The actress who learnt Welsh in four months to star in the nation’s hit television drama of last year feels proud that she may have inspired others to help “keep the beautiful language alive”.
Eve Myles became an overnight star last year after taking the lead role in the TV noir Keeping Faith — BBC Wales’s most-successful non-network drama for more than 20 years.
First shown in Welsh on S4C as Un Bore Mercher, the series later broadcast in English on BBC Wales and was released on BBC1 last summer. It has been downloaded 17m times on BBC iPlayer.
Myles, who is filming the much-anticipated second series of Keeping Faith, told The Sunday Times: “If I can contribute by showing how beautiful the language is, then of course I’m proud. This wasn’t my intention at the start, but I hope I’ve encouraged others to learn Welsh.”
Asked whether she supported the rise of Welsh medium schools and the nation’s fight to save the language, she replied: “It’s important to protect our heritage and language, and Wales should support that. We should be encouraging each other to keep the language alive.”
The National Assembly of Wales has set a target of 1m Welsh speakers by 2050. The number of people who consider themselves fluent has risen from 317,000 in 2005 to 319,000 in 2015, and the number who speak Welsh daily has climbed from 342,000 to 361,000. Schools that teach all subjects through the medium of Welsh have sprung up all over the country, while businesses and public bodies such as the BBC are also expected to promote the use of Welsh.
Myles initially turned down the part of Faith Howells, the small-town solicitor and mother of three whose husband, Evan, unexpectedly disappears one Wednesday morning, purely because it was in Welsh. She said: “It’s like asking me to speak Russian.” However, in the end she relented and learnt the language from scratch with the help of her husband, Bradley Freegard, a Welsh speaker who plays Evan.
“Living in Wales, Welsh was always around me, but I only knew a few of the basics. I learnt them at school and we’d repeat them at the school assembly: bore da, prynhawn da, nos da [good morning, good afternoon and good night],” said Myles, who was brought up in Ystradgynlais, in southwest Powys, and whose father is Scottish.
“Learning Welsh for Un Bore Mercher was the hardest professional challenge I’ve ever faced . . . My husband, who attended a Welsh-speaking school and has worked for most of his professional career on S4C productions, helped me.
“When I ran the words out loud, he’d listen and be my Welsh ears. At three or four in the morning I’d be kept awake because I couldn’t speak the dialogue in my head, so I’d give him a nudge and he’d patiently listen and help me with the word I needed to voice.”
Now Myles says that she speaks “conversational Welsh” with her daughters — “as I’m still very much a learner” — and is keen for them to grow up speaking the language. Her favourite Welsh phrase, she revealed, is cariad bach.
The second series of Un Bore Mercher, which will feature Faith’s life 18 months on from when the last series ended, airs on S4C on May 12, and the BBC will show Keeping Faith over the summer. As with the first series, the drama is being filmed simultaneously in Welsh and English. The Welsh version will be broadcast first.