Natasia Demetriou's fools are pleased with the world and slow to notice it is laughing at them, and she plays them gently. She is at her best among people who share her sense of humour, which so far means her brother and her friends.
Fi1m perspective
Sophie Charalambos in Stath Lets Flats (2018) is as dim as her brother and softer with it. Stath charges into every flat certain he is about to let it; Sophie drifts in behind him and agrees. Demetriou does not push for the laugh. She lets a line land, looks quietly pleased, and moves on, and the joke is that Sophie has no idea she is funny.
She came out of sketch comedy and stand-up around 2012, and the sketch habit has stayed with her: a strong shape, a strong voice, a character you understand in one line. Stath Lets Flats, created and written by Jamie Demetriou, gave her a character to live in across three series rather than three minutes. Nadja in What We Do in the Shadows (2019), the vampire mockumentary, made her name outside Britain; we have not reviewed it, and the part is by reputation louder and more strong-willed than Sophie. Ellie & Natasia (2022), a sketch series she wrote and performed with Ellie White, took her back to where she started.
What works is the company. We laughed until it hurt at Stath Lets Flats, and a good deal of it was the two Demetrious simply looking at each other, a brother and sister who plainly grew up in the same kitchen and cannot see anything wrong with either of them. That is not something you can rehearse into two strangers. Demetriou has said as much herself: "I get to work with my brother and all my friends, who I started out doing comedy with. We have an affinity and the same sense of humour." Her collaborators are few and constant: Jamie Demetriou, Ellie White, Matt Berry.
The one time we have met her outside that circle, it barely counted. As Wingnut in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) she is one of a crowd of mutants who each get a name, a shape and a line, and hers are hard to catch in the rush. It is a good film and she is not the reason. That is the question hanging over her: whether the timing and the particular dopey warmth survive when nobody who knows her is writing the lines.
Start with Stath Lets Flats, all of it, in order. Then watch for the first part written for her by someone who has never been to her house.
Biography
Natasia Demetriou is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. She was born in London on 15 January 1984, the daughter of an English mother and a Greek-Cypriot father, and raised in North London. She studied acting at the University of Leeds.
Demetriou is known for her roles as Nadja in the series What We Do in the Shadows (2019–2024) and Sophie in Stath Lets Flats (2018–2021). She co-wrote and starred in the BBC sketch show Ellie & Natasia (2022) with Ellie White. Her film credits include Nina in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) and the voice of Wingnut in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). She often collaborates with her younger brother, comedian and actor Jamie Demetriou.
