The Mumbles legend spoke about her friend, real name Gaynor Sullivan, whose music appears in a Swansea-based episode of new Amazon Prime series, Kill Jackie
Catherine Zeta-Jones pictured at the global premiere of Prime Video’s Kill Jackie(Image: Andrew Timms/Prime Video)
The coming together of two Welsh legends in Amazon Prime’s latest violent and funny thriller, Kill Jackie is something to behold.
An eight-part, glamorous and gritty drama starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as the main character, drug dealer-turned art dealer, Jackie Price being hunted down by a global gang of super assassins, the show is peppered with lots of Welsh Easter eggs and a touching nod to fellow Mumbles resident, the late Bonnie Tyler.
One of the episodes filmed and set in Swansea entirely as it follows Zeta-Jones’ Jackie across the globe trying to outrun the hitmen – and WalesOnline caught up with her where she spoke about why it was her “favourite” episode. For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter
With images of Tom Jones, Welsh flags hidden in shot and lines that only sound right in a Welsh accent, Catherine was keen to “put her own stamp” on the show and the role of Jackie is the first major role she’s used her own accent for.
“I know this woman, Jackie,” she said. “When I decided I wanted to play her Welsh, it opened up so many emotions for me of playing such a fun character in the closest way of me speaking. And it added much more humour for me, much more emotion.
“It made her real to me, because even though I don’t know international drug dealers or people working in the art world where they’re doing dubious tax-free things, I know this woman, Jackie.
“One of my mother’s friends….She’s a combination of people I know, even my body language and the way—it was liberating!”
And I think right now in my career, I just want to do things that are fun, that I can put my own stamp on. And you don’t get more of your own stamp than speaking the way I speak, and I just had a blast with her. And I hope we do more, because I’m not done with Jackie Price.”
Catherine has certainly put her own stamp on it, from Tom Jones artwork and a hidden red dragon handbag snuck into shot, but music-wise too, the soundtrack is packed with Welsh artist, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, The Alarm and the late Bonnie Tyler, a good friend of the actress, whose 1984 song Here She Comes plays over the end credits of the episode filmed in Wales.
“The soundtrack on the show is amazing, but, you know [I said] ‘we have to have this, we have to have that.’
“We wanted to use one of, I keep calling her Gaynor, one of Bonnie’s songs, but we were trying to avoid the absolute classics, you know, the iconic ones. They said, ‘We’ve got a Bonnie Tyler song,’ but this was all way before her passing. I wasn’t really familiar with that song so much.”
After Tyler’s July passing Catherine said: “It just touches me now much deeper to the core, you know, because it’s perfect.
“It’s perfect for Jackie, it’s perfect for my character, it’s perfect for Wales, and her vocals on it are just incredible. [We] did try to find something that was different, that was new, newer to a different audience.
“But it just worked out very poignant in the end, and no, she didn’t know we were using it, I didn’t call her up and say, “Darling, can I use this?’ But she would have been thrilled.”
Kill Jackie, which launches on October 2 on Amazon Prime also stars Daniel Ings from The Gentleman and is directed by Damon Thomas of Killing Eve fame. It’s taken from the book The Price You Pay in which Jackie Price is a man but the team behind the series wanted to flip the script and took a punt in contacting Catherine’s agent.
Turns out, she loved it. And the show was a big deal for her.
“I said to [executive producer, Peter Lawson] and our writers, ‘I want to play her Welsh’. There are many reasons why that was a big deal for me. Firstly, I’ve never, in the whole of my career, played a Welsh woman with a Welsh accent. I’ve never actually filmed anything in Wales. I’ve been all over the world and never actually filmed anything in my country!” said the Oscar-winner.
“I’ve always had to do accents, which I’m very happy to do, from Spanish, American to every regional accent in the UK, and when you work in another accent part of your brain is constantly thinking about the way your mouth is forming the words – so to alleviate that and have one less thing to think about has been wonderful! It’s been liberating not to have to do that, and it’s enabled me to throw in stuff that I maybe wouldn’t have thought of because half of my brain was thinking accent while the other one was thinking character.
“When you first see Jackie, she is in a fabulous outfit done up to the nines, strutting along the river beside the incredible Guggenheim Museum and then you hear the way she speaks! It’s a great moment because what comes out of Jackie’s mouth doesn’t go with the image of the woman you first meet!
“Jackie is a cat with nine lives, a woman of many disguises and many different personality traits which the audience will get to discover over the course of the series.”
Filming in Swansea, too, was a huge plus for the star. It’s where she first trod the boards of local theatre and where her children Dylan and Carys – with husband Michael Douglas – spent endless childhood summers with their grandparents.
“It began what has been a wonderful international journey through some fantastic locations in Bilbao, San Sebastián, London, Wales,” she said of the world-wide locations Kill Jackie explores during fiming.
“It’s not just a few locations and a studio interior, we go all over the place and visually it’s really exciting. But for me, filming not just in my home country but my hometown was very special. It was great to go back to Swansea, back to streets that I remember. The first thing I did was go to Johnnies, my favourite fish and chip shop, and Joe’s Ice Cream – their Welsh classic vanilla is phenomenal and I highly recommend people head to Swansea for them!
“We filmed very close to where I went to dancing school and where my grandmother was brought up, nearby to where my auntie went to church – my childhood was all in this area. People know me there and the people who lived in the street where we filmed were very sweet – they were very quiet while we were shooting but then said, “Hiya Cath”. They’re proud of me there, genuinely proud of me and it makes my heart soar. I have a very special place in my heart for Wales and the Welsh people.”
Kill Jackie is available to stream on Amazon Prime from October 2.
