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‘I said I knew the fridge there quite well but stopped short of saying why’: Olivia’s father’s body is taken to the morgue. Illustration: Marc Aspinall
‘I said I knew the fridge there quite well but stopped short of saying why’: Olivia’s father’s body is taken to the morgue. Illustration: Marc Aspinall

Playing dead: my part as a corpse that came back to haunt me

This article is more than 7 years old

When Olivia Williams was starting out as an actor, one of her first roles was as a dead body in Poplar morgue, providing her with a darkly funny anecdote. But 20 years on the story took a poignant twist…

Here is a true story that has been rattling round my head for the three years since my father died. There’s a quotation from Hamlet that rattles around with it, comprising my father’s favourite lines. Although you may recognise them, you probably haven’t heard them spoken by an actor because in performance they are usually cut.

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

One of my first jobs, well over 20 years ago, was in a TV cop show playing a corpse. I think I had one “living” scene in which the normally lovely Jason Flemyng had to pretend to be a mean and violent husband, after which my character drowned in the Thames. The corpse was fished out of the water and I ended up with two more scenes in a morgue being identified by Jason and the star of the show.

The morgue scene was filmed in a real morgue in Poplar, east London, on a Sunday, so most of the comings and goings there were reduced. The duty morgue attendant was present, but none of the offices and facilities were running at the busy week-day capacity.

I had been fitted with a full prosthetic bloated face; my entire naked body was made-up to be bluish and mottled. Thames mud was shoved up my nose, in my ears, eyes, nails and hair, and before each take I was liberally sprayed with brownish water – which was cold because the hot water in the morgue is switched off at the weekends – by which time, each particular hair on my body did stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. I was laid out on a zinc bed and, during the scene, slotted back into the vast fridge, which was “open plan” and L-shaped inside. There were no other bodies in the section of the fridge I was in, but there were some at the far end.

As I was pulled out of the fridge to be identified by Jason, the scene repeatedly came to a halt. Regrettably, the corpse of his dead wife was visibly shivering, rendering my television debut performance as a corpse both rubbish and unusable. The director politely enquired if it was possible to hold off shivering for the duration of the take and I politely replied that the very nature of the body’s response to cold is involuntary; that is to say, much as I wanted to be a trooper and an obliging actor with an astounding list of special skills including playing dead, I was unable to help him on this occasion. But if he ever needed an actor who could juggle on horseback I would be happy to help.

He then enquired of the duty morgue attendant if it was possible to turn the fridges off so I could warm up enough to stop shaking, and the attendant replied that after about half an hour the bodies would begin to smell. It was decided to leave the fridges on. In the end a bright spark (and I use this expression advisedly) had the idea to put a very hot lamp under my zinc bed. Thus, like a badly grilled fishfinger, my back, buttocks and calves were slightly burnt, while my knees, tummy and nipples remained convincingly frozen, and I was able to desist from shivering between the cries of “Action” (or in my case “Inaction”) and “Cut.” At this point the star of the show asked me if I was OK, and I said I was fine. The decision was then taken to swap the scene order so that instead of moving straight to my second corpse scene alone with Jason, she did her next scene and was then free to go. I waited in the morgue attendant’s office. The heating was off, it being the weekend, and any contact with warm fabric rubbed the body make-up off, so I was supplied with one of those tinfoil wraps they give to marathon runners, to insulate me from the cold, tiled room.

The star having completed her scene and gone home in the failing winter light, the morgue was re-set for my last scene of the day. By the time we wrapped it was dark outside and I was shown to the staff shower to scrub off the worst of the Thames mud and blue body make-up under a dribble of unheated water in the unstaffed staff quarters, and I have to say a few tears of self-pity mingled with the Thames mud and the cold morgue water. By the time I staggered in through the front door of my parents’ house (for despite being 25 I still lived in my childhood home) I was wallowing in misery – my body ached, I was a useless corpse and my career was a toxic fishfinger.

My loving and supportive parents tore themselves away from One Man and his Dog, mixed me a hot toddy and listened to my woes. In their warm and indulgent company my plight was soon transformed into the exaggerated, macabre extended anecdote you are reading now. The tears of self-pity turned to laughter (they especially liked the bit about the fridge), and we settled down to watch a re-run of Dad’s Army and finish off the cold cuts from the Sunday roast I’d missed.

‘My mother, suddenly and quite understandably, wanted to know where they were taking my father’s body… I knew the answer’: Olivia Williams returns to the morgue with her father. Illustration: Marc Aspinall/Observer

If this was a movie we would cut to a blue light flashing outside my parents’ house. It was the night my father died, in that same house, some 20 years later. I had never experienced the steady stream of strangers that are attendant upon an unexpected death in a private house – the paramedics, the police, a detective, which seemed odd when an old man had died of a heart attack, and finally whoever it is that takes the body to the morgue. My mother, suddenly and quite understandably, wanted to know where they were taking my father’s body. The man replied that since the nearest morgue, at King’s Cross, was closed for refurbishment, they would be taking him to…

At this point I knew the answer. He and I said “Poplar” at the same time. He could tell that there was some kind of recognition, but neither of us knew what to do with the unexpected unison. I said I knew the fridge there quite well, but stopped short of saying why and my mother helpfully explained that I am an actor, and we had a little chat about some shows he might have seen me in – that I’d played a detective once, and a corpse…

I could finish this story with a discourse on the strange places you see in my job, or the uncomfortable truths you are forced to contemplate. I could take you to some of the places I have gone in my head that I might sometimes wish to unthink. I followed in my father’s footsteps to Oxford and Venice, Botswana and California and the end of each journey was always a glass of something, some food and an anecdote that made you laugh. But this story doesn’t have a proper ending because when my father followed in my footsteps to Poplar, he never came back to tell the tale.

This story is dedicated to the paramedics who came to our house on 22 November 2013. Thank you for your kindness to us in extremis

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