‘I will always choose laughter’: Izuka Hoyle on Big Boys, Boiling Point and feeling brave

Having won a Scottish Bafta for Boiling Point, closely followed by a& pitch-perfect comedy performance in Big& Boys, Izuka Hoyle is red hot. Here, she tells Hayley Campbell why now is the time for big decisions

It was last New Year’s Eve, on a yoga mat, when Izuka Hoyle was brought to her knees in a moment of gratitude. “Classic Zuk fashion,” she says, rolling her eyes and grinning. She had been lighting candles for meditation practice when she was overcome by the speed of her own life. “I was just like, gosh, what a few years. We’ve come a way. I was feeling reflective, bruv!” She throws her head back and cackles loudly – she does this anytime she thinks she’s bordering on pretentious. But Hoyle does have a lot to be grateful for.

In just a few years she has gone from drama school to being handed a Scottish Bafta by Succession’s Brian Cox for her role as a French chef in the film Boiling Point, having never spoken a word of French before. That film then became a& TV series on BBC One. In 2019, she appeared in Mary Queen of Scots, opposite Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan, and in 2022 in Persuasion, alongside Dakota Johnson. Now she is promoting the second series of the much-loved Channel 4 sitcom Big Boys, in which she stars as the unshakeable, bisexual Corinne. She’s recently turned 28 and, as she said in her Bafta acceptance speech, she has already achieved so many of the goals she set for herself not that long ago.