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Dystin Johnson: Norma in Shameless

Season four of Shameless is about to burst onto our screens as Russell Myrie catches up with ‘norma’ actress Dystin Johnson

Don’t believe the naysayers and bringers of doom. Series four of Shameless is just as compelling, heart wrenching and funny as the preceding seasons.

Series four is dominated by the return of Monica, Frank Gallagher’s estranged wife and mother to Lip, Debbie and the rest of the Gallagher kids.

The only problem is that Monica forgot to tell her lesbian lover Norma that she was leaving her.

Unsurprisingly, Norma isn’t best pleased when she finds this out, and resolves to win Monica back. As a result, Norma played by Dystin Johnson, will spend a lot of the present series chilling in the Gallagher’s garden in her new home. A caravan.

We caught up with Dystin on the eve of the new series.

I’ve been told you’re off on holiday tomorrow. Do you want to be out of the country when the new series airs?

Well, I’m not going on holiday, I’m going to do some voluntary work in Ghana. At a refugee settlement. So as we speak, I’m re-packing, ‘cos I packed about four days ago and now I’m taking out all the things I don’t need.

That’s very commendable.

Well, let’s see how it goes, I’m getting a bit nervous now. It’s only a few hours before I go.

How did it come to be?

I haven’t done anything like this before but you know sometimes when you meet somebody they rattle your cage a bit in a good way.

I met someone recently, who’s quite active politically in various different things, not aid work, but in getting things done and having an opinion.

A lot of us buy Amnesty International and never read it, or buy from a Big Issue seller. I’m one of those people. This person made me realise I should never look the other way and so I decided that between this series and the next series of Shameless I needed to do something that wasn’t selfish.

So, I narrowed it down to an issue I’m interested in, which was child soldiers in West Africa.

I wrote a play and it included the character of a child soldier and it was quite horrific researching it. I kind of closed my eyes to a lot of it after the research was done. Four years later I’ve realised that it has been haunting me.

Rather than just giving money – which is a great thing to do and everyone should – I want to go and see what’s happening for myself. (The organisation if people want to look at the website is www.ikando.org).

So how did you come to be involved with Shameless?

It was an audition and then a recall and that was it. The part started off as quite a minor character when the scripts were in their first draft in series one.

By the time it came to actually start shooting, the characters had got larger. I wasn’t originally going to play the part. It went to someone who really was a huge black lesbian. Then when they realised the character needed an actress, I was asked to do it. I did the last two episodes of series one.

Both of us, meaning me and Annabel who plays my girlfriend, we were unsure of what was going to happen with the characters after series one and its really nice that we’ve been asked back.

How would you describe your character, Norma? She’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Wow. Oh gosh. Norma is the girlfriend of Monica, Frank’s wife. She’s been in love with Monica for a few years. She’s a complex character. Despite all of her misfortunes, her background, her foibles and her downfalls she’s a romantic who wants love and wants to be loved. It’s a human thing, everyone wants love.

Norma’s the kind of girl who wears her heart on her sleeve, and in this case she shouts it really loud and sometimes quite aggressively. As the series unfolds she becomes a really well rounded three dimensional character.

I know you can’t give away specific plot lines but in what ways does Norma develop?

I think we’ll see a lot more development between Norma and Frank and some of the Gallagher children, I think she will be basically camping outside in the van for a wee while. And that means she’s part of the family but not quite, and I think that’s an interesting dynamic. Where does this person fit?

What was it like filming the scene in episode two where a very naked Frank walks in on Norma using the toilet?

It was interesting (laughs). David Threlfall who plays Frank, said ‘should I wear a sock or should I not wear a sock?’ I said ‘don’t be ridiculous, don’t wear a sock it’ll make me laugh more if I see the real thing’. I should say I was very impressed. And I love a bit of slapstick. That’s the thing about Shameless. You’ll be crying with these characters one minute and laughing the next.

• Shameless is on Channel Four on Tuesdays at 10pm

Published: 24 January 2007
Issue: 1253

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