Nina talks to Fiona Mountford from the London Evening Standard about her new West End Play Frozen, h

Nina talks to Fiona Mountford from the London Evening Standard about her new West End Play Frozen, her ‘pinball’ career and why context is her favourite word.

Nina Sosanya is something of an enigma — and that’s how she likes it.

This much-admired actress had long been a cult fan favourite but now, thanks to high-profile roles on television and stage, she has come to wider prominence.

She’s probably best recognised for her parts on television: as Lucy Freeman, the BBC’s long-suffering “head of inclusivity” in W1A, and as the gentle but steely Kate McKenzie, Sarah Lancashire’s romantic partner, in the drama Last Tango in Halifax.

She’s about to open in a major West End revival of Bryony Lavery’s award-laden play Frozen but, surprisingly, there is almost no information about Sosanya in the public domain.

I soon begin to understand why. Sosanya, 48, is highly eloquent but fiercely guarded, and not the sort of actor for whom an interview is the optimum way to pass a lunch-hour during rehearsals. Is your very low internet profile deliberate? “It didn’t start out deliberate. But, yeah, I’m quite private and I’m shy. To be honest, before this interview I Googled myself yesterday in order to look at my CV. I find it almost impossible to look. It’s like looking in the worst sort of mirror.”

It seems fair to assume that Sosanya won’t be sharing her opinions with us on Twitter any time soon. “People are not allowed to change their minds, people aren’t allowed to think out loud on there,” she says reflectively. “The ramblings of my thoughts of the day are my own!”

There’ll be heightened public interest in Frozen when it opens because it’s a play with subject matter that automatically attracts attention. Originally performed in 1998, it’s a dark and compelling three-hander — Sosanya appears alongside Doctor Foster’s Suranne Jones and W1A co-star Jason Watkins — about the abduction of a child.

What was the appeal of such a piece? “It’s unlike any play that I have been in before,” says Sosanya. “It’s hugely challenging for both actors and audiences, in a good way. It does what plays should do, which is leave you with questions, leave you trying to work out what you think about something.”

The actors have been doing some intense research in rehearsals, including meeting people who have missing children. Sosanya plays Agnetha, a clinical psychiatrist. “The main question she’s asking is what are the differences between crimes of evil and crimes of illness, and indeed are there any?”

Does the bleakness of the subject matter get her down at times? “There’s no getting away from it, it’s a dark and disturbing place that human beings can go to. One of the things I’ve really taken from all of that is that however dark human beings can get, they can also rise even higher in response.” She pauses. “It gets to you in ways you’re not quite aware of. It comes out in strange irritations with the world. I became very offended by litter!”

I ask Sosanya if she has children — she doesn’t — which gives rise to an intriguing thread that weaves through our entire conversation, about assumptions and expectations. “It’s interesting because I think we are asked that question [about children] as women and I don’t know if men are asked the same thing. Context is everything. It’s my favourite word actually. It defines everything, doesn’t it?”

Sosanya’s Last Tango co-star Nicola Walker says: “Nina is one of the most talented, brilliant and lovely actors I’ve ever worked with, a proper gorgeous person. I love that for years now she’s been making really good work, often crossing between drama and comedy. Can you tell I think she’s brilliant?”

How would Sosanya describe her own career? “An out-of-control downward spiral! I read that somewhere, but that second meaning of ‘career’ does apply,” she says. “It’s not controlled. It’s a bit of a pinball and so far it’s been hugely rewarding.”

Sosanya grew up in Wood Green and Rutland, the child of a white English mother and Nigerian father, both of whom were haematologists. Her theatre-loving mother took her on regular trips, including to the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon. “I remember walking along Waterside and her explaining that the actors worked in the theatre here and lived in these cottages on the other side of the road. I thought that was an absolutely outstanding job to have.” When she subsequently worked at the RSC her early supposition was proved correct: “It was as excellent as I thought it would be.”

An active, physical child, keen on athletics and gymnastics — “I was a show-off, even though I was a shy person” — she was wowed as a teenager by a piece about gamblers and gambling from physical theatre company the Kosh. “It was a mixture of everything on this little box stage, music, dance, lights. It was just so exciting. I thought: ‘I could do that!’”

Sosanya completed two-and-a-half years of a three-year vocational dance course using the Martha Graham technique at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance before dropping out. “It was too hard. Dancers are incredible people and I didn’t have it in me at the time,” she says. She actually joined the Kosh for a stint after that but injury put paid to her physical theatre career and led her to focus on straight acting.

She is constantly asked questions about diversity. Does she get tired of that? “Yes,” she says firmly. Does she wish they didn’t ask? “I wish they didn’t have to. Finding out the reasons why there is a lack of diversity might be a useful endeavour. I have an inkling that somewhere people underestimate audiences. I think people are far more open and willing than the people who are trying to make money assume they are.”

She pauses. “People crave stories, it’s a very human thing, and they crave stories about things that surprise them, people they don’t see in their mirror. I understand the need to relate, a word that people often use, but there are so many different ways to relate to a story. You don’t necessarily have to see yourself reflected physically. In fact, you’re not really being told anything if you’re just looking in a mirror.”

As mission statements go, it’s hard to think of one finer. Hamilton, which “fills my heart with joy”, is a “great example of storytelling using everything and everyone we have at our disposal”.

Describe yourself in three adjectives I say as our time draws to a close. She laughs. “Evasive. Curious, in both senses of the word. I think I’m possibly quite a curious person in terms of how other people see me. I don’t know if I’m fathomable or not. It’s possibly me wanting to define myself and failing.”

With that, the sphinx-like Nina Sosanya heads back to rehearsals and the unfathomable mysteries of the human psyche.

Nina in interview, London Evening Standard, 26 January 2018