My first professional audition - god, I've never told anybody about this - was for a test commercial, I think it was for Xbox. It involved me getting kidnapped by a granny who wanted to play the Xbox. It was very weird and I definitely had no idea what I was doing. I actually got the gig. It wasn't a commercial; it was what directors did when they wanted to show the company what they would do with a commercial.

I wasn't particularly prolific at sport, and I could get by at school, but I wasn't going to win any prizes. Suddenly people were slapping me on the back and saying that I was funny and talented. So I just knew that it felt good to be appreciated, basically. Whenever I got an opportunity to do some acting I did a little bit more.

My mum was an actor until she started having children. I was the first child, so in a way I was the end of her acting career, which hopefully she's forgiven me for. She's still watches my show every week. It's funny because I didn't grow up in a household that felt like a theatrical household. My dad did a normal job and my mum had given up. But when I decided to try and do it - it wasn't the most alien concept.

Once you get an agent you're given an opportunity to try a little bit more. It's a really long ladder.

I suppose it's really satisfying to play someone with secrets. It's really satisfying to decide how and when those things are going to start being revealed, and how subtle to be.

I'm incredibly grateful for Sophie Barthes, I'll always be incredibly grateful for her being generous enough to believe in what I thought. And it was just lucky that I met the right person.

There was still an element in acting, certainly for my dad, of like, "This is lunacy." But then once my parents could tell that I was serious, it was like, "Okay then."