Death Valley star: Teachers thought I was lazy but no one knew the REAL reason

One of the breakout stars of Sunday night TV, Gwyneth Keyworth has helped make the BBC’s detective drama Death Valley a runaway success. It’s arguably the Welsh actress’s performance as DS Janie Mallowan – a mixture of high energy, comic timing and fantastic facial expressions – which has made the show fizz so agreeably. And it’s no accident the character of Janie is so in tune with Gwyneth. who was involved in the production of Death Valley a year in advance of it being filmed – time enough for the show’s creator Paul Doolan to make the character more like the actress who was going to be playing her. Not that there weren’t similarities already.

“When I first read the script, I remember thinking, ‘Have they written this for me?’” she admits today of her role opposite Timothy Spall. “The dipsiness of the character, her over-excitement – I have those traits. But as the series developed, I could feel her moving even closer to some of my own rhythms and traits.”

Some of the changes made to Janie reflected Gwyneth’s ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), a condition the actress only recently sought a precise diagnosis for after years of being dismissed as “lazy”. She discovered she has type 2 which is associated with inattentiveness and is more common in girls and women.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Express, Gwyneth now says she hopes she is armed with the information that will make it easier for her in the future, especially when it comes to talking to producers and directors.

“I wanted a diagnosis so that I have the right terminology when I meet employers, it gives me the chance to advocate for myself, help people understand why, for example, I am hyperfocusing on this one thing and appear not to be listening to what they are saying, the kind of behaviour that used to get me labelled at school as a daydreamer,” she explains.

“I am listening to what directors and producers are saying to me and I do want to work with them, because I love acting and I think ADHD is an asset in my profession. ADHD means I love to be on my feet, means I like solving problems — and acting is literally that. I just have a slightly different way of going about things compared to other actors.”

And Gwyneth’s acting prowess has not been lost on viewers with more than four million people tuning in to watch the chalk and cheese duo of DS Janie Mallowan and John Chapel – one an enthusiastic young sleuth, played by Gwyneth, the other a retired actor with a talent for detection portrayed by acting royalty Spall – solve murders in Wales.

The show was recommissioned, by the BBC, after just three of the six episodes in the first series had been shown, a remarkable achievement for a new, fresh-off-the page comedy thriller. Filming on series two is due to begin in Wales in September.

Her chemistry with Spall, 68, playing the droll, sharp-as-a-tack Chapel, a retired actor and star of former fictional TV detective show Caesar, has undoubtedly been a draw for viewers. And to think the 34-year-old from Aberystwyth might have missed her chance to land the role, a victim of her own success and a busy schedule.

“The night before my ‘recall’ audition for Death Valley I was filming scenes for [BBC drama] Lost Boys And Fairies so I was a little bit bedraggled the following day,” remembers Gwyneth. “Fortunately, the producers of Death Valley were able to see past that!”

In Sunday’s episode [June 22], we see the pluses and minuses of ADHD, Janie impulsively and embarrassingly blurting out “love you lots” to an estate agent she hardly knows, but also applying a sharp, laser-like focus to the task of catching a killer at a murder mystery weekend. The actress says the condition has been both a hindrance and a help to her.

A “superpower”, she calls it, but also, especially in her younger years at school in North Wales, a source of frustration and occasional humiliation. “I was told all the time at school that I was lazy, that I wasn’t trying,” she sighs. “The teachers said I had potential but just didn’t deliver – they couldn’t understand why I was so strong verbally but not with the written word.

“I was trying my best but things just seemed to come so much more easily to other children. It was felt that I was choosing to be disobedient when I struggled to read in primary school but I wasn’t. ‘She’s just not applying herself,’ was a typical comment. You take that kind of criticism very personally and carry the shame.”

Gwyneth’s ADHD manifested itself in many ways, most strikingly during exam time. “I didn’t like exams, I would become anxious about them because I found it hard to sit down for long periods of time. I would hyperfocus and write my name over and over again on the exam paper so that at least I could control that one factor.

“There was no way of telling my brain to stop doing it so I kept on writing my name until my best friend whispered across to me: “move on, move on” thus putting herself at risk because it might have been thought she was conferring with me.”

University was never a realistic possibility for Gwyneth – “all those big bits of text frightened me, I’d always struggled writing an essay” – but acting offered an exciting alternative. I liked play-pretend and never grew out of it,” she laughs. “And, besides, there was nothing else that I could do! Waitressing? I tried that and - believe me - you were lucky to get the right order.’’

Inspired and encouraged by a woman called Buddug Jones Davies, who ran a Welsh language youth theatre group in Gwyneth’s local village hall, the teenager gained a place at The National Youth Theatre. Coming home from school, she saw a fat envelope on the doormat marked NYT and knew she’d been accepted, dancing on the kitchen table with her little sister to a T-Rex album.

She co-wrote a sketch show and performed it at The Soho Theatre in London, in her late teens, bagging herself an agent in the process before enrolling at acting school RADA.

A variety of parts followed, including the prostitute and slave Clea in Game Of Thrones. American star Peter Dinklage, who played the key role of Tyrion Lannister in the legendary fantasy show, surprised her by gathering the entire cast and crew together to sing her happy birthday. Gwyneth has worked regularly on stage and screen in the 11 years since Game of Thrones – she was Joe Cole’s despised lover Nicola in classic Black Mirror episode Hang The DJ – but Death Valley represents a shift in status for her, a high profile role in a mainstream, primetime BBC1 drama for the first time. No wonder she was nervous ahead of filming.

“I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to deliver but fortunately my co-star Timothy was there to say, ‘You’ve got this, we’ve got this’. He took on the uncle role. He wasn’t my dad – although he’s the same age as my real dad – so he wasn’t telling me what to do but he was there to help me, nurture me, support me, and also to take the mickey out of me if he thought I was getting a little bit too serious!”

Timothy and Gwyneth formed a close bond of friendship during filming, partly as a result of their shared histories. “We both went to RADA from not particularly wealthy backgrounds so we have that in common,” she smiles. “The place has changed a lot since I left but we were quite surprised by how similar a lot of our experiences were there, despite attending many years apart!”

The climate and landscape surrounding ADHD has also changed – thankfully for Gwyneth and others with the condition.

“There’s certainly a better understanding of it than there used to be. If I had been born 50 years ago, and hadn’t been very good academically, the outcome of my life would probably have been very different.

“We used to be told that there is only one way to be successful in life but now there are lots of different ways, it’s just about working out your strengths and being confident enough to use them. You don’t need to be good at everything, you just need to be good at the things you can be and then apply yourself.”

Death Valley looks set to run and run and could become as familiar a part of the TV schedule as other, long-running shows with homicide at their hearts, such as Midsomer Murders and Unforgotten.

Like Spall’s character John Chapel, Gwyneth will no doubt pick up a few tricks of the detecting trade, during her time as a TV sleuth. Just don’t ever expect her to apply them in real life. “Being a police detective is not a profession to which I would naturally be suited – having ADHD would make it difficult for me to keep track of what was going on in a case or keep notes on it,” she adds. “I’ll leave the detective work to other people!”

• Death Valley continues on BBC1 on Sunday