Interview with MyAnna Buring who plays Lilly in the new BBC Two drama series White Heat.

There is a fragile beauty about Lilly but she’s more tenacious than her ephemeral looks suggest. She has true Northern grit. Like Charlotte, she can see the road map of her life ahead and it daunts her. Marriage to a local lad in Bolton, pregnant before 20, working in a local shop.

But unlike Charlotte, she’s not academic, the only thing she was good at school was art. It’s not a subject which was taken seriously by her family and peers but that just makes her more resolved to pursue it and she gets a place at a London Art college. But self doubt can plague her. Perhaps this is why she is driven by a need to prove to herself that she is more than a vacuous pretty face. She will need all her tenacity to deal with the tragic events which await her.