Reposted from The Guardian by Bim Adewunmi
Television's coolest characters often come with a signature "thing". The Fonz from Happy Days had his leather jacket and his thumbs. Master William from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air had his hi-top fade and loud trousers. In the Channel 4 comedy Fresh Meat, Vod has her off-the-wall clothes and that withering gaze that cuts down foolishness at 20 paces. She's easily the coolest character on television at the moment, but when I tell that to the woman who plays her, the response is charmingly modest. "I would really like to keep anyone who says that in my pocket, as I go about my daily life," says Zawe Ashton (the Zawe is pronounced like "Bowie"). "When I hit a low point, I'd just ask, 'What's that you're saying in there? I'm the coolest person on TV? OK, I'll take that!'"
With the third season of the show starting on Monday, it feels fair to say that Ashton is the breakout star of Fresh Meat. Her many memorable moments include preparing coq au vin with a sword (at posh boy JP's family home) and a lecture-hall monologue about Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children ("I feel like I've got this pompous, fat, naked man sitting on my face, and he's resting his big, overrated bollocks on my airways"). She is the show's wry centre, looking askance at the dubious decisions made by her housemates and doling out wisdom as necessary. The character works best in concert with the others, though, and the ensemble is excellent, something Ashton puts down to a meticulous casting process and a writing team who really understand the characters. "Everyone in this show was put through a very rigorous process," she says, "and I think that's real testament to Sam and Jesse [Bain and Armstrong, the show’s creators]. They were determined to find a group that worked together, and not just go, 'Who's hot right now?'"
In person, Ashton is only superficially like her plain-speaking, no-holds-barred alter ego: her speaking voice is slightly less deep, far less estuary than Vod's, and she's clearly more prone to both chuckling and thinking before speaking. The source of Vod's cool – The Essence Of Vod, if you will – can be boiled down to a simple but powerful philosophy: she doesn't care what anyone thinks. "I always describe her as having no subtext, no filters," says Ashton. Combined with the fact that she's a girl – and a black girl at that, which is almost never brought up as an issue to be "tackled" – Vod was primed for cult status from the start.
To read the full interview, click here.
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