Wild At Heart and Unforgotten star Hayley Mills was delighted when she got the invitation to guest star in Death In Paradise season 13.
"This is one of the wonderful things about being an actor," she tells us. "You're sitting at home twiddling your thumbs, and then you get a script out of the blue to be in Death In Paradise and have two weeks in Guadeloupe!"
Hayley plays charity founder Nancy Martin, a wealthy resident of the Paradise Bay care home in Saint Marie, in the season's second episode, but her character meets an untimely end when she's fatally stabbed with one of her own knitting needles. Everyone else in the care home was occupied with a game of bingo when Nancy was killed — so who could the murderer be?
We caught up with Hayley to find out more about her role on the show...
Hayley Mills interview for Death In Paradise
What can you tell us about your character, Nancy Martin?
"It's difficult with these kind of stories knowing how much to give away! She loves bingo, and she considers herself to be rather one of the leaders of the group in the care home, a rather superior person — and I don't think she's terribly popular, quite frankly! That's always fun to play."
Nancy dies early on in the episode, but we still see you in flashbacks throughout. Did you enjoy filming those scenes to flesh out Nancy's story?
"Yes, it was wonderful — to be honest, in these sorts of parts you come in and you don't have an awful lot of lines to remember, but you do a nice job and you have a good time and then you go 'bye!'. Everybody else is getting up at 5am, sweating and learning lines, and you just pop in and out and go home! I think it appeals to the really lazy streak in my nature, but when you work, you work hard. I love these little short, sharp jobs. They're fun!"
Were you a bit disappointed not to have more scenes with Ralf Little and the rest of the regular cast because of Nancy's untimely demise?
"That's right, that's one of the disadvantages about being the corpse! But they were all so nice — Ralf is very charming and very good. The rest of us were all staying in the same hotel — Ellie [Haddington], Juliet [Cowan], Kevin [Harvey] and Akiya [Henry], who played my daughter. We met up on the beach, and then went 'oh, we've got to go to work tomorrow' — it felt like we were on holiday!"
Did you get to do much sightseeing while you were in Guadeloupe?
"I didn't, really. I was very happy, the hotel was on a little peninsula with a beach on either side. One was very good for swimming and sunbathing, and on the other you couldn't swim at all because there was an incredibly strong riptide. It was very beautiful — you could watch the sun coming up on the wild beach and going down on the peaceful one."
Was this your first time filming in the Caribbean?
"I hadn't filmed there myself, but many, many moons ago my father [actor Sir John Mills] made a film called Swiss Family Robinson, which was shot on the island of Tobago. That was wonderful for him, and I went over as a child — I was 13, I think? — and we spent Christmas in Tobago, it's a beautiful island."
Death In Paradise has just reached its 100th episode. What do you think is the secret of its enduring success?
"It's very well-made! It's escapism, and you're not confronted by what's going on in the world, which most of the time is depressing. The scripts are good and fun, the stories keep you guessing. I was thrilled to be asked to do it, and I hope I'll be asked again — but I suppose I can't because I got bumped off in this one!"
- Death In Paradise continues on BBC1 on Sundays at 9pm. All episodes are currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
