It’s A Sin’s Lydia West and her co-stars had to have ‘training’ to perfect their ‘La’ phrase

Lydia West has revealed she and her It’s A Sin co-stars had ‘training’ to perfect the way they said ‘La‘ to each other in the show.

The actress, 27, revealed in the podcast Table Manners on Wednesday that the exclamation was an in-joke between show creator Russell T Davies, Jill Nalder and their friends when they lived in the Pink Palace in the eighties.

In the show, Lydia’s character Jill Baxter and her friends Ritchie (Olly Alexander), Roscoe (Omari Douglas), Colin (Callum Scott Howells) and Ash (Nathaniel Curtis) would happily say ‘la’ to each other whenever they left their flat.

And Lydia said of making sure they said the word in a particular way: ‘It took some training. Russell had us doing all sorts of “La” to get it right.

‘It was their private joke between himself, Jill and some other of their friends who lived in the pink palace. It had to be right. It wasn’t just a made up fictional joke.

‘It was like “we did this”. I don’t think they do it anymore but Jill even remember’s doing it. 

‘We were in rehearsals that first week, trying to get it right and Peter [Hoar, the director] was like “I actually don’t know the difference between all your La’s”. We did it so many times.’ 

It’s A Sin follows a group of friends throughout the eighties as their life of hedonistic partying is infiltrated by the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 

Lydia’s character is based on Russel’s friend Jill, who also plays her mum in the show, and she said: ‘I think even knowing Jill, my character, was based on someone in Russell’s life, that was just enough for me, but knowing she was playing my mother, I was just double whammied. I couldn’t handle it.’

Describing what she was like, Lydia went on: ‘She was just like fictional Jill. She’s so so kind. So loving. She lived in the pink palace. Worked in the West end, in theatre growing up. She nursed people in their dying days. 

‘She had a lot of gay friends. She went on all the marches. She marched with the quilt. She did everything you would imagine fictional Jill does, she did. 

‘She would eb on set, and would have so many anecdotes from the time. Even just from the fun they got up too. 

‘Russell really wanted to show the joyfulness of the show, the friendshsips, the celebrations at the time and Jill just having that inspiration on set to just tell you “then we went to this club, the parties in the pink palace, the marches.”‘

‘It was just such a huge source of inspiration for me to listen to her. I was in awe of everything she said. She’s so special. She’s so important.’

The show follows Ritchie (Olly), an 18-year-old hailing from an ignorant, unloving household on the Isle of Wight who throws himself headfirst into London life, soon befriending Jill and three others and renting a flat, lovingly dubbed The Pink Palace. 

Davies, the writer and producer behind Queer As Folk, the 2005 revival of Doctor Who and Cucumber, loosely based It’s A Sin on his own experiences in the eighties. 

The cast of young talent is supported by a string of veteran screen stars, including Keeley and Shaun Dooley as Ritchie’s parents, Stephen Fry as an MP lover of outrageous flatmate Roscoe, and Neil Patrick Harris as a mentor to another, the quietly observant Colin.