Suranne Jones has been on medication since the death of her father: ‘I wasn’t coping’

Suranne opened up on how she manages her mental health (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

Suranne Jones has been on medication since the death of her father Chris in January. 

The Doctor Foster actress confirmed in May that her dad had died four months earlier, after contracting Covid-19 and spending three months in the ICU.

After getting Covid herself, the actress ‘wasn’t coping again’, so accepted help with her mental health.

Speaking on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, the 43-year-old actress explained she wasn’t sure if she should divulge the information, but decided that it was important to dispel the ‘taboo’.

Suranne said: ‘The pandemic hit, and my dad got sick. I got a call from my dad and he was grey and he couldn’t breathe and he said that he’d done a COVID test and it was positive.

‘So my work – Gentleman Jack – sent him a medic and the medic said he needed to go to hospital.

‘He was there for three months in ICU. He didn’t make it and then I got COVID myself at Christmas.

‘At that point I felt like I wasn’t coping again so I had to go on medication.’

The star added: ‘I think it’s important to say that I’m doing great and I’m still filming my job and professionally I’ve always been really strong and on point.

’But I’m on medication, and at some point I’ll need to get off that.’

Suranne had been on medication a year before the pandemic, after having a ‘really big breakdown’, but had come off her prescription because she ‘felt really good’.

The star had first been prescribed medication after she took on a huge workload following the death of her mother Jenny in 2016, and collapsed during a performance of the 2018 play Frozen, in which she played the mother of a child kidnapped and murdered by a paedophile, forcing her to pull out of four performances. 

Suranne said: ‘My mum had been sick for many years, she had an aneurysm. She slowly got worse and she developed dementia and she was in a home. In 2016 I had my son, and by the end of 2016 I lost my mum.

The actress suffered a ‘public breakdown’ after the death of her mum (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

‘What I did was go straight into work because I thought well, I’ll take a job because I want to show that I’m back in the game. So I took on a tough job – I don’t know to this day why I would choose a subject that was about a paedophile.

‘I had a very public breakdown on stage in front of the audience and there was a build up to it that I didn’t recognise.

‘I thought it’s OK, I’ve got this brilliant opportunity – Gentleman Jack – I’m going to do it because I think it will help me. It did to a certain point.’

Suranne threw herself into 14 hour work days, saying: ‘I’m trying to control stuff. I’m trying to control the inevitable. Because I haven’t yet grieved for my mother and I haven’t given myself any time.

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‘So after the first Gentleman Jack I had a really big breakdown and I was offered medication, and I took it.

‘And I didn’t want to. Kicking and screaming I took it, but I was so far gone by that point, because I’d had the death of my mother and then I’d gone on to do two huge shows and my husband did not know how to help me.’

The former Coronation Street star previously shared that she has been in therapy in 2003, comparing the process to ‘going to the gym’ to keep her mental health in check.

Suranne is back on our screens this week on Channel 4 in the latest installment of Dominic Savage’s I Am… series, I Am Victoria, in which she plays a woman on the edge of a breakdown.

She will also be back on the BBC this year in Vigil, in which she plays a detective investigating a suspicious death on a submarine.