The Good Wife legend Archie Panjabi argues portraying NHS should be "challenging" – and recalls playing the Rani in Doctor Who

A very big screen. I got it to bribe the family to watch together. It’s amazing to watch TV on – but it’s quite different when I’m on it and my face fills the whole screen.

In Play for Today: The Quiet Hour, you play Riya, a stressed NHS nurse who’s also worried about her teenage daughter. It’s a challenging watch – what was it like to make?

If you’re making a show about the NHS and it’s not challenging, you’re not making a good show because the truth about the NHS – they’re so overworked and there isn’t enough money – is challenging. When you’re playing a nurse, keeping up with everything your character is doing becomes an exciting challenge. I like to be kept on my toes, and the role certainly does that. Plus, she’s very different from my characters in Hijack and Doctor Who.

Play for Today comes with quite a history. Was that inspiring or intimidating?

Before the days of the internet, it highlighted taboo subjects that weren’t being discussed and affected the national conversation. It’s an inspiration. When I read that nurses experience PTSD at double the rate of the public, I was stunned. Nurses are the backbone of the NHS. If we don’t have them, we don’t have a system. I think healthcare professionals’ mental health is really important to discuss and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this project.

Is it easier to play a character as grounded as Riya, or heightened, like the villainous Rani in Doctor Who?

Playing the Rani, who has no moral compass and thrives on chaos, was new territory for me. With Riya, what was tricky was understanding the paradox of her working in an environment where she’s so efficient, compassionate and managing her trauma quite well – but then that very environment being a minefield filled with triggers that bring out her PTSD. Unlike the Rani, Riya internalises so much.

Riya is also a world away from private investigator Kalinda Sharma, your no-nonsense character in The Good Wife. Does she cast a long shadow?

Kalinda was cool and sexy. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that people still identify me with her. She was a life-changer in my career and I got cast as a lot more strong women as a result, so I wear that badge with pride.

Have you always wanted to act?

My mum says that when I was born, she looked at me and thought, “She’s going to be an actress.” I don’t know what my expression was, but it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I started looking for work at the age of 12. This was before the internet, so it meant writing letters.

Who did you write to?

Anyone I could think of, including the Citizens Advice Bureau and my heart-throb growing up, Nick Berry. He actually wrote back and said to get The Stage, and I’m so grateful he did. I had this burning ambition, but no one to inspire me, and I remember saying to my mum that there was no one that looked like me on TV. She just said, “Well, go and change it.”

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That’s a profound statement to make to a young girl.

It stayed in my head and I made it my mission to play all the characters I could, no matter what their background. I signed up for a local acting course and entered every competition I could and played a multitude of characters. At the end of the course, you got a certificate, but they also presented me with an award – the versatility cup. I must have been around 16. I couldn’t believe it.

What did you learn?

I learnt that it doesn’t matter what I get offered or don’t, whether a character is Asian or not. I don’t think about characters like that. I put myself up for characters that I hope everybody will connect with. Don’t think about the box, think about the person.

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Play for Today: The Quiet Hour is on Friday 16 October at 9.05pm on 5 and 5 streaming.

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