An Interview With Stella Duffy

Stella Duffy talks to Naomi Young about life, love, the universe and everything in it.... Well, nearly!

I met Stella Duffy on a warm June evening. We sat on the grass behind the Glass Bar (it being closed) surrounded by the typical sights and sounds of Euston, including arguing drunks. She was somewhat subdued as a good friend had died that morning, however even a subdued Stella makes most other people seem withdrawn and reticent.

Duffy is a writer, actress, comedian and improviser and has also written for radio; so I wondered which of these activities she likes best. “I like the thing I’m doing at the time. I’m writing a show for the National Youth Theatre at the moment which I’m loving because there’s something fantastic about working with young people, they’re really vibrant. But, I think I have a passion for book writing that is ongoing. I don’t think I’d like not to be writing.” She has also been working on a screenplay for a possible film of State of Happiness. “I’ve written two drafts of the script so far, it’s got a director and two production companies who are co-producing. I’d say it’s 12% along the way. I won’t think it’s real until it’s distributed, but there’s definite potential.”

She has also been writing for TV, which she enjoys more than she’d expected. “I love television, I love it as a form. I mostly like American TV. I like all the things basically that came after Hill Street Blues and are within that sort of American realist genre. I’m not snobby about telly. I think telly changes the world, more people see it than read our books, so if you want to change the world go and make some good telly.”

Stella’s new novel, about a London community, focussing around a dry-cleaner’s shop in Loughborough Junction, is published by Virago, and is due out in autumn 2007. Singling Out the Couples will be re-issued in November.

Duffy seems to be unable to say no, at least to anything that might diminish her enjoyment of life. She describes herself as a “glass half full person” and likes to regularly count her blessings, “it makes me feel better,” and undoubtedly she has many to count, including recently marking five years since the end of successful treatment for breast cancer, but she also seems to have had more sadness and deaths of family and friends than your average 43 year old.

When I said I was going to ask some personal questions, she said, “Like what makes you cry?” and laughed hugely. Yes, why not? “People being ill and dying, anniversaries because both my parents are dead, and I have a dead sister and a dead nephew. I’ve written a thing in my new novel about when you’re a kid all you have is Christmas (or your religious festival) or your birthday and as you get older, you get all these other ones, your first date, getting married, the break ups, but then you start having deaths and your life gets full of anniversaries. Injustice, I get angry about the world not being better. My black and Asian friends don’t have any choice about being out and we do. They have to deal with racism every day in a way that we don’t necessarily have to deal with homophobia (given that we can choose to be out or not), so I do think it’s our duty to make it better. Political things make me cry in frustration. Beautiful sunsets. I’m lucky to be quite positive.”

But getting back to the writing, I wondered if she preferred writing the Saz Martin books, or more literary novels. “I don’t find them any different. I think the Saz Martin books are quite literary and I know that the literary ones are quite plotty. They’re sort of stuck, sadly, between being not quite very literary in which case I might win all the big awards and not quite very commercial in which case I might win all the big money! It’s a non-specific type of writing that makes it hard for booksellers to sell. I personally think all writing is non-specific but booksellers like us to be in our little boxes and not jump out of them. What I would say about the Saz ones is that the necessity to write a crime novel irritates me sometimes, and I wouldn’t mind just doing the characters rather than the crime. I never meant to write crime novels anyway.”

When I said she seemed to have ‘normal’ lesbian characters rather than stereotypes – she laughed heartily. Does she make a conscious effort to include lesbian characters? “I did when I started. I had lesbian characters in my life so it would be insane not to. I also have black characters in my life, so I have black people in my books. Just because the bulk of writing is done by white, generally middle-class people in Britain doesn’t mean that’s all we can write.”

“I don’t think lesbian relationships are any less or more complex than straight ones, for some women particularly women who aren’t out there’s the complexity of lying, but you know they could get over that if they just came out.”

It turns out that our duty to be out for the better good is somewhat of a hobbyhorse for Duffy. “I’m sure I’ve gone on and on and on about it. I’ve written a piece for an anthology published by Continuum, for Stonewall, about why I think it’s our duty to come out. We just happen to have been born in a time when it’s not quite all right yet, so for the women younger than ourselves who may be gay or straight or whatever, it’s our duty now to make it better for them, and the men. It’s the same old verbal that I always say!”

Despite a total lack of lesbian role models, Duffy herself came out at about 18, having first started considering the possibility even younger. “I didn’t know what it was that I felt, so I talked to people about it. I was still shagging men ferociously, and women, until my early 20s, but I think I always knew that my heart was a lesbian heart, or my soul or my psyche. I’m not even sure which part of me it is; it’s certainly not merely sexuality. I came out to my parents in my late teens early twenties. My mum said she’d seen a lot of it in the army so she wasn’t surprised! [laughs] And my dad didn’t care, he was a working class Catholic bloke of his generation, it was amazing. He was more upset that I wanted to be an actor, or a writer. I was the only person in my family ever to go to university, it was such a big deal to get the possibility of education and he saw it as wasting it on being an actor.”

Duffy draws her characters from herself and people she encounters. “I don’t believe writers who say they don’t, they’re drawn from everywhere, and parts of me. Sometimes they’re drawn from choices I wouldn’t make. In State of Happiness (SoH) the character had a terminal illness, which I didn’t when I had cancer. I had her make choices I don’t make, because it’s more interesting to me – it’s not diary, it’s fiction, but I think it’s impossible not to have some of yourself in it.”

SoH has been described as her ‘cancer’ book. “I started writing it before I was diagnosed. I get very grumpy when people say it’s my ‘cancer’ book, because the word cancer is not mentioned once, in the novel, intentionally. I have friends with AIDS; I have friends who’ve been living with HIV for a long time, and friends who’ve been living on the cocktail drugs. I think disease is really prevalent and we don’t talk about it, so even before I was diagnosed I was interested in that concept. I didn’t write it because I was sick, which is even more weird to think that I was starting to write about those things before I knew I was ill. I think perhaps our subconscious knows stuff that we don’t.”

“It’s about what happens to relationships within illness. I think in many ways when I was sick it was harder for Shelley because she didn’t get the attention I did and I saw how hard it was for her. So in the novel a lot of it’s about Jack. I did intentionally make them a straight couple because it would have been a whole other issue and I wanted it to be a much more mainstream book and not only read by lesbians, and sadly the truth is straight people still won’t often read novels about lesbian characters. I think Sarah’s [Waters] made a huge breakthrough there, but I’m still not entirely certain that your average mainstream straight reader is always OK with contemporary lesbian lead characters. Also, sadly, lesbians often don’t want to read novels that don’t have lesbians in them, which drives me crazy.” There is the lesbian best friend though. “You’ve got to have the lesbian best friend! Also, she’s the funniest character. She’s brilliant; in the film she’s a great part.”

Stella was recently civil partnered with her wife Shelley, however this was actually their third wedding. “We did it on December 23rd, the first day we could because bloody Lambeth Town Hall, full of homosexuals it was! We couldn’t get in ‘til the Friday.” Their first wedding, very small, was when she was ill. Then, “we had a big one for a huge amount of people last year…we did one of the last of the Partnership Registrations at City Hall, because we wanted to do it in September which was our 15th anniversary and 5 years since I’d finished treatment. Excellent frocks, very good shoes and heaps of food and wine and speeches.” Duffy says it was a purely personal event on the emotional level, but concedes there is a political element. “I think it’s a fantastic step…it’s not marriage, we’re not there yet, but it’s more than I ever thought we’d get in my lifetime. So the people who made that possible did a brilliant job over the years of campaigning. I’m aware that I’m grateful to them.”

Duffy constantly refers to Shelley as her ‘wife’ so I wondered what she might have to say to detractors who might say such a term implies ownership or copying straight marriages. “If I say girlfriend, people might think she’s my girl friend, if I say this is my partner, they might think she’s my business partner, when I say this is my wife, it says everything. She calls me her wife as well. It’s a very easy way to be out, very quickly. I still feel a little like I’m saying it rather than it’s coming easily, but I haven’t been married for long! I think we kind of do feel like we own each other, we don’t have an open relationship, and we do intend it to go on forever so that’s fine with me. The priests only took marriage away from us human beings 600 odd years ago, you used to be allowed to jump the broom or tie the knot literally in front of your friends and family and calling someone your helpmeet was enough. Helpmeet I think is a gorgeous phrase but I’m not sure that most people at a party would quite get it. Wife does it nice and quickly.”

I was intrigued to read that Duffy has always been dumped, never the other way round. “Because I’ve never asked anyone out either, cos I’m a wimp. I haven’t actually had that many deeply long term relationships. I’ve been with Shelley for 16 years since I was 27. It’s not like I got dumped a million times! But I have been heartbroken rather than heartbreaking. I think it’s because I liked them more than they liked me. It’s not because I wouldn’t do it. Inappropriate relationships will always get you dumped.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever asked anyone out, I’ve been very obvious, and even as I say this I know all those people who like to go ‘ooh Stella Duffy’s so femme’ will just jump on that. I hate that, I don’t like anyone’s labels and I don’t perceive myself fitting in my definition of femme.” [Which is?] “The one who never asks anyone out! Or rather who wants to be in the kind of relationship where her partner is the one who does those things, I’ve never wanted to be in the kind of relationship where my partner does those things. I have a very fluid role specification with my partner.”

And just to end on a totally frivolous note, I asked who are the better kissers, men or women? “Ooh, gosh, it’s a long time since I’ve kissed a man. Guys are a bit bristly and I don’t do the bristle thing so possibly women, just for the lack of bristle. I remember thinking when I was doing both with some regularity that the softness of women’s faces as well as lips was a nice combination. And in truth, probably the women were slightly more hygienic with flossing and tooth brushing in my experience, but I wouldn’t want to cast aspersions on anyone else’s men that they’re snogging, I’m sure they’re all very clean!”

Naomi Young (Velvet Issue 10, Nov 2006)