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TV Quickfire: Actress Charly Clive on how comedy drama Pure sheds light on OCD

Based on a memoir by author Rose Cartwright, Channel 4 comedy drama Pure tells the story of a young woman caught in the grip of an excruciating form of obsessive compulsive disorder. We quizzed lead actress and rising star Charly Clive about it

Charly Clive as Marnie in Pure
Charly Clive as Marnie in Pure Charly Clive as Marnie in Pure

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE STORY BEHIND PURE?

Pure is about a young woman called Marnie who has a type of OCD which is known as Pure O, which means that she experiences unwanted, intrusive thoughts. Hers are of a sexual nature. It's about her coming to London to start a new life for herself, and figure out how best to deal with her OCD, and to live as normal a life as she can. It's also about new friendships and relationships and navigating millennial life.

WHAT ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF MARNIE APPEALED TO YOU?

Well, when I first read the scripts I was quite daunted, because if there's an actor bucket list, you tick it all off quite quickly with Marnie, in terms of the comedy and the tragedy and the really naturalistic situations, as well as the crazy, big group intrusive thoughts scenes; it isn't something you expect to do, necessarily, on your first job. Just reading a female character who's really funny and holds her own – there's a lot of room to play around, but it comes from a really grounded place of Rose's book and Kirstie (Swain)'s writing – was really exciting to me.

DID YOU READ ROSE'S BOOK AS PREPARATION FOR THE ROLE?

That was almost my first port of call. I got the book and read it very quickly. It's a page-turner and an easy read. Then I met Rose a few times, and she was a real open book, which was amazing. I got a lot of insight from her. I did some independent research, just initially, online, looking at what I could. There's not as much as I thought there would be about it, especially from the point of view of a young person, and especially a woman, actually.

WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE SCENE TO FILM?

There were a few moments where I had to lose that goofy 'make a joke' facade for a minute, and sit down with the OCD as the character; I think those probably were the most memorable because I was very anxious that it should be as authentic as possible.

WOULD YOU AGREE OCD IS AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT TO BE TACKLING ON TV?

Definitely. Most people, if you say OCD to them, will think of people washing their hands a lot, or counting, or not stepping on cracks on the pavement. How many times do you hear people say, 'Oh, I'm so OCD about this'? Nobody means to be insensitive, but it makes it harder to talk about the condition with any nuance, because people already have an idea of it. So I think the show will really shed light on that and make discussions a lot more varied about it.

HOW ELSE DO YOU HOPE THE SHOW IMPACTS VIEWERS?

Hopefully it will help anyone with Pure O to realise that other people have it and struggle with it and live with it, and live very normal lives with it. Marnie's great fear is that she's in some way a deviant or a pervert, so it's really important to be able to shed light on this sort of thing. It's not an easy conversation to have with friends or parents and hopefully the show will create other platforms for people to discuss it.

:: Pure starts on Channel 4 on February 3.