them for who they are because people are
flawed and complicated, but then you can
just go and get someone new and shiny
and start the whole process again.”
Appleton grew up with a younger
brother in Witney, a small town in
Oxfordshire; her mother is a nurse for
the NHS, her father an architect. She was
an anxious child — “about everything”,
she says, eyes wide. “I never felt settled in
the world. I didn’t really get to grips with
life or going to school. You couldn’t pay me to go back.”
She tried to make it in to school for drama lessons but
would often stay at home during the day. “The world
felt big and scary. It was very much always worst-casescenario is going to happen. Convinced
of it. I’m so much better at coping with it
now, but I had to completely restructure
my natural way of thinking, which I’ve
worked on in quite a lot of therapy.”
Appleton “wrote off ” a drama degree
because she couldn’t sing. Instead, after
leaving school at 18, she moved to London
to pursue modelling, packed into a “model
house” by her agency.
“I was so young, and you’re on your
own, trying to figure it out. There needs to be an inde-
pendent body, a models’ union, to make sure agencies are
invested in the wellbeing of their young men and women.
The industry isn’t regulated, agencies take an extortionate
percentage [of your wage], and I don’t think we should be
putting 15-year-olds in swimsuits for advertisements.
Why are we doing that?”
Commodifying her body also changed the way she
understood it. “You become so aware that whether you
get a job is based on how you look and how slim you are.
It’s not good for you. I mean, no one is coming to you for
creative ideas. That is your value in this world and that
stretches to what you feel is your value in your regular life.”
At one point she got “thinner and thinner and thinner”
because of stress, “and I thought, ‘Oh wow, if I’m losing
weight then I’m doing the right thing.’ It’s so sad.”
In her mid-twenties she got a role in a short film, which
she gave a “bloody good go” — and she loved it, so much
that she kept acting, appearing in the BBC thriller Clique
and the Netflix fantasy drama The Witcher. “I’m annoyed it
took that long for me to have that confidence and to feel
strongly enough about something,” she says.
After years of feeling like she didn’t have enough confi-
dence to act, Appleton is currently starring in another big
hit: she plays a fictionalised Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend
of Sid Vicious who is haunted by drug addiction, in
Danny Boyle’s series Pistol, which is streaming on Disney+
now. “There were so many layers to playing Nancy — the
make-up, the hair, the voice, the clothes — so you peel
the character away at the end of the day,” she says. “I found
it easier to leave her at the door than playing Maggie,
whose life is not too dissimilar from mine.”
Appleton recently moved back in with flatmates in
Camberwell, going for walks, to the pub, watching telly, all
the normal stuff, trying not to think about how her life
might change this summer. She “absolutely adores”
Alderton, who spent a lot of time on set. “I would consider
her a friend. I hope she thinks the same,” she says laughing.
“For the record,” she leans down to my Dictaphone on the
table, “Dolly, we’re friends, OK! But I do feel like there’s
quite an amazing bond that has been forged, the fact she
has trusted me to play Maggie.”
Everything I Know About Love has certainly made
Appleton reflect on her twenties and that decade’s ups
and downs and muddles. “I think the main lesson is
that nothing has to be the same for the rest of your life —
you don’t need to know exactly what you’re doing all
the time.” ■Everything I Know About Love starts on Tuesday on BBC1,
with all episodes then available on iPlayer‘I do feel like an
amazing bond
has been forged,
the fact that
Dolly trusted me
to play Maggie’
Jacket, £3,610, and stockings, £140, Gucci. Vintage skirt, stylist’s
own. Arpeggia white gold choker and headband and Arpeggia white
gold necklace, POA, and Talisman rings, £7,950 each, De BeersEmma Appleton shares more stories from shooting Everything I Know About Love on Style’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/TheSTStyle
16 • The Sunday Times Style