Vicki Pepperdine plays women who are sure of their standing and wrong about it, stiff-necked, grand-voiced and never winking at us. Television and audio have given her room; film has so far given her a scene or two.
Fi1m perspective
Aunt Sally, in Worzel Gummidge (2019), is a wooden doll from the manor who considers herself above a scarecrow, and Vicki Pepperdine plays her with a stiff neck, a grand voice and not a flicker of doubt. That is the Pepperdine part in miniature. Her women are practical, bossy and certain they are in charge, and the joke is that nobody around them has noticed. She does not play the certainty as a pose; it is real, and the comedy is in how little it gets her.
She came to acting late, training at East 15 after years in publishing and at Help the Aged, and spent the 1990s in small television parts, including The Bill and I'm Alan Partridge. The turn came in 2009 with Getting On, the BBC Four sitcom she co-wrote and played in with Jo Brand and Joanna Scanlan, as the consultant Dr Pippa Moore. From there the work runs through comedy she had a hand in making: Puppy Love (2014) with Scanlan, Princess Anne in The Windsors from 2016, and a long partnership with Julia Davis across Nighty Night, Camping, Sally4Ever and the improvised podcast Dear Joan and Jericha, which began in 2018. Of the Anne she said, "It's definitely not an impressions show, and I'm not an impressionist", which is the point. She is building a woman, not a likeness.
Film found her later and has used her more sparingly. In Johnny English Strikes Again (2018) she plays Lydia. In Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) she is Edna Eaglebauer, the woman from the council who argues with Mike about licences, and she is briskly funny in a stretch of the film that otherwise lists its scenes rather than playing them. In Poor Things (2023) she is Mrs Prim, in a part so small our review did not mention her. Neither film is among our favourites; she is a point in each one's favour for exactly as long as she is on screen, which is not long.
Our honest reaction is to Worzel Gummidge. We laughed at Aunt Sally more than at anything else in the series, because Pepperdine gives a doll's snobbery the full weight of a duchess and never lets on that it is funny, and we were a little sorry each time the hour moved on to the fields without her. That series underuses its grown-ups, and she is the clearest case.
Where she writes, or where Davis or Scanlan writes with her in mind, she gets a whole woman to play. Where a director has a scene to fill, she gets the scene and fills it. Start with Worzel Gummidge and Getting On. The films can wait until one of them gives her more than a licence to argue about.
Biography
Vicki Pepperdine is an English actress and writer. She trained at East 15 Acting School after studying History of Art at the University of East Anglia and working in publishing and for the charity Help the Aged.
She co-wrote and starred as Dr Pippa Moore in the BBC sitcom Getting On (2009–2012), receiving two BAFTA TV Award nominations for her writing and a British Comedy Award nomination for her performance. Pepperdine has appeared in films including My Cousin Rachel (2017) as Mrs Pascoe, Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) as Betty, Johnny English Strikes Again (2018) as Lydia, Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) as Edna Eaglebauer and Poor Things (2023) as Mrs Prim.
