For the past few years, Lauren Lyle has been best known as Marsali MacKimmie Fraser in the Starz TV drama Outlander. But that might be about to change – thanks to Karen Pirie. “So many people who come up to me… I used to always just get recognised for Outlander and now it’s often Karen,” Lyle tells me. “Often people are like, ‘she speaks to her boss in a way I wish I could.’”
And then some. The show, which first aired in 2022, starred Lyle as a no-nonsense detective who ends up solving a cold case from the Scottish police archives.
It was a success, both critically and commercially, and won several BAFTAs – and now it’s back, with a new case to solve (this time: the case of a kidnapped Scottish heiress), and more interpersonal drama for Karen too. Namely, patronising bosses and a messy relationship with her colleague Phil Parhatka (Zach Wyatt).
“I’ve really loved that this season we get into female rage. Or at least I delved into the female rage side of things,” she says cheerily. “As I've gotten older, I've really noticed how much I've had to keep a lid on my feelings. But this season, things like the scenes where she's screaming and crying and singing in the car and doing it to like heavy metal music – I do that. I don't think we see that from young women on screen very often.”
Lyle’s own success is the result of decades of graft. Growing up in Scotland and attending “quite a traditional Scottish school”, Lyle wasn’t into acting much – but that all changed when her family upped sticks and moved to New Zealand. It was a shock in more ways than one: her school was creative, and considerably more diverse.
“My best friends that I made were Fijian, Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese and I just hadn’t been around those cultures ever,” she says.
“I’d never had sushi in my life. The first time I ever had sushi was with them and I didn't like seaweed, so I’d unravel the sushi in front of them all and eat the inside. They'd all be like, ‘What are you doing?’”
Despite getting a C in her drama A-level, Lyle caught the bug and moved back to the UK. In her own words, she “did loads of theatre and plays and really just grafted; hustled” to pursue her dream of acting.
That included working the Edinburgh Fringe, which involved Lyle sharing a house with 12 other people, dressing up as Jack Nicholson from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to distribute flyers on the Mall.
That said, she’s well aware of the opportunities she had. These days the Fringe has become an increasingly expensive place for young professionals to chance their arm at mainstream success – something Lyle admits to immediately.
“It’s wild what people are having to pay,” she says. “I mean, it really pushes people out. I think it used to be much more of a place where you could be discovered.” Plus, it’s a prestige thing these days. “I've noticed big people will go and they'll sort of take over and the smaller guys don't get such a show in.”
It’s not just the Fringe that’s changed, though. Lyle adds that she joined the industry in a “golden age”, where there were more paths to success – such as schemes like the ones the National Theatre ran, nurturing young acting and writing talent.
“They don't do that anymore, and I think it's that they just don't have the funding to be able to provide it,” she says. “But I met lots of people through that sort of thing and connected with folk, and I do think that that helped me because I didn't get to drama school and I couldn't go that route.”
Does Lyle think that missing out on drama school impacted her chances of success? “I think it's just really different,” she concedes.
“I have noticed in the industry there's still a snobbery around having not gone. I still have people funny about the fact that I haven't gone to a drama school. And I think it's such an old school way of thinking, because most people I know that did go say how difficult it was to be there and how there's parts of them that they felt they lost by being there.”
It certainly hasn’t damaged Lyle’s career. After a role as an understudy in The Crucible at the Old Vic, as well as a few other parts, there came a year where Lyle hardly worked at all. And then, finally, came Outlander – followed by Karen Pirie, which has seen her forge a close friendship with its writer Emer Kenny.
It’s a lot of work, and Lyle is open about how hectic she’s found it. “It got to me sometimes on sets where I would start to get really unwell, because I'd be so burnt out. And I'd be like, ‘You can't be sick. You're actually not allowed to be sick,’” she says.
“The pressure around this is mental, but it's also really thrilling and it's annoying how addicted to it I am. And me and Emer have got a phrase, where it'll all be getting too much, and we'll look each other across the room and be like, ‘But we prayed for this. We prayed for this. So let's just do it.’”
Though she’s got her hands full with Karen Pirie right now, Lyle also has plans for the future. Or perhaps dreams. “I really, really want to play a rock-star DJ,” she says. “I want to stand up on a stage of 800,000 people and play a guitar like Ellie [Rowsell] from Wolf Alice. I’ve always said I’d love to play Stevie Nicks in a biopic.” The sky’s the limit.
Karen Pirie is streaming now on ITV
