Charity Wakefield’s passion for the natural world shone through when we caught up at her local green space. I met the actor, environmentalist and Woodland Trust ambassador at Peckham Rye Park to talk about trees, wildlife and acting. Charity explains how nature has made her happy since the tree-climbing, den-building days of her childhood. She is concerned that people have lost their connection with the environment, but is hopeful for the future and encourages us to recognise that we can all make a difference. She believes in ‘people power’. We also talk eco-friendly fashion, filming comedy-drama The Great and climbing a tree to learn her lines in Lewisham! Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Charity Wakefield is an actor, environmentalist and Woodland Trust ambassador. She starred in BBC One’s production of Rapunzel, Constance in The Three Musketeers at the Bristol Old Vic, and Elaine in the Graduate at the New Vic. She had a lead role as Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and has been in Doctor Who, the Halcyon, Bounty Hunters, amongst other productions. And she’s now starring in the TV series, The Great about Catherine the Great. Well, I met her at her local park to talk about acting and the importance of the natural world. Charity: So now we are at Peckham Ride Park, which has been my local park for most of my time in London. I now have a baby so there’s lots of kinds of mother and baby groups around the area. I have lots of friends here still. Adam: Are you a country girl or did you grow up in the city, or? Charity: Erm, I, I never thought of myself as a country girl. I did grow up though in and around East Sussex. I used to live in a couple of different places down there. We moved a bit as a kid. Adam: Sorry, why don’t you, you grew up in the country, why did you not think of yourself as a… Charity: I don’t know Adam: You know you thought of yourself as you felt your inner urban woman early on? Charity: I just don’t think I grew up with any sense of identity if I’m honest, because I also live a little bit in Spain when I was very small. And like I said we moved around quite a lot. So actually I’m an actress and I trained at drama school and going to drama school at the time of going to university for most people if you do that, that was the first time I really had this interest to work out where I was from, or you know you kind of try to identify yourself by telling each other, and also drama school, in particular, you’re looking at different kind of life experiences and personality traits, because it’s material for you, right? So, you start kind of realising ‘oh I that this background or that background’. Yeah, for me, being from the countryside just meant desperate driving as soon as I can. I could drive about a week after my birthday because I had secret driving lessons with friends and my dad and stuff. Yeah, I guess I have always loved the countryside and I sort of you know had friends you know the family were farmers and we used to go and make camps in the woods. Adam: Well, that’s good, and talking of woods we seem to be, what’s down there? That’s a very wooded area, shall we go, you lead on, but shall we go down there? Or Charity: This is the Common, this is Peckham Ride Common, and erm I think it was, has been around for at least a couple of hundred years and it’s a really big open space with some really huge trees in the middle. They’re probably like, lots of them are London planes and oak trees, and I think this section we’re about to walk into was actually sort of closed off at the beginning I think it was a big common and this was owned by an estate.