Vera star Brenda Blethyn's unique living arrangement with husband after quitting show
Brenda Blethyn played Vera Stanhope in the hit ITV drama for years until she decided to quit the role to spend more time with her loved ones
Brenda Blethyn has revealed her unusual living arrangements with her husband of 15 years after her exit from the ITV drama show. The acclaimed actress played DCI Vera Stanhope on the show for 14 years.
In a shock statement last year, Brenda announced she would be quitting the role and her final scenes aired earlier this year as the show wrapped with a Christmas special and a two-part series.
In her statement, she shared: "Working on Vera has been a joy from beginning to end and I’m sad to be saying Cheerio. But I am so proud of our achievements over the last fourteen years. I’ll be forever grateful to the wonderful Ann Cleeves who created Vera, and to Elaine Collins who saw fit to cast me in the role.
"The Producers, dream cast and crew have been fabulous and I’m going to miss them, but I won’t forget their huge talent, the camaraderie, laughter or kindness we shared nor the friendship of the people of the north east and our fans worldwide. Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
Now, Brenda has opened up about life after Vera. She revealed that her and her husband Michael Mayhew live in the same building in Kent but they both have separate apartments after their differences became clear.
"My husband lives upstairs. We moved into this very nice flat in Ramsgate. And I’d be saying, ‘Can I open a window, it’s very hot in here?’ And he’d say, ‘No, it’s freezing.’ And after a while, I said, ‘Is that flat downstairs still vacant?’" she told The Telegraph.
"So I moved downstairs. It works brilliantly. We eat together. We go out together. We live together, but in different apartments."
Brenda previously revealed her decision to quit Vera was to spend more time with her family.
"As much as I loved all that, I’ve got a family at home and I realised I hadn’t had a summer for 14 years with my family. So I still did another series because I couldn’t drag myself away. But anyway it was time, that’s all," she said.
"Naturally, I missed my family. And my dog Jack, although he was with me in the North East, but I didn’t see him much because I was working all day. I love my Vera family, but I love my other family too."
She added: "And when you consider I was already thinking about packing work in when I was offered the job back in 2010, 14 series of working on Vera is pretty good going! I wasn’t actually going to do any more after series 13, but of course ITV said they needed to wind the series up. So I said: ‘Oh, go on then, I’ll do a couple more episodes.'"
Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.