'I'M DRIVEN BY EQUALITY - PEOPLE LIKE ME SHOULD BE GOOD ALLIES'

WITH NEW DRAMA RIDLEY ON OUR SCREENS, ACTRESS BRONAGH WAUGH REVEALS SHE WON'T BE CHASING THE BRIGHT LIGHTS OF HOLLYWOOD AND EXPLAINS WHY LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION IS SO IMPORTANT TO HER

- SAMUEL MCMANUS-MAXWELL

It's a balmy day when we meet Bronagh Waugh but a sense of cool breezes in with the 39-year-old as she arrives for our shoot, apologising for being ever so slightly late in her unmistakable Northern Irish accent.

Explaining that she had waited 55 minutes for an Uber to pick her up, she says her husband, Richard Peacock, offered to give her a lift.

"I said, 'You've got a child-free day, you're not wasting it on me!"" she laughs as she greets every member of the crew before sitting down for our chat.

Bronagh - who is starring as DI Carol Farman in ITV's Ridley alongside Line Of Duty actor Adrian Dunbar and Richard welcomed their first child together, son Oisín, in May last year.

And she returned to work on another ITV drama, Our House, just three weeks after giving birth.

"It was quite full-on and I'd had a C-section as well, so I probably maybe shouldn't have gone back quite so soon," she reflects.

"It was a real juggle. Weirdly, it's easier to juggle a newborn baby with filming than a toddler because I could just snuffle his cot into my trailer. Every time they changed the camera lens, I could nip in and feed him or my husband would stay and look after him.

And he was very quiet, he'd just sleep." However, the juggle wasn't as simple while filming Ridley - which was shot in locations including Lancashire and Yorkshire – with Bronagh revealing, “He’s one now, running around breaking things and throwing himself into tantrums, so it’s less easy to hide him because you can hear him before you see him!”

Bronagh may be better known these days for her gritty roles in dramas such as The Fall and Unforgotten but she cut her acting teeth on Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks, playing larger-than-life Cheryl Brady.