“I’m so sorry,” Charlotte Ritchie frowns, 10 minutes into our Zoom call, suddenly ducking out of view of the camera. “My charger’s not working.”
A few light-hearted waggles of her cable are to no avail and Ritchie looks mildly flustered. It’s not something I necessarily expected from the 35-year-old, along with the casual hoodie she wears as we speak. After watching her play Kate Galvin in You last season, perhaps I expected an intimidatingly glacial figure dripping in gemstones (and, as she goes on to tell me, I wouldn't be alone in assuming that). Instead, Ritchie is warm, friendly and smiling.
We’re here to discuss Kate, the role Ritchie is reprising for the fifth and final season of the popular Netflix drama. The trailer for the long-anticipated dénouement reveals that three years have passed since Joe (Penn Badgely) and Kate left London, with Joe returning to his old stomping ground of New York. Kate is now his wife, and the CEO of a company, seeing the pair living a comfortable – and somewhat high-profile – life in Manhattan.
“They’re feeling quite morally good,” Ritchie explains. “They’re working towards more philanthropic angles, they’ve found [Joe’s son] Henry and adopted them into their family. They’re a power couple.”
Of course, it speaks only to the couple’s arrogance that they feel they can return to the States, particularly with the long list of bodies Joe has left trailing in his wake. Indeed, early snippets of the series strongly suggest this could all be part of his downfall – so what’s Kate role in all of this?
“I think that they are both really calculating and able to manipulate people into doing their bidding,” she says. “She’s more rational, while Joe’s actions are extreme – but they both have something that draws people to them. Kate’s impulses aren’t as dark as Joe’s, but they both have these calculated minds. I think that’s why they’re drawn to each other.”
Kate is Ritchie’s most "grown-up" part in a sea of otherwise more youthful roles. While she initially entered the celebrity sphere as part of pop-classical crossover band All Angels, Ritchie made acting her main focus while she earned an English degree at Bristol University. One of her first breakout roles was as ‘gap-yah’ girl Oregon in the Channel 4 comedy Fresh Meat, as well as the clumsy, newly qualified nurse Barbara Gilbert in Call the Midwife. Elsewhere, the hugely successful paranormal comedy Ghosts, in which she plays the lackadaisical Alison, has an American adaptation on CBS.
“There’s just something inherently quite adult about Kate,” she says. “You get this feeling that since she was about 15, she was a grown-up. She’s so much more controlled, a lot darker and lot less sympathetic. She’s impeccably dressed this season as a CEO of a company. She’s not someone who would spill food down her top. She’s so different and that’s been a real change for me.”
Kate is also one of Ritchie’s most high-profile roles; You is one of Netflix’s biggest shows and the fourth season rocketed to the top of the streamer’s charts with more than 92 million hours viewed.
Ritchie admits that it was an adjustment to suddenly be exposed to international levels of recognition. “People who know me from Kate are just not afraid to talk to me,” she says. “But they assume I'm going to be like her, so the reception is a bit colder. People who know me from Ghosts practically give me a hug, because I feel like they know Alison and think of her as approachable. It’s quite a strange experience.
“I really struggled with it for a year or two – that feeling that you’re known but people don’t really know you, and wanting to live up to their expectations. I’ve had talking therapy for the last few years, and it’s helped me process it.
“I used to worry that people would think I was like Kate, and then I felt like I had to prove that I wasn't. Now I know it doesn't matter. I don't have time in each interaction for them to understand the whole of me and for me to understand the whole of them.”
Despite the difficulties of being instantly recognisable, Ritchie has adored being part of You, and has helped breathe fresh life into a series that has its moments of being silly as well as sinister. Viewership has only grown since its inception in 2018, with writers and showrunner Sera Gamble finding creative new ways to keep its premise fresh, even though it could be limiting. Season five, You’s last outing, is still as unpredictably entertaining as previous iterations – and has some darker elements in its finale.
“It’s still as ridiculous and self-aware as ever,” Ritchie laughs. “I actually marvel at this show's ability to satirise but also send itself up. But there are elements of Joe that really got under my skin this season. Some of the scenes I have with Penn are quite disturbing.”
You’s popularity, particularly with its female fanbase, may seem strange considering its subject matter. The murderous and violent rampages, in addition to excessive bouts of stalking, particularly in the current climate, seems unnerving. Ritchie argues that the writers are at pains to paint Joe, and those who are allied with him, as hideous villains and not plucky antiheroes.
“For some people, You is just a show that’s really funny, pithy, entertaining and fast-paced,” she says. “And for other people, I think it does allow a place where you can have a relationship with those scary and darker sides of the reality in a controlled and distant way that you're in charge of.
“I think the crucial thing about this show is that it's made up. Joe’s not a real person. He's the creation of the author and the writers. And the show is very self-aware. It does present its story with a kind of knowingness, where you don't feel like you're being drawn into these tropes unwittingly.”
Despite the series’s darker themes, You’s final chapter was still incredibly fun to film out in the States. “We had the same dressing rooms Penn had when he filmed Gossip Girl,” Ritchie says. “It was an incredibly fun bunch of people, and we spent a lot of time hanging out together – we’d go out and do karaoke together after filming.
“I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Penn over the years; I really respect and trust him, and I really get on with him. Our friendship has really helped us with filming the more intense, difficult moments as we can get straight to the heart of the scene. That’s the dream with any actor, just to feel like you can go straight to work and not get caught up in anything else.”
So are these "intense" scenes she filmed with Badgeley an indicator on how You will ultimately play out? Ritchie is coy. “It is 100 per cent an ending that fans will have an opinion on,” she laughs. “Sometimes having an opinion is as much part of it as it is about being satisfied. I think people will have a lot to talk about. What I can tell you is that season five pulls out all the stops and we go back to the show’s original roots.
“I can’t wait to see what people make of it. I’m intrigued to see everyone’s reaction.”
