Emily Atack jokes her childhood was 'destroyed' by TV star family members
Emily Atack joked that visiting TV studios with her mum, actress Kate Robbins, and late uncle, Teletubbies star Simon Shelton, ruined her childhood as she saw how children's shows were made.
Emily Atack jokes her TV star relatives "destroyed [her] childhood".
The 35-year-old actress saw much-loved TV show costume characters with their heads off and found out the magic behind how programmes are made when she spent time in studios where her mum, actress Kate Robbins, 67, and her late uncle Simon Shelton - who played Tinky Winky in the BBC's children show Teletubbies - worked.
She told the new issue of the Radio Times magazine: "My mum has always been on TV.
"My late uncle Simon played Tinky Winky in Teletubbies, so my childhood was spent going to Teletubbyland and to the studios where my mum was working, seeing behind-the-scenes, but it kind of destroyed my childhood.
"I saw Barney the dinosaur with his head off."
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kate worked on the ITV satirical puppet sketch comedy show Spitting Image.
Each episode saw comics impersonate various current events and public figures.
Kate provided almost all of the female voices, including the late royals Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana.
When Spitting Image - which was one of the most-watched TV programmes of the 1980s - was cancelled in 1996 after viewing figures tanked, Kate kept some of the puppets, including former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
And when her children - Emily, Martha, 34, and 32 year old George - were naughty, The Inbetweeners star explained that Kate would make them sit in the room with the scary puppet of the late Conservative politician to punish them.
Emily said: "Mum was on Spitting Image and kept some of the puppets in the house.
"If my siblings and I were naughty, she'd say, 'You have to sit in the room with the Margaret Thatcher puppet,' which I was really scared of.
"So really, I should hate TV!"
Elsewhere in her interview with the magazine, the star said she has been sexually assaulted on TV sets throughout her career.
And Emily - who fronted the 2023 BBC documentary Emily Atack: Asking for It? on the subject of online sexual harassment - is keen to make a documentary on intimacy coordinators after her experience with them on the Disney+ series Rivals and feels that they have brought about a welcome "shift" in conduct behind-the-scenes in projects.
She said: "I want to do one on intimacy coordinators, and I'm going to start having conversations about it soon.
"I've seen people roll their eyes about them and say, 'I don't need one.'
"There's a defensiveness about it, because they feel like they're being accused of something they haven't even done yet.
"Intimacy coordinators are there for support if you feel uncomfortable, whether you're a man or a woman."
Emily continued: "I've been sexually assaulted at work throughout my career, where it's on the actual set, or at a wrap party – and since the #MeToo movement, it shows that people are listening and that there has to be a shift in behaviour on sets."
