It’s a Wednesday afternoon and Olivia Cooke is holding forth about her guilt complex.
“I’m the most shame-filled, guilt-ridden person in the world. And I think that is why I like playing [morally complex] characters so much, because I get to exercise something that I would never, ever do,” she laughs.
“If I pass a stranger in the street, and they smile at me, but I don't notice it, then I'm like, ‘Oh, she smiled. God, they’re going to think I’m a right bitch.’ So yeah, it’s really therapeutic, actually, to just be so brazen and impulsive.”
Her latest character, Cherry, certainly is both of those things. Over the course of Prime Video’s newest show The Girlfriend, she spits in her colleague’s coffee, has sex on the job and takes part in several elaborate revenge schemes – one of which involves a bucket of blood and a wedding dress, à la Carrie.
See also: The Girlfriend on Prime Video review – Robin Wright serves up high-camp melodrama at its best
This is a problem, because at the same time, Cherry is also trying to ingratiate herself with the mother of her new boyfriend – the icy, composed Laura (Robin Wright, who also directs). As the pair clash, Danny (Laurie Davidson) is caught in the middle, with deadly consequences.
It’s a hell of a premise, and both Wright and Cooke milk it to the full. But there’s another element to their struggle: Laura and Danny live in ultra-rich, rarefied circles, whereas Cherry is working class, with a builder father and mother struggling to make ends meet after his death.
As Cooke puts it, the show is set “in a world that treads the boards of classism and where Cherry belongs.”
She can relate. Born in Oldham in 1993 to a policeman father and sales rep mother, Cooke started acting at eight at an after-school drama programme. She left school before finishing her A-levels to appear in the drama series Blackout, before leaving for America.
“I think starting my career primarily in America was really good, because my accent, even though it's a lot softer now, wasn't so much of an identifier,” she says. “And so I could just play any sort of role, whereas, maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I do wonder about my career. If, when I was 18, [I had] just stayed in the UK, how that would have differed.”
“My female rage is metastasizing into some awful ulcer or cancer. And I get to exercise it in some small, controlled way on screen.”
“I do enter certain circles and situations with my line of work. And even though I'm accomplished and I'm a successful actor, I still have these quite juvenile and insecure thoughts of having only a GCSE education and not having gone to drama school.” But, she adds, there are no regrets. “It's all swings and roundabouts, isn't it?”
It is, and Cooke’s talent and hard work landed her a slew of increasingly big roles across the UK and Hollywood. Over the years, she’s migrated from big-budget films like Ready Player One, to shows like Slow Horses and Modern Love.
Of those roles, many have involved her playing women who don’t neatly fit into a box. Alicent Hightower in House of the Dragon, Emma Decody in Bates Motel or Becky Sharp in the latest adaptation of Vanity Fair all spring to mind here – something Cooke readily admits to herself.
“I love morally wonky characters, and so I always find it really fun to try and find the humanity and the nuance [in them],” she says. Is there some female rage there, too? “A hundred per cent. My female rage is, like, metastasizing into some awful ulcer or cancer. And I get to exercise it in some small, controlled way on screen.”
There’s also the interesting case of sex. Cherry’s sexuality is brought up often in the show; she’s a character who feels confident in her body and the effect it has on others, and her initial flings with Danny are depicted as sweaty, lustful and fairly graphic.
“Sexuality is such a massive part of this show. And I really wanted passionate intimacy to be shown,” Cooke agrees. “But also the fun... it's not a PSA, but I do feel like that is so important for us as humans, and we're missing it madly now, and people just watch porn. I wanted it to feel really connective.”
She pauses. “This is oversharing. I'm gonna say it, anyway: I was single for a while. From 2023 to the middle of 2024. I was on the apps, and it was just, there's nothing. You don't meet people in real life anymore. We've lost that ability to have this frisson when you meet someone. Or even the ability to have eye contact with people. It’s sort of omitted from our society now.”
“We've lost the ability to have this frisson when you meet someone. Or even the ability to have eye contact with people.”
Dating is presumably even harder if you’re famous, and in the years since House of the Dragon (where she met her now-boyfriend, Ralph Davis), Cooke’s fame has blossomed still further.
There have been premieres, there have been worldwide press tours – and there has also been a viral video of herself and co-star Emma D’Arcy discussing negroni sbagliatos, which Cooke brands “the most inane conversation me and Emma have ever had”, and which nonetheless went viral.
Despite that, she says she’s rarely recognised on the street. “I live my life very normally,” she says, though adds that these days, she’s “maybe [more] protective of myself. Like, I won't be such an oversharer to strangers as much.
“But I cycle everywhere, I get on the tube every day. I want to live as normally as possible. Because I just think as soon as you start to isolate yourself, that's not really good for my job.”
And that’s the way she likes it. “I feel really uncomfortable with celebrity, and I don't want to be treated differently,” she adds thoughtfully. “It makes feel really icky. And I think it is also imposter syndrome. Feeling like what I've got is incredibly undeserved, which is something for my therapist.”
“I just try and be as un-vain as possible when it comes to my job. But then it is hard when you've got the other side of it, when you come out of therapy and you've just been crying, and then you get paparazzi, and you're like, ‘F***ing hell, guys, this is cruel.’”
That says, there are still positive sides to it all. For one, roles like this. For the other? “I was blind drunk off three pints of Pimms at Wimbledon in the Ralph Lauren suite the other day, and it was silver service,” she says.
“You're in this amazing Ralph Lauren suit. And I was with my partner, and we were pissing ourselves laughing. We just could not believe the extravagance of the situation, and it wasn't lost on us or where we've come from at all. We were just like, ‘This is remarkable, if people from back home could see us now.’”
The Girlfriend is streaming on Prime Video from September 10
