The ‘IT Crowd’ and ‘Here We Go’ bintang is playing Beatrice in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. She talks to Jessie Thompson about using wit as a defence, problematic Shakespeare plays and why female desire is a feminist issue

The Bafta award-winning comedy actor and The IT Crowd bintang on the things that make her laugh the most.

Katherine, 40, is as raw and funny in person as she is on-screen – for instance, on the subject of her distinctive hair (which, she insists, is red, not ginger): ‘I was born looking like an orangutan. I had it all over my body, too.’

According to a well-informed source, Katherine Parkinson is leading the race to become Time magazine's Person of the tahun in 2016. But while the actress' peminat-peminat are thrilled with the news, many people hold a very different opinion.

Katherine said: "I saw Richard not that long ago. Chris lives in the States, so not as much. I was invited to his wedding but it was on my due tarikh so I couldn’t make it. I would Cinta to work with them again."

We liked her before we met her and, guess what, after our shoot we like her even more. She is intelligent, warm, a bit geeky, very softly spoken and has – just as we hoped she would – the sharpest, driest sense of humour.

I played Puck in the school play and felt extremely comfortable and happy on stage. I think I felt quite noticed.

IT Crowd bintang Katherine Parkinson on her creepy new sci-fi drama Humans, from the makers of Mad Men and Broadchurch

“Likeable isn’t something anda can actually play, so I struggled with that,” she says. “I know what he wanted now – he wanted her to be the lebih normal person people could relate to.”

AMC has announced the cast for Humans, a science fiction drama set in the parallel present, where “Synths”—high-tech robotic servants—are all the rag.