Prunella Scales has admitted she still worries if people will like her every time she takes on a new role.
The actress, 92, was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2014, and although her ‘memory is less good’ she says not working would leave her ‘very depressed.’
She has recently reprised her lifelong role as Queen Victoria, recording new voiceovers for a reprisal Queen at Tabard studio theatre in west London.
Speaking ahead of the final show on Tuesday, Prunella told The Times: ‘You go to a different place and you think, “Oh God, these people won’t like me.” You have to cope with that every time.’
The Faulty Towers star and her husband Timothy West, 89, are both still working, even after she ended her 67-year acting career in early 2020.
Prunella Scales has admitted she still worries if people will like her every time she takes on a new role (pictured in 2017)
Prunella explained: ‘Oh, well, the answer to that is because we’re still invited to. If we’re out of work, we get very depressed.
‘As one gets older, one’s memory and living from minute to minute changes, doesn’t it? You get less efficient. My memory is less good. I mean, I forget to do things and, that’s age, the same as everybody else.’
Performing the role she first stepped into 44 years ago, the actress, returned to her role as Queen Victoria at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last month.
She has played the monarch over 500 times in the play in ‘An Evening with Queen Victoria’, both in London and in performances around the world until 2007.
Prunella also appeared as Queen Victoria in the children’s TV ‘Station Jim’ in 2001 and in BBC drama ‘Victoria: An Intimate History in 2003.
In an interactive history project, she featured once recording a monologue for a projection in front of the statue of Queen Victoria on Blackfriars Bridge in London.
The show’s writer Julian Machin said the veteran actress ‘exceeded all expectations’ with her performance.
He told The Telegraph: ‘Although Prunella has vascular dementia, which greatly affects her in many ways, she absolutely retains longer-term memory of herself and her working experience.’
The actress, 92, was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2014, and although her ‘memory is less good’ she says not working would leave her ‘very depressed’
The Faulty Towers star and her husband Timothy West, 89, are both still working, even after she ended her 67-year acting career in early 2020 (pictured in 2020)
After almost 50 years playing Queen Victoria, Machin said that ‘her memory of having said the lines so many times over the years made it much easier to direct her than even I’d hoped for.’
Alongside husband and actor Timothy, Prunella revealed her diagnosis in 2014 during their Channel 4 show ‘Great Canal Journeys’.
The couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last year and spoke to the BBC about Scales’s worsening health.
The touching interview saw Prunella who has had symptoms of vascular dementia for more than 20 years, say to her husband: ‘Thanks for sticking with me for so long.’
West responded: ‘Well, we’ve done all right’ before asking her ‘It hasn’t really been hard work, has it?’
Last year, Timothy admitted he misses the ‘companionship’ of his ‘best friend’ as her dementia battle continues.
The couple, who ‘fell in love over crosswords and packets of Polo mints’, first addressed her condition after she began struggling with her lines on stage in the early noughties.
Scales, best known for playing Sybil Fawlty (pictured) in Fawlty Towers, ended her 67-year acting career in early 2020
The veteran acting couple pictured together in When We Were Married in 1986
He explained that by 2003, Scales, who was performing in A Woman of No Importance, was relying on ‘idiot boards’ to get her through the show.
They did not receive a formal diagnosis until 10 years later and he explained that the progression of her illness had ‘taken a very long time’.
Prunella ended her 67-year acting career in early 2020.
In a foreword to the book of their Channel 4 show, ‘Our Great Canal Journeys’, the actress wrote: ‘How do I feel about being in this situation? Well, angry of course. I hate the idea that the world is going on around me, but that so much of it is closed off. I soon forget my anger, though, as I forget nearly everything else.’
