The cuddly alien-like creatures who turned children’s television on its head from 1997 to 2001. Photo / Getty Images
The cuddly alien-like creatures who turned children’s television on its head from 1997 to 2001. Photo / Getty Images
Being part of children’s TV’s biggest-ever phenomenon changed Nikky Smedley’s life – now she’s taking her ‘Confessions’ to the Edinburgh Fringe.
It’s 23 years since Nikky Smedley made her debut on TV as Laa-Laa, the kindest (and yellowest) of the Teletubbies, those cuddly alien-like creatures who turned children’s television on its head across five blockbusting seasons from 1997 to 2001.
Now Smedley is taking her one-woman show about her experiences as part of children’s TV’s biggest-ever phenomenon, Confessions of a Teletubby, to the Edinburgh Fringe.
Unleashed on an unsuspecting universe on March 31, 1997, Teletubbies was an instant sensation: a 90s cultural milestone up there with the Spice Girls or Oasis. “We saw the papers. We understood. People were talking about it,” says Smedley of those whirlwind early weeks.
However, Smedley, 61, says that the response was “quite derogatory at first”. The Daily Mirror claimed parents were shocked at the Teletubbies’ “goo-goo” speech and feared their offspring might grow up talking gobbledygook.
Worse was to come. The Teletubbies, who dallied in the rolling fields surrounding their “Tubbytronic Superdome” home, were dubbed “a bad influence on their children”. At the 1998 World Summit on Television for Children, a horrified executive from Norway described Teletubbies as “the most market-oriented children’s programme concept I’ve ever seen”.
Smedley recalls feeling protective of the show’s creators, Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport of production company Ragdoll. “[We were] upset for Anne and Andy because they were trying to do something brilliant and it’s getting slagged,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in Warwickshire.
Not that there was much opportunity for navel-gazing. For one thing, Laa-Laa didn’t have a navel (instead she had a useful television built into her tummy). Also, everyone was far too busy sweating it out on set. “We were concentrating on doing the work. We were working long days. You didn’t have time to lie about and read the paper and watch the news.”
“It wasn’t until I got out into the outside world in the lead up at Christmas, that I thought … oh my God … everyone knows [about Teletubbies],” she tells me. “It was me walking into my local pub. Nobody knows who I am apart from my friends [whom she’d let in on the secret]. We’d signed NDAs [non-disclosure agreements], so you couldn’t say [you were in Teletubbies]. Then, at the pub, there was karaoke and a whole bunch of drunk people on the stage doing the Teletubbies’ single.”
Smedley was already an experienced actor, singer and dancer. She was also a keen musician and by the mid-1990s was fronting the garage-rock group Psychopussy, A career in children’s entertainment was the last thing on her mind when, in September 1995, she spotted an advertisement in The Stage: “Artistes with stamina required for new children’s television programme.”
Her motivations for applying were entirely practical, Smedley remembers, as the novelty of living gig-to-gig was wearing thin. Indeed, she remained blasé about the job until Teletubbies co-creator Wood shared her passionate vision of a children’s series that would function as a sort of anti-Power Rangers. Rather than celebrating violence and conflict, the idea was to make young viewers feel loved. At that point, Teletubbies – then called Teddytubbies – was a work in progress. After passing the audition, Smedley was encouraged to help shape Laa-Laa’s personality: her kindness, her love of song and dance and her attachment to a giant orange ball.
“They were generous. They wanted to know our ideas and how we were going to develop the character. We had long and arduous conversations about all those things. It was great to have that input. Rather than, ‘show up, say your lines, hit your mark’.”
The idea was to make young viewers feel loved with Teletubbies. Photo / Getty Images
Still, for all the emphasis on collaboration, the Teletubbies cast members were never equal partners with Ragdoll. They were employees, as was made clear early in the process when they were asked to sign documents giving up the rights to any royalties or residuals – notwithstanding Smedley’s role in the development of Laa-Laa’s personality (though not, of course, the character’s physical design).
“You’re offered the contract. It’s not an Equity [the actors’ union] contract. You go to your union, and they say it’s not an Equity contract … You go to the company and say, ‘is there any leeway on any of this?’ and they say, ‘no – you either sign it and you take the job, or we go to the next person on the list’,” she says. “Which is not unusual. It’s how things work. Do you beat yourself up about it? Or go, ‘fair enough – this is still an almighty stroke of luck and I’m very happy to have it’?.”
Teletubbies was a merchandising goldmine for Ragdoll — Anne Wood is estimated to have made £200 million ($434.98 million) from tie-ins alone and the value of the Teletubbies brand is believed to have peaked at more than £1 billion. Smedley, by contrast, never saw a penny beyond her wages. This never bothered her. She went into the job with her eyes open and harboured no resentments.
“All right – so the toy-makers are making loads of money. Various people are making loads of money. You know the world you live in. You know the kind of industry you work in. And still, even though we were just on a decent wage, it was still the most decent wage I’d ever earned. It still lifted me out of poverty into a brighter future. I’m not going to moan about it at all, frankly.”
She had not known the other Teletubbies when they were cast. Tinky Winky (purple, triangle on head) was played by actor Dave Thompson; Dipsy (green, “dipstick” antenna) was comedian John Simmit; and Po (red, circular antenna) was television presenter Pui Fan Lee. However, at the end of season one, Thompson was replaced by Simon Shelton, who played Tinky Winky until the cancellation of Teletubbies in 2001 (it has been revived several times since, most recently by Netflix).
“It was tougher in the first season,” explains Smedley. “When we got into the second season, when Simon came … I don’t want to diss Dave, but Simon was more physically capable. That’s kind of the bottom line. The number of takes we would have to do were reduced, and we started to bond a lot more.”
Thompson’s departure was nonetheless a shock, she recalls. “We didn’t see it coming. They could have handled it better. I did feel sorry for Dave. It was pretty brutal, to be honest. I understood their reasons and their thinking – I think they could have been a little bit more considerate.”
At the time, their identities as Teletubbies were still supposed to be secret (they had all signed those NDAs). But with the media besieging the set, the furry friends were soon unmasked. There was a lot of fan mail – including “weird messages”.
“It started after the Daily Sport printed a badly mocked-up image of Laa-Laa, dressed in black bras and pants, with the tagline, ‘FAKE: Saucy shots of Laa-Laa shock fans,” she writes in her memoir Over the Hills and Far Away.
“I started getting [letters] from a grown man telling me what a saucy little Teletubby I was and what he would like to do to me – with Tubby custard. I let the bosses know, in case I came to a grisly – and sticky – end, but after a few months, the letters tailed off and it became apparent that I was no longer starring in the stalker’s fantasies.”
The attention was strange but she never felt in physical danger. “We got very well protected. There was the whole Ragdoll office. And the BBC, which filtered things out. Weird messages, yes. Not for me. For Laa-Laa. Grown men, writing love letters to a giant yellow puppet. But there was no harm done in the end.”
Teletubbies remained controversial even after the "gibberish" controversy died away. Photo / Getty Images
However, even when the controversy over the “gobbledygook” speech died away, Teletubbies remained controversial. In 1999, American televangelist Jerry Falwell claimed Tinky Winky was a “covert homosexual symbol”. “He is purple – the Gay Pride colour. And his antenna is shaped like a triangle – the Gay Pride symbol,” he said, adding, as supposed evidence, the fact that Tinky Winky carries a purse-like bag.
“Simon [Shelton] was just brilliant about it. His line was ‘this says more about you than it does about us’. Really, you’ve got nothing better to do than speculate about the sexuality of a fictional puppet? Ridiculous – just ridiculous.”
Looking back, there were many pinch-yourself moments for Smedley. One highlight, she says, was reaching No 1 with Teletubbies Say “Eh–Oh!”, masterminded by a pre-X Factor Simon Cowell. Just a few months earlier, she had been singing in dingy indie venues with Psychopussy.
“It’s so funny. I was covering the whole gamut of showing off before Teletubbies. I sang in a lot of bands. I played the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. I was signed to CBS. I’d been trying hard to be a pop star and failed. Then, suddenly, I’m a giant yellow puppet – with a double platinum disc on my wall.”
