From time to time, people Gemma Whelan has never met before will greet her with a bizarre familiarity. “I’ll get waved at by a stranger,” she says. “They think they know me from the bus stop or the swimming pool.
When people can’t place me I feel quite shy about saying, ‘It might be telly?’ My husband’s like, ‘There’s no shame in telling them.’” Even now that she’s starring in not one but two prime time ITV detective dramas — The Tower and DI Ray — Whelan has the kind of friendly, no-nonsense demeanour that short-circuits celebrity. When she was playing the swashbuckling warrior queen Yara Greyjoy in six series of Game of Thrones , she would often go out in Belfast with Alfie Allen, her on-screen brother Theon.
“People would absolutely lose their minds and without even looking at me would say, ‘Quick, will you take a photo of us?’ And Alfie would say, ‘This is the girl that plays my sister.’” Another time, she accompanied Kit Harington into town to buy a belt and had to beat a hasty retreat from the ravening fans. “Nobody recognised me but they fell apart for him.
And I really felt sorry for him. Obviously it’s a privilege, but I witnessed the burden of fame with some of those chaps, struggling to buy a belt.” She is happy to be on the rung of fame’s ladder where it is still possible to buy all manner of consumer goods.
That may soon change, though. In recent years, Whelan has become one of those ultra-capable actresses whom d.