Nina wears dress by Bernadette

For Nina, the appeal was that it was like nothing she had ever seen on TV before. “On paper, it was a prison drama,” she explains. “It seemed like one thing, and then I read it, and it was another, because it was from a different perspective to anything that I’d seen. It was funny, it was pretty honest, it was quite shocking. But most of all, it was a lot from the officers’ point of view, which was the bit I hadn’t seen before. I was sent the first script and the opening scene is of a woman (Leigh) waking up in a prison cell. This is someone who’s clearly used to being there, is kind of comfortable being there, and then she gets dressed in a prison officer’s uniform. And I thought that was not only a brilliant way to start any show, but a brilliant way to introduce a character. You just don’t know who she is, or what her motives are. And from the very first scene, you’re questioning and wanting to know more.”

This summer will see the second series hitting our screens, and Nina is delighted to be back in Leigh’s steel-capped shoes, patrolling the corridors of HMP Long Marsh. “There’s a bit of a thriller element to this series. It’s a bit darker, but it’s still funny. And I think, actually, the funnies sort of work even better set against the intensity of plotting in this new series,” she tells me when I ask what’s in store for the staff and inmates. “It starts only six weeks after the end of the last one. So, we sort of find the officers dealing with the aftermath of what occurred at the end of series one, with the murder of one of their own. They’re kind of dealing with trying to get back to some sense of normality. And of course, that’s just not going to happen… To say anything else would be giving away something that I wouldn’t want to. The joy of Screw is that it sort of confounds your expectations quite a lot of the time. We set up one sort of argument, usually with some sort of moral basis, and then we’ll sort of pull the rug out from under you.”

Nina is set to appear in Good Omens 2, which is due to screen at the end of this month, but this time in an entirely different role. Was she surprised to get the call offering her the job? “I mean, I was surprised that there was another Good Omens,” she exclaims. “Because I have long been a fan of the book, and I know that it’s a story in its entirety. When I got the call to be in the first series, I was sort of beside myself. I auditioned and I got the part, which was fantastic. And then I assumed that that would be it, because there were no more books because Mr. Pratchett was no longer with us. But, of course, Neil and Terry had been collaborating for a long time and had many ideas about how the story might go forward. And so yes, Good Omens 2 turned up. And I was completely surprised, because not only did I not know that that series would occur, but I also had no idea that I might have another role to play…”

“Yeah, I kind of grew up with fantasy. I was a big reader from a very young age. And it was always other worlds that just utterly absorbed and fascinated me…” NINA SOSANYA

Nina wears dress by Bernadette

Has she always been a fantasy fan, I wonder. “Yeah, I kind of grew up with fantasy. I was a big reader from a very young age. And it was always other worlds that just utterly absorbed and fascinated me,” Nina agrees. “You know, whether that was the Hundred Acre Wood, or The Jungle Book. Or Enid Blyton – the more magical stories that she would tell like The Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair. Then I started reading Piers Anthony and Ursula Le Guin, and then I discovered Douglas Adams, which was a kind of confluence of everything that I loved… this really irreverent sense of humour mixed with something that I feel is really profound. I think the best science fiction and fantasy is saying something very profound about where we are now, where we’ve been, where we’re going. It’s just a sort of different version of the world we live in. I don’t really see it as escapism, I just see it as a different way of looking at who we are.”

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that she is drawn to roles in these types of production. But what else appeals? “It’s really tricky to know what makes for a good role until it sort of turns up in front of you,” Nina explains. “I think it always has to be within the context of something that I also find interesting. I want to be part of telling some story that I’m interested in, that excites me in some way. Some characters that are so opposite to me or have a facet of themselves that are not me. Those are the ones that I find really interesting and that make my heart race a little bit. Then there are characters I can understand, because there are various traits where we do cross over, and I feel I’ve got some insight and might be able to offer something to the character, as well as what’s written there.

That’s always fun as well. Yeah, the things I’m drawn to watch, I suppose, are the things that I would love to be in.”

One of her favourite ever jobs was in a series she finds that not many people have watched. “I keep telling everybody to watch it,’ she tells me. “It is a show called Little Birds, which was a fantastic ensemble piece that was on Sky. It was adapted from the book by Anaïs Nin. It’s very melodramatic.

It’s set in the 1950s in Tangier. It’s got a multinational cast. It’s got Juno Temple in the lead, Hugh Skinner, and a whole host of amazing actors. It looks beautiful, and it’s quite out there, quite shocking. It’s Anaïs Nin, so it’s going to be… I’m playing someone called Lili von X and she’s a sort of very risqué fading film star from the 40s who’s come to Tangier because she’s been blacklisted in Hollywood, and she wants to make her own sort of surreal, weird films. She was a huge amount of fun to play. And it’s period as well, I love anything period.”