There was a moment, just before Aimee-Ffion Edwards jumped off a nightclub balcony in Slow Horses, when she had to lie to herself about what she was about to do. This is mad!’” She laughs. I was like, ‘Huwwaah!’” She sucks in her breath, then says: “But there were 200 people stood there watching.
You’re like, ‘Well, I gotta do it.’” In the scene that we see, though, Shirley Dander – the tough, traumatised, cocaine-snorting MI5 agent Edwards plays – does not hesitate, leaping from the balcony to land on a suspect. That collision (on a stuntman) was no soft landing either and, at 38, Edwards knew she’d feel it the next day. And yet she jumped off the balcony “five or six times” during filming.
It’s quite instinctive.” Edwards is wearing an elegant sleeveless blouse, smart navy trousers and gold hoop earrings. She does not, as she sits there sipping a flat white in London’s Soho Hotel, look much like a rugby player. Yet, with some pride, she reveals that her childhood dream was to play rugby for Wales, where she was born and raised.
I played one match for Wales. Then I was like, ‘I’ve done that. I think I’m going to do some acting.’” Edwards, a fluent Welsh speaker, still lives in Newport.
She had a paper round there until she was 19 and grew up the middle child of five. The actor regularly commutes to London (“it’s so close – an hour and 35 minutes on a good train”) and finds it refreshing to be able to play a British spy with her authentic Welsh accent, pleased Shirley’s Welshness is not a talking point in the hit show. It’s good to normalise it.
We hear northern and other accents all the time, but Welsh accents have been underrepresented.” Except, she adds, in comedy roles. It’s really not.” Before Slow Horses, which follows a ragtag bunch of reject MI5 agents who are presumed to be inept despite usually saving the day, Edwards had to fake a Brummie accent as the opportunistic criminal Esme Shelby in Peaky Blinders, and adopt a southern one as manipulative Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid of Kent” in Wolf Hall. But as Shirley, and especially as Richard Burton’s older sister Cis in the 2025 film Mr Burton, she has increasingly been able to lean into her Welsh identity.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
