Actor recalls being groped, harassed and left “frozen” during TV jobs early in her career

Joanna Page has spoken candidly about the dark side of her early acting career, describing experiences of being “sexually bullied” on set and groped by a television presenter. The Gavin & Stacey star shared the harrowing details during an interview on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, following revelations from her new book Lush! that have already sparked headlines.

Joanna Page explained that while filming one show, she was relentlessly harassed by a male co-star whose behaviour left her shaken. “I remember being on this one telly job and this fella just bullying me all the way through,” she said. “This particular scene, oh my god, where he was so sexual and just bullying me non-stop, but I didn’t quite know what it was. After we finished filming I went to the producers and said, ‘I don’t know how to describe this, all I can think of is that I’ve been sexually bullied because I don’t quite know what this actually is.’ I didn’t really have the words to describe what had happened.”

She added that the incident was not an isolated case. In her book she recounts being groped by a presenter whom producers had even warned her was “handsy.” “Halfway through filming, he starts groping me,” she recalled. “I hit his hands and said, ‘What do you think you’re bloody doing? I feel like I’m in Bristol Zoo being mauled by the lions.’”

The actor admitted that despite being outspoken and confident, in that particular moment she froze. “I can handle myself, I don’t mind giving it back and saying, ‘get your hands off.’ But with this one, I was just completely frozen.”

Page reflected on how unprepared she had been as a young woman entering the industry. “You’re 21, you don’t know anything and you’re just really, really vulnerable,” she said. “You go to auditions and most of the time you turn up to a hotel and there’s the cameraman, a producer, a director, and they’re all men. You just hope for the best, hope it’s going to be okay. The amount of times when I’d find myself going to the back of beyond for an audition, or you’d be doing a play and somebody would make a pass at you… just loads of different uncomfortable situations.”

Recalling one particularly disturbing encounter while filming a sex scene, she said: “Getting through those is difficult enough as it is, but when I was younger you just had to get on with them. I remember doing this one and halfway through I realised he was trying to pull my top down and my clothes off. I suddenly realised he was humping me and I thought, ‘oh my god, we’re pretending to have sex.’”

Her experiences, she explained, were shaped by an era in which actors lacked support. “You didn’t have intimacy coaches or anything. That was just the way that it was,” she said.

Page also revisited her training at RADA, describing her time there as “brutal.” She recalled how the school insisted there was only one way to act, dismissing anyone who struggled. “If you can’t do it, you’re s*** and you can’t act,” she said. “It was basically breaking us down, but they don’t build you back up again. It was horrible. They were really, really awful.” She said it has been reassuring to hear others such as Daisy May Cooper and Phoebe Waller-Bridge speak about similar experiences at the school, confirming to her that she had not been alone.The Love Actually star said she felt lucky to have found the strength to speak up and fight back in many situations, but acknowledged that the industry failed to protect young actors from harassment. “These are things that stay with you,” she admitted, adding that she hopes by telling her story she can help others recognise unacceptable behaviour and feel able to challenge it.