What To Know
- Kacey Ainsworth significantly influenced her character Cathy Keating’s evolution on Grantchester, helping shape her into a businesswoman.
- Ainsworth reflects on her time with the show and Cathy and Geordie’s relationship.
Who would have thought that Grantchester’s Cathy Keating would end up becoming a successful businesswoman? When the British mystery series debuted 11 seasons ago, her world centered around the home she shared with her police detective husband and four young children in the English village in 1953. But Cathy’s portrayer, Kacey Ainsworth, played a role in her evolution to co-owner of CeCe’s clothing boutique with former vicarage housekeeper Sylvia Chapman (Tessa Peake-Jones) in the early 1960s.
In the series’ upcoming penultimate episode, Cathy, Mrs. C, and CeCe’s are at the center of the action as a hostage situation unfolds. It’s quite a change from the show’s early seasons, when the women didn’t have many scenes together, and the actresses didn’t see much of each other during filming. Later, Cathy began working at a department store and Mrs. C helped out with the children. “Then it kind of fell to Tessa and I to think about what they could do next,” Ainsworth recalls. “I said, ‘What if they opened a store?’ And it took off in the imagination of the writers.”
The creative team, she adds, welcomed such suggestions from the cast. “We all had input into our character development. It didn’t necessarily follow that they’d take that on, but they were willing and open for us to say, ‘Look, I’ve had an idea. What about this?’ It could have been a story from your own life, or a story from your grandmother’s life, or just something you felt like should be addressed. They’ve done various things that I’ve tentatively suggested, from Cathy having a job to a menopause storyline to how they treated women with mental health issues in the ’50s.”
Robson Green and Kacey Ainsworth (Courtesy of Kudos, ITV, and MASTERPIECE)
Over the course of Grantchester’s run, Cathy and her husband, Geordie (Robson Green), have faced marital challenges. In Season 11, Geordie has been jealous of the amount of time his wife has been spending away from home, especially since much of it has been in the company of Mr. Switch (Daniel Lapine), the accountant helping with CeCe’s financial affairs. But through it all, Ainsworth admires how Cathy and Geordie have remained a team.
“She brightened his dark days because she was very present,” Ainsworth says. “If she had a bad day, she didn’t think to herself, ‘I better be quiet because he’s coming from work.’ She was like, ‘Oh, I’ve had a terrible day! Wait till you hear what’s happened to me.’ I think her liveliness is the thing that he loves about her, the fact that she is so fully alive and present, always moving forward. That is a real antidote to his job, which is about everything being dead.”
Ainsworth, who spent six years on the British soap opera EastEnders, saw her Grantchester role expand over the years (she’s even credited as a cowriter on a Season 9 episode). Like Cathy, the actress, who lives on a farm in Hertfordshire, had young children when the show started, so she didn’t want to spend too much time on the set initially. Along with other cast members, she found the last day of filming to be full of emotion.
“It was very sad, but that kind of bouncy sad,” she recalls. “The sadness you’ve got because something’s ended, but also the joy that you have done something that you’ve enjoyed and that you’ve invested a lot into. We felt like the quality had never been diminished. So although it was sad, it was a bit of a celebration, too.”
It’s an experience that will stay with her. Besides getting to keep some items from the set, including Cathy’s colorful cardigans, Ainsworth has a Jack Russell terrier named after one of series’ core characters: former curate Leonard (Al Weaver). She says the canine seemed to fit the character: “Jack Russells have a tendency to be quite nervous. They’re also really good fun, and they’re very loving.” Ainsworth even has a tattoo on her back as a reminder of Grantchester. She was among a group of cast and creatives who got a small letter G affixed to their flesh.
And Ainsworth will be back on PBS before long — she’s been shooting another series for Masterpiece that she won’t name — but she adds that she’ll miss the joy of spending summer with the Grantchester gang. “We genuinely liked each other, liked working together, liked the long hours. I’ve been working in this industry since I was 9, and it’s quite unusual to have that level of cohesion amongst a very big cast. The camaraderie amongst us all was so strong.”
Grantchester, Sundays, 9/8c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)