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Flack's Lydia Wilson is the face you'll recognise and the name you should

Photo credit: UKTV
Photo credit: UKTV

From Digital Spy

Having played memorable roles in everything from South Riding to Black Mirror over the past 10 years, Lydia Wilson took the lead in last year's eerie BBC series Requiem and is following it up in 2019 with a must-see performance in W's new original series Flack.

Though she's hardly new on the scene, this feels like the year that Wilson could finally, deservedly, become a household name. Starring alongside Anna Paquin and Sophie Okonedo, an Oscar winner and nominee respectively, she very nearly steals the show in Flack as Eve, the foul-mouthed colleague and best friend of Paquin's PR guru Robyn.

Photo credit: UKTV
Photo credit: UKTV

Related: Flack's Anna Paquin: "True Blood was extraordinary, but Sookie always had to be saved by boys"

Wilson first met series creator Oliver Lansley "running around in Wales", with Lansley, also an actor, having played a supporting role in Requiem. "He's very professional – he didn't mention at all that he was also a genius writer!" she tells Digital Spy. "Then I went to the audition for Flack and 'Oli the writer' was in the room – it was quite surreal, actually!"

Having landed the role of Eve, Wilson says playing someone described in the show's promotional material as "morally bankrupt" was "so refreshing", and as Flack digs into the seedy world of celebrity scandals and cover ups, it's clear that she's relishing the outrageous dialogue afforded to her character by Lansley.

"Anna couldn't get through hearing, 'I'll punch you so hard in the vagina I'll turn you into a glove puppet' so we had to do that over and over!" she laughs. "But I was worried when I read the scripts at first. I thought, 'Can those words come out of my mouth? Will I get struck by lightning?' – pretty quickly, though, it felt like my right to say horrific things!"

Photo credit: UKTV
Photo credit: UKTV

She's not too concerned about how the audience might take to Eve, either. "Playing what's on the page and then letting the audience be the judge of your character is quite fun," Wilson says. "It lets you go a little bit further than if you're trying to clean up after them."

Besides, we'll see different sides to the "provocateur" character as the six episodes of Flack unfolds. "Eve's set up for a fall. She's lording it over everyone for so long that the perfect way to find the vulnerability in her is to stab her in the back... and something of that flavour does happen.

"I got all doped up on her sassiness and then my heart broke for her a little bit as it went on. The twist with Eve is that it turns out the wicked witch has feelings!"

Wilson graduated from RADA in 2009 having previously studied English at Queens' College, Cambridge. Alongside her TV and film roles in the likes of Ripper Street and Star Trek Beyond, she's appeared in award-winning theatre productions Blasted (2010) and King Charles III (2014), in which she played Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.

Photo credit: UKTV
Photo credit: UKTV

Having now firmly established herself as an actress of both stage and screen, she's keen to return to her roots to tackle another new challenge. "I really want to write," she reveals. "You have to sort of wear blinkers, at least in the beginning, with this industry, to really grab it head on, but [acting has] been slightly suffocating other parts.

"I've always loved reading and writing and I still do, and I hope those two things will come together a bit more in the future. This year, hopefully."

And after Flack, she's planning to pursue her ambitions with a ferocity that Eve would be proud of. "I really missed her when I was done filming, but I've taken a little bit of her with me," she says. "You need a little bit of that – especially in London, I think!"

Flack begins Thursday, February 21 at 10pm on W.


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