'Was it better to slap him or kiss him?': an interview with Louise Brealey

This paper is an edited dialogue between the actress Louise Brealey and the novelist Richard T. Kelly regarding Brealey's role as Molly Hooper in the BBC TV series Sherlock (2010-2017), a re-imagined updating to the twenty-first century of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories by the writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Brealey describes how she was cast in what was first envisaged as a minor role; also an anomalous one, in that -while every other character in the show had an analogue in Conan Doyle's original stories -Molly was the co-writers' invention: a young woman with an unrequited romantic interest in Sherlock. Brealey details how the storyline of Sherlock and Molly was given increasing prominence by the writers as the series progressed, based on intense interest from its growing audience, expressed conspicuously through the Twitter website and other online forums. Brealey describes her interactions on social media with this fan-base and gives her own analysis of the profundity of their reaction to the show. She offers additional thoughts on Sherlock's addressing of issues of gender (including her briefly playing a gender-swapped version of the Hooper character) and of sexuality (in how the series depicted the relationship between Holmes and Dr Watson).