Nicola Walker may be one of Britain’s most beloved actresses, but don’t call her a national treasure.
“I think it’s a phrase that’s applied in a lovely way, but I worry that it means people are sick of the sight of you,” she says in this exclusive interview with HELLO!. “It’s not quite as positive as it sounds.”
The London-born actress has won plaudits for her performances in primetime drama juggernauts such as The Split and Last Tango in Halifax. Yet Nicola, 56, is self-deprecating regarding her success.
“To be honest, that’s all there was,” she says. “When I started out, there weren’t that many parts for women in TV, unless you were playing the love interest or the hot or crazy girlfriend. I didn’t really fit in during the Nineties on TV.”
Everything changed when she landed her breakout role, aged 33, playing the intelligence analyst Ruth Evershed in the BBC’s spy drama Spooks. It sparked a career-defining run of portraying intelligent, authoritative female characters, including the detective Cassie Stuart in ITV’s crime drama Unforgotten.
“I think the police officer parts came along because, at the time, that was the only place where the business could imagine women in positions of power.”
“That is changing and has been changing for a long time,” she continues. “The alternatives just weren’t for me. I was never going to get those parts.”
Domestic bliss
Her status as a TV star certainly doesn’t earn her any special treatment at home.
“My husband now uses it as a joke and chases me around the house saying: ‘Is the national treasure going to actually cook some food tonight?’ I never cook,” says Nicola, who met her husband, the actor Barnaby Kay, in 1994, marrying him in 2006.
Nicola has never wanted to break into Hollywood, she says. Although she “loved” her brief stint on Broadway in 2015, when she starred alongside Mark Strong in a production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, she has chosen to focus on British opportunities.
© Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Disney+“If you’re still acting in your late forties or fifties, you’re there because you really want to be there. But I thought: ‘I’m probably better off going home, where I might stand a chance of getting a job,'” she says.
“I think that if I was 21, maybe I’d have given that a go, but I like the television we make here.”Brownie points at homeNow, Nicola is embracing comedy.
In the new Disney series Alice and Steve, she stars as Alice, a mother whose friend of 30 years, Steve (played by the Flight of the Conchords star Jemaine Clement), starts dating her 26-year-old daughter.
© Lara Cornell/Disney+The show has earned her some brownie points with her son, Harry, 19.
“He’s a big fan of Jemaine, and Alice and Steve is the first show I’ve done that my son really likes,” she says. “It’s a great vote of confidence.”
Looking ahead
Nicola is optimistic about her future.
“Your fifties were presented to you as a time to slow down, but the culture is changing. Your career isn’t done and dusted then,.”
“You know when you’re on the motorway and you see a dog with its head out of the window, with its ears flapping in the wind? I feel like that at the moment. “You’ve got to stick your head out of the window and see the winds of change, because they are coming at you.”
Alice and Steve is available to stream on Disney+ now.
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