The actress has never shied away from a challenge, but leading the new ITV drama might be her most intense ask yet, she tells Gemma Dunn.

Just one month into the new year and Sheridan Smith OBE is upholding her title of the hardest-working woman in showbiz.

In January alone, the Bafta award-winning actress has fronted two huge dramas - first as a bereaved mother in true-crime miniseries Four Lives, and more recently as a teacher who is accused of a sexual encounter with a pupil in psychological thriller The Teacher.

Now she's set to lead ITV's gripping and complex four-part event drama No Return, the latest offering from the dream team of screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst and executive producer Nicola Shindler (think hits such as Safe, The Stranger, Ordinary Lies).

"I've wanted to work with Nicola for years," Smith, 40, says of receiving the script. "And Danny, I was following on social media, and I was a huge fan. So before I even read it, I was like, 'I definitely want to be on board'. But when I did read it, I was gripped. Like, I didn't stop!"

The thriller tells the story of one unassuming family who, while on an idyllic all-inclusive luxury break in Turkey, find themselves navigating an arrest and an expensive - and alien - legal system.

Mum Kathy (Sheridan Smith) and dad Martin (Michael Jibson), their son Noah (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) and daughter Jessica (Lily Sutcliffe) are blissfully unaware of the horrific ordeal about to unfold when unsuspecting Noah accepts a seemingly innocent invitation to a beach party.

Suddenly it's up to Kathy and Martin to fight for their son's freedom.

Smith explains: "It instantly gave me that jelly belly feeling of, 'What would you do in that situation?'

"I've never read anything like this before. And from the minute Noah is arrested, that's it. Four hours of intense high drama!"

How do Kathy and Martin react?

"They both try to help their son in different ways but don't communicate," reasons the former Gavin & Stacey star. "They are both trying in their own way to fix it and do something, through very different routes, and that causes more arguments. All of the problems in their relationship come out.

"They also have a daughter, Jessica, who is 14 and stuck in the middle of it all, missing her friends back home. It's a living nightmare for this family."

"It was harrowing to film," Smith admits. "I've done lots of different roles, but this is just like a hell ride. You don't really come up for air until the end. I hope viewers will be gripped to see what happens next."

Completing the cast are Sian Brooke, who plays Kathy's sister Megan, David Mumeni, who plays Megan's husband Steve, Philip Arditti as Noah's legal representative Rico Karvalci, Murat Seven as hotel worker Ismail, and Rufus Hound as private investigator Al Milner.

With themes of parental love, guilt, grievances, and issues around consent for teenagers, the series certainly makes for a contemporary and emotional watch, and it's made all the more pertinent by the fact that Smith is now a mother herself.

"I've played a lot of mums, but this is the first time I've played a mum as an actual mother myself - it's so different," she says, having given birth to her son in 2020. "You can act being a mum but there's something very different when you are a parent yourself with a child of your own.

"All I kept thinking of was Billy. Every time that would just set me off. I didn't have to act too much in the crying scenes because you just imagine this mother going through this hell and thinking if it was my little boy. So I could totally relate to this.

"It felt like the right role to play after having a child and being a mum and really understanding the lioness of a mother that I would be and every mum would be, I'm sure, and every parent would be to try and save their child."

The Moorside actor (who split with Billy's father, Jamie Horn, last summer) prefers to take her son "everywhere with her", detailing how she flew him out to Spain to film for No Return.

"I think nowadays you can go away and take them with you," Smith muses.

"I was in Budapest for six weeks on another job and I didn't see him because we were just coming out of the pandemic. I missed him so much. So I hope if I do jobs in the future I can always have him with me - even if just for a little bit of it.

"But I had a nanny - Yvonne Forrest - out in Spain to help me," she confesses. "Nannies are amazing. I wouldn't be able to be working if it wasn't for her.

"Eventually one day he'll realise that mummy is doing it for him, and he'll understand. But at the moment he's just so young and a bit clingy. I just miss him so much when I'm away. But it's worth it because it is for him."

And her star certainly shows no sign of waning, with Smith's next feature being another Danny Brocklehurst piece - The Railway Children Return, a sequel to the famous 1970 film.

It marks more than two decades spent in television, film and radio for Smith, who has gone from playing, in her own words, "slappers and chavs" to taking leading roles in top TV dramas and films.

Whether it's her tear-jerking performance in The C Word, a Bafta-winning turn in gritty TV biopic Mr Biggs, or singing her heart out as the nation's sweetheart Cilla Black, she certainly doesn't do things by halves.

But it's all in a day's work for the Lincolnshire-born talent, who admits she doesn't really prepare.

"I just kind of get stuck in; I just want it to be really true and real and I want to do my best for the writer and the team," she finishes.

"I tend to dive headfirst until I finish a job, and come up at the end of it all. It can be intense, but I love it. I just always want it to be authentic and real."

No Return starts on ITV on Monday February 7.