Jessica Gunning can make an unreasonable person seem entirely settled in their habits. We value her calm comic timing and her willingness to find vulnerability, though she cannot make a character complicated when the script gives her only one thing to play.
Fi1m perspective
Jessica Gunning’s Dame Washalot empties her tub down the trunk in The Magic Faraway Tree (2026) as though any objection would waste everybody’s time. We laughed at the calm of it: Gunning makes this unreasonable habit seem too well established to discuss. There is no need to signal the joke when the character sees nothing odd about what she is doing. It is the kind of small comic part she makes worth waiting for.
In Pride (2014), she plays Siân James for Matthew Warchus. The cast earn most of the uplift, even when the story tidies away the difficulties. Television work in Back (2017–2021) and Stephen Merchant’s The Outlaws (2021–2024) continued her place in comedy ensembles. Her Welsh accent in Pride and Bristolian in The Outlaws are useful reminders that the apparent ease involves quite precise work.
The turn came with Baby Reindeer (2024), written by and co-starring Richard Gadd. Gunning’s Scottish-accented Martha Scott has vulnerability as well as obsessive behaviour, which keeps her from becoming a straightforward villain. That breakthrough is a reason to seek out the earlier comedy, rather than assume it was all preparation for one dramatic part.
The limits are clearer in The Christophers (2026), where she plays Sally Sklar opposite James Corden as her brother, Barnaby. Steven Soderbergh, directing, shooting and editing, gets more from the conversations between Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. Ed Solomon gives the children greed and little else, and Gunning plays the part as written. We wanted their scenes over, because neither actor is given much beyond the wish to make money.
The Magic Faraway Tree is the more useful reminder of what she can do with a comic routine. Its insistence that nothing should worry anyone leaves too little at stake, but Gunning knows how to make a routine amusing without fussing over it. We would happily watch her in another family comedy, preferably one prepared to let the children be frightened.
Biography
Jessica Gunning is an English actress. She was born on 1 January 1986 in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Holmfirth High School and Rose Bruford College, from which she graduated in 2007.
She began her career in theatre at the National Theatre and has appeared in television series including White Heat (2012), What Remains (2013), Back (2017–2021) and The Outlaws (2021–2024), which she also wrote for. Her film roles include Pride (2014) and Summerland (2020). Gunning is known for her performance as Martha Scott in the miniseries Baby Reindeer (2024), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Television Award.
Her recent credits include the role of Sally Sklar in The Christophers (2025) and Dame Washalot in The Magic Faraway Tree (2026).
