Kate O'Flynn
Kate O'Flynn is an actor, born 1986.
O'Flynn's reputation was made on stage and television has been catching up ever since. The National Theatre production of Port won her a Critics' Circle Theatre Award in 2013, A Taste of Honey followed in 2014, and The Glass Menagerie brought an Olivier nomination for Best Actress in 2017. The screen work has been the day job around all that, and for a long time it sat at the small, sharp end of British drama.
Mike Leigh used her twice, as Suzy in Happy-Go-Lucky and later in Mr. Turner, and Leigh's improvised process suits precisely what she is good at: people who are slightly too honest for the room they are standing in. That instinct runs through her television. DC Emma Lancing in Landscapers is the officer who works out what the interview is really about. Dr Peep in No Offence is a joke delivered completely straight. Victoria Woodcock in Brexit: The Uncivil War is a campaign operative with no interest at all in being liked.
Lately the parts have got bigger and odder. She plays Princess Mary in My Lady Jane, a Tudor comedy that gives her permission to be enormous, and Patricia in Widow's Bay. The stage still has first claim on her, which is why the screen CV reads less like a career plan and more like a series of raids.
Movies (5)
TV (9)
Where to start with Kate O'Flynn
Try Landscapers first. It is the best-built thing on her CV, and her detective is the sane person inside a story determined not to be sane, which is the register she owns outright. Then No Offence, where the same deadpan is aimed at comedy and she never once winks at it.
On the film side, Happy-Go-Lucky and Mr. Turner are both small Mike Leigh parts, but the second is the more interesting: a couple of scenes, no vanity, a whole life implied around them. Brexit: The Uncivil War rewards anyone who enjoys watching competence played without charm.
My Lady Jane is the outlier and the most fun, a broad Tudor romp where she gets to be the villain of the piece, and Father Brown is early-career filler you can leave until last.