Top by BALLY.
What’s your favorite film character entrance or introduction of all time?
The goat is gone, the glass of water is shaking, the kids are panicking, Jeff Goldblum is being Jeff Goldblum and the idiotic lawyer p**s off to the bathroom (“When you gotta go you gotta go”), only to be devoured moments later – trousers around his ankles – by the glorious T-Rex. What an entrance. In fact, that toilet scene in Jurassic Park inspired me to write a song when I was ten called Man on the Bog; a tragic retelling of this story as seen from the T-Rex’s eyes. I’m sure a cassette recording exists somewhere amongst Bungay Middle School’s music department although I’d dread to hear how it’s stood the test of time.
If you had to ask advice from someone you didn’t know, whom would you pick?
Lemmy.
What’s the first story (true or fictitious, written or performed or told) that you remember being entranced by?
I watched the 1975 film Picnic At Hanging Rock when I was about 12 years old. It had such a profound effect on me, it spooked me and engrossed me equally. It was the ambiguity of it all paired with that brilliantly ominous soundtrack.
What scene from a TV show or movie always makes you hungry?
TV doesn’t make me hungry but it does make me thirsty. Coffee, whisky and cocktails have had their fair share of cinematic moments. It’s usually black coffee drunk by frazzled detectives who are having a breakthrough on a murder case at 3am all alone in their run down office or whisky in beautiful tumblers sipped by baddies as they broker some kind of dodgy deal in a dimly lit yet tasteful art deco room or Tom Cruise reciting barman poetry in Cocktail… that does it for me.
(R) Top and trousers by KEJI DENIM.
If aliens exist and visit the Earth, which film should we screen for them?
I’d invite them to watch the entire Planet Earth boxset to show them the best of what we’ve got. And then I’d ask them if I could join then on a ride in their spaceship.
One of your newest projects, Harlots, is set in an 18th century brothel – has the role altered or augmented the way you perceive ‘the worlds oldest profession’?
Absolutely. It’s given me a whole load of context, context that really resonates when our current society owes this particular time and profession so much. I think our show portrays sex work in a very human way despite the fact that the industry was/ is so often inhumane and completely ignored. What’s been so interesting to me is really how little has changed since 1763. True, our hair was higher and our skirts were wider then but the politics are almost the same. There’s a huge amount of empathy to be had from Harlots; historically, fictionally, past and present.
What should everyone try?
Retaining eye contact with actual people, not phones, when walking along the pavement.
What is the ideal way to start and end a day?
Thinking about what kind of breakfast you’re going to eat. Ideally I also like to end the day by thinking about what kind of breakfast I’m going to eat the next day.
Poppy Corby-Tuech can be seen now in Harlots on Hulu (US) and ITV Encore (UK).
As told to Paul Vaughan for TPJ
Creative Director & Photographer: Jessie Craig
Stylist: Francesca Turner
Hair: Fabio Nogueira
Makeup: Adele Sanderson
