Outrageous star Bessie Carter: 'I'm weirdly connected to Nancy Mitford!'

"I think she's a pretty modern woman, actually. Deeply empathetic — I think that's what makes her such a good writer, that's something that [Outrageous creator] Sarah Williams and I spoke about very early on, because I think to be such an intelligent writer, you probably have to be quite sensitive, and observe people quite quickly. But she also loves a laugh, and I think that's really nice — your lens, as the audience, is to be shown things through someone who likes to find the funny side of life. When you're going into the depths of quite a dark world, I think you need someone who can also see the light."

"I did the audiobook for [Nancy's novel] The Pursuit of Love four years ago, completely coincidentally, but I knew a lot about the Mitfords because I've been weirdly connected to Nancy for ages. I went to the same school as her, Frances Holland, for the same amount of time — only three years — and I knew that because it was quite a famous thing about my school. I did some research around the time I was doing the audiobook, and since then I've found out that she worked at St Mary's Hospital during the war, which is where I was born, and she lived in Maida Vale 10 minutes from where I live, so when I got the script through, I genuinely did feel quite confident, like, 'I think I can get this!'"

"I think the main love story — and break-up story — is between Nancy and Diana. I don't think Nancy wanted to get involved, but you see her in the story being forced to. They were this strange clan, stuck in the countryside with nothing better to do than tease each other, make up languages and terrorise governesses, so they've got this pent-up passion and intellect raring to go and nowhere to put it. Nancy started writing because she could express herself very eloquently, but Diana was trapped into marriage at 18 and divorced at 21. Nancy was always jealous of Diana because of her looks; Diana was the blonde, icy steel queen and Nancy was 'the funny one' — I can relate! Another excellent thing that I found out was that Nancy was the eldest and two years later Pam was born; she never forgave Pam for being born, so Nancy definitely had a jealous streak to her, which she had to keep down! But there's a big journey between Nancy and Diana..."

"I think there was an absolute obsession between him and Diana, and I think maybe Nancy wants that deep love and attraction that they have? But she also sees the fascist, the leader who is inciting violence, and she can't understand how someone disconnects that so easily. It's Diana's unwavering support and allyship of him that Nancy doesn't get — and you also have Nancy's best friend being a Jewish person, so she sees the real pain that's being caused. She's got good morals, does our Nance!"

"Well, one thing we have really changed is the voice, because their voices are so inaccessible. It's ridiculous how they sounded — the only people who sound like that now are probably royalty! In rehearsals we had a 'Mitford Boot Camp', and because we've all got slightly different accents — Jo's Scottish, Izzy's from Birmingham, Shannon's from the Isle of Wight — so we came together to make a sort of fluent RP between us."

"Are we fascinated by people who are beautiful and rich and go into extreme, strange things, like when we have celebrities who are Scientologists? Maybe it's something to do with that — I don't know, it's a good question. I think we want to know how humans work, we want to sort of see behind the scenes. I think in Outrageous you get to see the Mitfords as humans, not in a way that we necessarily sympathise with them, but you see that real, 3D person, so we can make our own minds up."

"There's much more to say! This series goes up to just before the outbreak of the Second World War, but there's so much more that happened to them during the war. I think there's potential for a series two, three and four!"