes,"' she said.

"When they said, 'don't tell anybody,' I said, 'oh my God, James, of course I won't'.

"I put the phone down and phoned my mother. And then I told my husband and then when the script arrived, I just showed it to mum straight away and James.

"One time I was trying to learn my lines and I was sitting on the bed in my bedroom with my mum going over the lines and I made my daughter go out of the room.

"She had a funny look on her face as she was leaving, and I looked under the bed and she put her iPad under there and on record. I took it out and deleted it."