Jade Anouka on starring in Chris Bush's 'Otherland'

Fresh from starring in HBO sci-fi series Dune: Prophecy, Jade Anouka returns to the London stage for a play exploring love, identity, and big changes.

As soon as Jade Anouka read the script for Otherland, there was no doubt in her mind: she wanted in.

“It feels like I’m over-egging it, but I’m really not – I thought, ‘This is the best play I’ve ever read,’” she explains. Speaking to me over Zoom, the 35-year-old actor looks genuinely thrilled when talking about Chris Bush’s script, which she’ll help bring to life at London’s Almeida Theatre from February. Over the 10-plus years of her professional career, Anouka has explored plenty of thorny characters and relationship dynamics – from playing opposite Jonathan Bailey and Taron Egerton in the 2022 stage revival of Cock, to witch queen Ruta Skadi in the TV adaptation of His Dark Materials. But for Anouka, something about Otherland feels like an additional level of challenge – and it’s very welcome.

Described by the playwright as a “phantasmagorical exploration of womanhood/epic voyage of self discovery”, and by others more simply as a romantic comedy drama, Otherland stars Anouka and Fizz Sinclair as two people trying to untangle their lives after a breakup, with both facing great life changes on the horizon.

“I just thought it was brilliant. I thought, ‘How is anyone ever going to put this on stage? That sounds like a challenge – why not?’” Anouka recalls from her first read of the script. “My character, Jo, is the part of a lifetime,” she adds. “There’s a lot in it that I’ve never had the chance to do in my career. It’s been rare, for me, to do a play like Otherland, where I felt that so much of what I want to say, and so much that I hope art and theatre can put out into the world, is actually in a piece I auditioned for, and not one I was part of the writing process for.”

Anouka wrote and starred in her debut play, Heart, in New York, Edinburgh and London from 2022 to 2024. The autobiographical show features Anouka as a staged, but unnamed, version of herself, navigating the breakdown of a woman’s early marriage to a man before the beginning of a new love story with a woman. Concluding its run a year ago at Brixton House, the play remains a high point of personal and professional accomplishment.

“I found it really fulfilling, putting on my own show; from the responses I got, I think people felt like they connected to the story like it was theirs – and it was theirs, really,” Anouka says. Heart was originally scheduled to launch at the Kiln Theatre in summer 2020, but was postponed indefinitely due to the Covid pandemic. However, the two-year delay to getting the work in front of an audience turned out to be a shining silver lining.

“I didn’t realise it at the time, but if I’d done it in 2020, I don’t think I would’ve been ready,” Anouka explains. “I performed that piece after my wounds were healed, so then it wasn’t for me, it was for others. The responses were incredible, the amount of people who connected to it. It’s sort of the point of what we do with art, make people feel less alone. And also, it was really fun to do – and it ends with queer joy. What’s better than that?”

Anouka is married to the musician and beatboxer Grace Savage, who accompanied her in Heart, and they share two children. Family life, as well as age and experience in the industry, have contributed to her being truer to herself in her career than ever.

“For me, and I feel like for a lot of people when they get into the industry or first come out of drama school, you just want to please, and say yes to anything,” she notes. “Acting is the most important thing in your life. Then you get older, and life happens, and that is just as important – the acting is never the MOST important thing. “You realise that actually, the choices you make in your work life affect your personal life, and probably vice versa. When I’m considering a job now, I’m thinking, ‘Where’s rehearsal? Where is the play? Would I have to leave home – and if so, where are we moving to? For how long?’ So many things come into play.”

Another project she weighed up and said yes to was Dune: Prophecy, a HBO prequel series to the blockbuster films, adapted from Frank Herbert’s Dune books. Anouka plays Sister Theodosia, an acolyte of the Sisterhood, a powerful sect, and will reprise the role for the sci-fi series’ second season.

“Honestly, it was a bit overwhelming to realise what I’d got myself into,” Anouka admits. “I knew of the Dune films, but I didn’t really understand just how massive it is. I loved doing that show, there was such a great vibe on set.”

With many of the characters being women, along with female showrunner Alison Schapker and lead director Anna Foerster on hand, there was also a feeling of empowerment in the air. “This never happens on set, women everywhere!” Anouka remembers. “It was really good, especially in the sci-fi fantasy world, a space that is often dominated by men – I hope it will be part of a sea change, and lead to more and more women running sci-fi in the future.”

But before we get to the future, Anouka is fully submerged in preparation for Otherland, and is keen for audiences to be touched by its tale in the way she was. “One of the reasons I branched into writing for myself is because there were stories untold that needed to be told,” she says. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna be part of the people telling those stories.’ It didn’t feel like people like me with stories like mine were necessarily being put on stage. “That’s why I was so overwhelmed with this piece – I thought, ‘This is it, this is special, this is the kind of stuff that needs to be out there.’”

Check back for Otherland tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Jade Anouka and Fizz Sinclair in Otherland. (Photo by Phil Fisk)

This article first appeared in the February 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.