OVER the past few months Rachel Tucker has been enjoying private meetings with a professional dominatrix.
Her husband has also found her surfing the internet for websites about high class escorts and prostitutes.
But she hasn’t developed a fascination with 50 Shades of Grey and she’s not on the hunt for a new line of work.
Her husband hasn’t been complaining either.
The Belfast-born actress has been preparing for a role that sees her take on a character like none she has played previously.
This week the London-based artist – who is just home from making her Broadway debut in New York – revealed the role that might shock some of her fans, as she took to the stage, in very little clothes, as a time-travelling dominatrix prostitute, in a revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s award-winning black comedy Communicating Doors at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Her role – as the high class prostitute Poopay – sees her travelling in time and helping a few others along the way, in the production directed by Lindsay Posner.
“It’s fair to say my fans are seeing a different side to me” the actor, who rose to fame after competing on Britain's I’d Do Anything talent contest in 2008, claims.
“I play a time-travelling dominatrix prostitute,” she adds, “so it’s very very far from anything I have ever played before, but it is so much fun and it’s a brilliantly written play. It’s a black comedy and the way Alan manages to realistically time travel us from 2020 back to 1980 is quite extraordinary, but it happens.”
After months of rehearsals, the 33-year-old, who has been London-based for 15 years now - where she lives with her theatre director husband and their two-year-old son Ben, is excited to finally bring the production, which opened on May 7, to the audience.
“It’s been great to get stuck into,” she claims “and has meant a few meetings with a dominatrix and some internet research on prostitutes and escorts, but my husband hasn't minded that,” she joked.
“The character is an English cockney lass, a prostitute who time travels and is streetwise, honest and has a huge heart, and something entirely new for me, but that is what I love about my job, you can become anyone.”
Fresh from her first stint on Broadway – Tucker moved her whole family, including their dog Barney, to New York last year while she played Meg in Sting’s The Last Ship - the former star of Wicked the Musical is also happy to simply be back in her adopted hometown and doing some ‘straight’ stage work.
“Playing Broadway has always been a dream of mine so it was literally a dream come true to be in New York last year,” she admits.
“I learnt so much from it too, as it was originating a role, a character, at the beginning of a play where anything was up for grabs, but I did miss the English people,” she explained.
“London is kind of my home now," she added, "so it’s a bench mark for me and I missed it. I missed the green spaces too and also, weirdly, the Chinese food, which they don’t really do the same in New York, although they have a lot Szechuan restaurants.”
Rachel Tucker stars in Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn at the Menier Chocolate Factory from May 7 to June 27. For tickets call the box office on 020 73781713
