Nicola Walker admits her new TV show would ‘break’ her in real life

Nicola Walker is arguably one of the UK’s biggest on-screen queens of drama, leading the casts of Spooks, Unforgotten and The Split. 

So to see her show off her funny bones in the new Disney Plus comedy Alice & Steve is a welcome change of pace, leading us through an awkward (yet hilarious) tale of a mother on the warpath when she discovers her best friend of 30 years is dating her 26-year-old daughter. 

It’s hardly a classic romance – and Alice (played by Walker) is on a mission to end it before it fully begins, turning her once-solid friendship with Steve (Jemaine Clement) into an all-out war for her daughter’s heart. 

While Walker is leaning into comedy on screen, she notes there’s a certain kind she loves most – and it’s something present in Alice & Steve. 

Speaking to Metro, she explains: ‘In my flavour of comedy, there has to be a kindness to it. I don’t mind if the comedy is really biting, but there has to be something in it. 

‘I have to care about the characters. There’s to be something to keep me rooting for them.’ 

‘I don’t actually think I’d have the energy to be as vengeful as Alice,’ Nicola told Metro (Picture: Lara Cornell/Disney Plus)

While Alice goes full ‘mama bear’ in her vengeance against Steve, Walker admits she would struggle to even comprehend a friend would do that to her. 

Walker says: ‘I’m fortunate enough to have people that I really trust, have been there for me in my life and would again, but if they did something to me that I felt broke all the rules of that friendship, how would I feel? I would go mad.

‘It would break the silent deal you make with best friends. They’re the keeper of all your secrets, and always in your corner, so if you felt betrayed by real best friends, I’m not sure how I would come back from that. 

‘I don’t actually think I’d have the energy to be as vengeful as Alice. I would just be so broken by it.’ 

In the series, the awkward family power-balance with Steve – as well as the fact he saw Izzy grow up  – is somewhat swerved when Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith), fresh from a split with her boyfriend, makes the first move. 

Steve, who is crashing on the family couch after a boozy, cocaine-fuelled night out with Alice after a funeral, is just as shocked as anyone else. Though unlike others, he leans into it. 

While Walker says she’ll ‘be fair’ and acknowledge Izzy and Steve are drawn to each other, as Alice, that kind of information is ‘irrelevant’. 

‘Alice doesn’t care about that,’ she notes. ‘But what I enjoyed when I watched the first few episodes, you think, “Oh, they are actually falling in love”, which makes it more interesting, but I still completely understand why Alice wants to take him down and destroy him.’ 

‘That is my daughter,’ she continued. ‘When you see them in the nightclub, they’ve been to this funeral, they’re at the age where their friends are starting to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Some viewers have found the age-gap romance in Alice & Steve ‘icky’ (Picture: Lara Cornell/Disney Plus)

‘Alice’s reaction to the death is to take 10-year-old cocaine that she has to dig out from under her bed, and Steve’s is that he gets really sad in this nightclub and says, “I want to be loved.”’ 

‘They shouldn’t really be in this nightclub, and Alice says to him, “I’m gonna find you a young girl. Young women are just older women, but younger. It’s fine”. She’s pretty drunk by this point, but she doesn’t see a problem with it. He’s an amazing person, and [she] says, “Any girl would be lucky to have you.”’ 

‘I love the double standard, “Any girl… but not my girl,”’ she adds. ‘I just think those sorts of double standards in this show come up all the time, and they’re beautiful to watch.’ 

By the end of the second episode alone, Alice – furious at Steve for dating Izzy – has taken steps to take down his career, his viability and his likeability in front of Izzy’s friends, with their once close friendship now an utter shambles. 

‘I don’t think [Alice’s] intentions are ever nasty,’ she adds. ‘She thinks she’s protecting Izzy, she’s just taking it to an extreme. She maybe could have gone about it in a different way, but that’s not possible for her.’ 

But there was, at one point, a time when Alice and Steve were inseparable – something Walker and Clement had about 20 minutes of screentime to establish as believable before the chaos set in. 

‘There was a brilliant sequence when you get to see Alice and Steve’s friendship, and they were singing Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart,’ says Walker. ‘I thought it was wonderful. 

‘It was one of the first scenes we shot together, and Jermaine and I were really nervous. Bonnie Tyler broke the ice for us.’ 

Sadly, the moment never made it to screen, becoming a smaller part of a montage of a wild night out where the pair – both in their 50s – try to party with 20-year-olds but fail to have the stamina for it. 

For Walker, it meant she could spend time with her on-screen counterpart Clement, who’s famed for much broader comedies like Flight of the Conchords, Time Bandits and – Walker’s personal favourite – What We Do In The Shadows. 

‘I’ve always thought Jermaine is an absolute genius, and I was correct,’ she says. ‘I like his irreverence, to feel that relaxed. His brain works so quickly, I loved every scene I got with him. I’m not a big improviser on camera.’ 

‘I confess to this, on day one, I let him get through half a day of us doing filming, then I said, “I’ve got to be honest. I’m a huge fan of work. I won’t go on about it and embarrass you, but What We Do In The Shadows is probably in my top five films of all time.”

‘He was really sweet and gracious and didn’t look frightened, and we moved over it, but I had to say it.’ 

Alice & Steve, out now, is easily digestible in six half-hour chunks: a quick binge watch for those who need a laugh. 

Walker admits that, when not on screen herself, she’s a self-declared binge-watcher – but worries the format can be a negative as much as it is a positive. 

‘I watched The Boroughs [on Netflix] the other night, [finished] it over two nights. I think that show must have taken them three years to get made, but then in two nights watch [done],” she notes. ‘It’s great, I really enjoyed it, but there’s something a little bit worrying about that. 

‘I think I’m going to try and ration myself because binge-watching is not good for my head,’ she adds. ‘I can’t actually remember it.’ 

Alice and Steve is available now on Disney Plus.  

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