Silk actress Maxine Peake, who stars as former News of the World and Sun editor Rebekah Brooks in this week’s Comic Strip Presents satire Red Top, has revealed how she jumped at the chance to be in the production.
“When I heard it was Comic Strip I just asked if I could be in it,” she told the Observer newspaper, “and when I heard that it was Rebekah Brooks I thought ‘Brilliant’.
“The Brooks part is obviously a caricature,” continued Maxine,” who made her name in Victoria Wood’s dinnerladies, “but I tried to pick up on elements of her character. People who’ve met her say: ‘I didn’t want to like her but I did.’ Obviously she has some extraordinary charm that people really seem to fall for.”
Inspired by the phone-hacking debacle, the 1970s-set story follows Northern girl Rebekah who unwittingly becomes chief executive of News International and gets caught up in a “Watergate-style scandal”.
“Like our previous The Hunt For Tony Blair which was set in the 1960s, Red Top lampoons the world of politics and press proprietors, and is set in a Boogie Nights-style parallel universe with a disco soundtrack,” said Peter Richardson who masterminded the project.
The comedy also stars Harry Enfield as Brooks' former husband, Ross Kemp, while Russell Tovey is Andy Coulson and Stephen Mangan reprises his role as Tony Blair.
Red Top can be seen on Gold at 10pm on Wednesday
