When the script for The Gold came through four years ago, Charlotte Spencer was so young that she had to consult her parents. Not because she lacked experience – by then, she had been acting for almost 20 years, spanning Bafta nominations (for Jack Thorne’s Glue and an adaptation of Iain Banks’s Stonemouth) and West End blockbusters Mary Poppins and Oliver!. More because she hadn’t heard of the subject matter.
“I wasn’t even born when Brink’s-Mat happened,” laughs the 33-year-old over Zoom. “But mum and dad were really excited – why wouldn’t they be? It was the biggest gold heist the world had ever seen! Families see all the boring, rubbishy bits of acting where you’re waiting by the phone, so to involve them in the fun parts and run a script by them is lovely.”
Spencer, who is sipping coffee in the kitchen of the 17th-century Hertfordshire cottage she shares with her firefighter partner, was as gripped by the story as the millions who watched it on BBC One. At its heart were Spencer’s Nicki Jennings (smart, determined), Emun Elliott’s Tony Brightwell (world-weary, exasperated) and incorruptible veteran Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville), the coppers who brought about the arrest and prosecution of some of those who stole and laundered £26m of gold bullion in 1983 and the subsequent recovery of some of the proceeds.
Some, but not all: hence The Gold’s return for a second and final series, as the team – joined this time by shifty maverick Tony Lundy (Stephen Campbell Moore) – hunt down Sam Spruell’s Charlie Miller (back from Spain to claim his cut) and Tom Cullen’s John Palmer (laundering his wealth in a Tenerife timeshare scam). It’s another formidable distillation of a complex story, told with wit, pace and insight.
“I grew up in Essex, so Nicki’s east London accent wasn’t hard for me,” says Spencer. “I knew what this girl was about. I love her fight, her will to do good and her fierce loyalty, once you’ve earnt her trust. These are all beautiful qualities. There’s a trend at the moment to root for the antihero, but I feel like rooting for the heroes again.”
Returning to the Eighties and Nineties was discombobulating. While she relished the fashions and phones, Spencer – who was born in 1991 – came unstuck in a car: “I thought there was something wrong with the steering wheel. They were like, ‘No, it’s just not power-assisted…’ I had no idea!”
The era-appropriate sexism, meanwhile, is present but not overegged. Jennings is inclined to tolerate it wearily rather than call it out. “It was water off a duck’s back, rightly or wrongly, but we can’t bring our current sensibilities into how they dealt with it then,” says Spencer. “Personally, I’ve been pretty lucky because I grew up with a good dad. I’ve never felt less than a man.”
While Jennings’s father was a crook, Spencer’s father is a builder and her mother works in a school. Even so, she has her distant connections to that world: great uncles who, decades earlier, served time for robbing Securicor vans. “I completely see how people can do it, how your background can influence your decision making,” she says. “But if you break the law, you should be brought to justice. The robbers in The Gold make a lot of references to Robin Hood, but they stole from the rich to make themselves rich. You can understand the actions of people like Palmer or Miller, who grew up with nothing, but I have no sympathy for them in that regard. My lineage isn’t wealthy. It’s about choices.”
If Jennings’s lineage made her an unlikely police officer, Spencer laughs that her career is just as far-fetched. “I have to pinch myself. My parents, amazingly, remortgaged their house to send me to Sylvia Young [Theatre School]; I never went for the scholarship because I never thought I was good enough.”
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There is a sense that imposter syndrome still lurks under the surface with Spencer, who talks frequently of luck and serendipity. But then her hard work and talent spoke for themselves from a young age: at 12, she won the part of Elizabeth Banks in Richard Eyre’s West End production of Mary Poppins, which meant 6am starts, midnight finishes and a grudging acceptance that she might be pretty good at this performance lark.
“When Richard said to my parents, ‘She’s a very good actress, very special’, that was a shock for my parents and a shock for me! Ten years later, I played Christine Keeler in another one of his shows [Stephen Ward]. So that’s the beautiful thing: if you do good work, people remember.”
I first met Spencer in 2014 on the West Country set of Glue, Jack Thorne’s E4 drama about bored teens dealing with a friend’s murder. Among a formidable young ensemble – newly minted Hollywood star Callum Turner, The Serpent’s Billy Howle and Death Valley’s Gwyneth Keyworth – it was Spencer who caught Bafta’s eye. The series remains a treasured memory: “We keep an eye out for each other – Callum, bless him, sent me a lovely text about The Gold.”
Glue came about courtesy of the casting director on her previous job: a series that, she recalls laughing, she once referred to in a text as “something called Line of Duty”. Her role as Carly Kirk was small but pivotal, and came in the second season as it moved from cult concern to national obsession. “I had no idea!” she admits. “You just never know when something’s going to get traction.”
True enough. Spender’s TV career neatly spans the peaks and troughs of a television career: shows never picked up (ABC pilot Broad Squad); shows cancelled before their time (Glue, The Living and the Dead); shows given a chance to grow (Line of Duty); shows cancelled before their time and then given a chance to grow (Sanditon). The latter was the realisation of a childhood dream to do a period piece (next ambition: a western), and didn’t disappoint: “The ballroom scenes were candlelit and we had a live orchestra to dance to… It was like a dream.”
Even a Bafta-nominated series watched on primetime BBC One by millions comes with no guarantees. “I had a year out of work after series one of The Gold,” she shrugs. “Mentally, the constant rejection is tough, that slight panic of not knowing where your next pay cheque is coming from.”
Happily, the next pay cheque has been taken care of courtesy of splashy, explosive action thriller spin-off Apollo Has Fallen, which she will be returning to film shortly. But as long as she can fill her downtime with a related activity – or her latest passions of gardening and “aerial hooping” – she’s happy. For instance, keenly aware that funding cuts and rising ticket prices are making the performing arts even less accessible, Spencer volunteers at her old school and teaches dance.
“Those kids don’t know or care who you are, but to see them light up when they’ve hit the note or nailed the scene is amazing. I worry that acting is becoming elitist: theatre is so expensive and I don’t know where the money’s going. I have a lot of friends in musical theatre and it’s not the ensemble that sees it. It needs to have a rethink, because otherwise it’s only accessible for the rich.”
Not that Spencer is one to moan – if she is tempted to feel morose, her partner will reply with tales from his day job. “That’s why my job is not hard. You can’t grumble about it really – and I’m not expecting to be famous. I’d be OK to be the actor where people go, ‘I don’t know her name, but she was really good in that thing.’ That would be fine with me. And to be honest, I’m only good at performing. I’m not good at anything else.”
‘The Gold’ season two begins at 9pm on Sunday 8 June on BBC One and is available on iPlayer from 6am
