Life With Julia Brown: ‘Shetland is such a beautiful place and I feel lucky to have experienced working there’

Rising Scottish actress Julia Brown on working on Shetland, falling in love with acting as a child, and the latest season of Karen Pirie on ITV.

I grew up in Edinburgh but I live in London now. I was a chatterbox at school – and still am today – so that could get me into trouble sometimes. I also spent a lot of time in the drama department, which makes sense today.

I count my lucky stars to be doing something that a 12 year old me would have never believed was possible. If you had told her that she would get to dress up and play pretend and get paid for it, she would have been in shock.

Loch Lomond has to be my favourite place in Scotland. I love taking visiting friends for a drive around the lochs and it brings back a lot of happy memories of time spent there with family growing up. To be honest, I’m very content around most beds of water and feel so lucky that we have so many beautiful beaches in Scotland too. 

When I was little I said I wanted to be a doctor by day and a performer by night, I hadn’t quite factored in the time to sleep. So I definitely remember performing as one of my first loves, for sure. Whether that was performing pop concerts and plays for my family in our living room, dressing up in crazy costumes or constantly pestering those around me with my forever changing character voices and accents. 

Julia steps into a new role in the latest season of ITV’s Karen Pirie, playing Catriona Grant – a young heiress kidnapped at the centre of the show.

I wish I had been part of White Lotus, the characters and scripts are so intricately layered and it’s fascinating to watch. It’s also a dream of mine to work on a tropical beach for months on end. There’s still more of it to come so I won’t lose hope.

My most watched film and guilty pleasure is Love Actually. I may or may not have been known to watch it several times every December. 

I loved working on Shetland. We had such a blast on the island (and in Glasgow) for both of the series I was involved in. Not only for the people I worked with but Shetland is such a beautiful place and I feel lucky to have experienced working there and experienced every season of weather possible in one day. Plus the beaches can look like the Caribbean when it’s sunny.

The response to Karen Pirie on ITV has been brilliant so far, I feel so fortunate to have joined a show with such a reputation. It’s always daunting to await the audience response following such a successful first series but I’m overjoyed that the loyal fans have loved it and there’s been many new viewers too.

Others have told me this a lot and I try to tell myself it every day: what’s for you, won’t go by you. My hero is a jigsaw made up of tiny pieces in the form of my family and friends. Cheesy but true. I believe in energies and spirits but not ghosts in the conventional spooky way.

Read more from the Life With series here.

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