Katy Carmichael
Katy Carmichael will be introduced as Twist Morgan for the rest of her life, and fairly: Spaced handed her one of the great comic supporting parts of British nineties television, a relentlessly self-absorbed friend delivered with total sincerity, which is the only way that character could work at all. She never plays the joke, which is exactly why the joke lands.
Elsewhere on British television she has been Lucy Barlow in Coronation Street and Melissa Ryan in Waterloo Road, neither of them among the credits listed here, along with Justine Jenson in Cutting It and Elaine Thompson in Mistresses. The period and prestige work is the quieter half of the career: Anna Oortman in The Miniaturist, Linda Waugh in The Girl Before, Margaret in Misbehaviour, Daphne de Selincourt in Christopher Robin, Professor Campbell in H Is for Hawk. There is an early credit on the sitcom Bread, and a splendidly named Mad Puppet Woman in In the Bleak Midwinter.
She also directs and produces, most notably Mayday Mayday, and that is the part of the career that attracts the least attention.
Movies (4)
TV (6)
Where to start with Katy Carmichael
Spaced, obviously, and there is no case for starting anywhere else. Twist is in it from the first episode, and the show is short enough that you will have the entire performance inside an afternoon.
The interesting question afterwards is how differently she plays drama. The Miniaturist is the best answer, a seventeenth-century Amsterdam story pitched in a far colder register. The Girl Before is the modern psychological thriller option, Misbehaviour the ensemble period piece, Christopher Robin the family film, and Cutting It the soapier television work. In the Bleak Midwinter is a lovely deep cut for anyone who enjoys British theatre comedy about British theatre people, and H Is for Hawk is the most recent of them.