Cilla star Sheridan Smith: 'I felt like I was stood there naked singing' (VIDEO)

Sheridan Smith says creating the live scenes at Liverpool's Cavern Club for ITV biopic Cilla was excruciating – "I felt like I was stood there naked singing!"

The actress plays Cilla Black in the story of her rise to pop fame in the Sixties and she told What's on TV her vocals were recorded live.

Sheridan explained: "They rebuilt the Cavern Club because it's so tiny and it's changed so much since the Sixties. But they did the most amazing replica and they had all these extras, screaming... The Sixties music and that era it must've been such a buzz, the Merseybeat sound, The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers... So when we were in the Cavern Club it really was getting hot and sweaty and the musos were live, but the only embarrassing thing, so that they got my vocals live I had to have ear pieces in so I could hear the band. None of the extras could hear the band, they could just hear me singing, so it was like singing in the shower, like you were stood there naked singing."

Sheridan has no intention of abandoning her acting career for singing, preferring to 'leave that to the experts', but revealed she did have a background in singing – she performed with her parents, a Country & Western duo, at workingmen's clubs when she was a child.

Cilla premieres on ITV on Monday at 9pm.

Watch the interview with Sheridan Smith, above.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.