Katy Wix is the one who has heard what was just said and would rather not have. In Stath Lets Flats and Big Boys that face does more work than most people's dialogue, and she is happiest as the one the joke lands on.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Katy Wix while somebody else is talking. In Stath Lets Flats (2018), her Carole gets some of the best lines by looking as though she wishes she had not heard them, and much of the time she has no line at all: Jamie Demetriou's Stath explains his plan, Wix takes it in, and the laugh is hers. Most sitcom actors want the joke. Wix is content to be the person it happens to, which is a smaller skill and a rarer one.
She came up through stand-up, entering the Funny Women competition while still at drama school and forming a double act with Anna Crilly, and her first long television job was Daisy in Not Going Out, from 2007 to 2015. Daisy is a familiar kind of part, the sweet one who is half a beat behind, and eight years of it did not make it much more than that. Guest roles in Torchwood (2009) and Sherlock (2017) followed. The turn came with Demetriou: Carole from 2018 to 2021, then Mary in Ghosts (2019–2022), Jules in Jack Rooke's Big Boys (2022–2025) and Barbara in Ted Lasso from 2023.
What she does in these is arrive loudly in a scene that was going quietly. She works in accents and big gestures, and she is at her best in ensembles built by writer-performers who let her fill in the character herself. Our review of Big Boys found the show so keen to reassure that the jokes sometimes went soft, and Wix knows exactly what she is there for. "It's really fun. I mean, sometimes it's hard, because there'll be this sweet, subtle moment, and then I have to stride in and make it stupid again." That is a fair description of her job across three shows, and she does it without ever making the sweet moment look foolish for having happened.
We laughed until it hurt at Stath Lets Flats, and a good share of it was Wix saying nothing. Stath has just told the office something no lettings agent should say aloud, and Carole's face fills in everything the script has left out: that she heard it, that she will not respond, that this is her life now. Demetriou gives his sister Sophie and his colleague Al the sillier material; Wix gets to be the one adult present, and being the adult in that office is the funnier part.
The reservation is the obvious one. She has been the best supporting player in show after show and has not yet been handed one to carry, and a few of those parts, Daisy among them, are types she could play from memory. She writes for radio and television as well, so the role that puts her at the centre may end up being one she wrote herself. Until then, start with Stath Lets Flats, and keep an eye on whoever is not talking.
Biography
Katy Wix is a Welsh actress and comedian. She was born on 28 February 1980 in Pontypridd, Wales.
She plays Jules in the Channel 4 series Big Boys (2022–2025). Other television roles include Mary in Ghosts (2019–2022), Barbara in Ted Lasso (2020–), Daisy in Not Going Out (2007–2015), Carole in Stath Lets Flats (2018–) and Rhiannon Davies in Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009). She has also appeared in Sherlock (2017) and Miranda (2009).
Wix has written radio comedy including Bird Island (2012) and co-created the sketch show Anna & Katy. She was a contestant on series 9 of Taskmaster (2019).
