Aisling Bea was 'sick for a very long time' after This Way Up

Aisling Bea was 'sick for a very long time' after making the second series of This Way Up during one of the COVID-19 lockdowns - insisting she wishes they'd waited until conditions improved before going back to work

Aisling Bea

Aisling Bea was "sick for a very long time" after making the second series of 'This Way Up' during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 39-year-old actress wrote and starred in two seasons of the Channel 4 comedy and she's now admitted she "truly regrets" going back to work to make the second series in the middle of lockdown - insisting she wishes they'd waited for winter to be over so the production didn't seem so "hopeless and dark".

She told Stylist magazine: "I'm a big believer of regrets. I truly regret making the second series of 'This Way Up' in the winter lockdown, when there were no vaccines and it all seemed hopeless and dark.

"I wish we'd waited until the spring, when we were not so broken from the winter of isolation. It left me very sick for a very long time."

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However, in the interview, Aisling also admitted that some alone time is actually healthy for her because she needs some space to unwind.

She explained: "I am an outgoing, social lass 20 per cent of the time, but as I grew up in the middle of nowhere with just my sister and mam, my nervous system needs unobserved alone time to resettle or I become like an old kettle on the hob whistling in a panic."

In the show, Aisling plays a teacher who's trying to pull her life back together after a nervous breakdown and she previously insisted she hoped it would help shine a light on mental health issues.

She told Squaremile.com: "Just to show someone funny, struggling, and getting to the other side of it. I wanted to show someone on the other side. It wasn’t about going down hill.

"Even with the title. Someone wanted to do a different version of it and translated it to ‘Be Careful, Fragile’. I was like, ‘No, no, that’s not it.’

"First of all, from just your translation of the title, you don’t get that it’s about going forward and showing that you can go forwards and up. It’s not about being broken, it’s about rebuilding yourself. It’s about going in with that intent with every scene. It’s about recovery."