Nicola Walker is adored in Britain. With 'Alice and Steve,' everyone else can catch up

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Nicola Walker is not new to being famous.She has been a stage and television actor in the U.K.

for 30 years and a star for more than 20.A performer of deep humanity who can take a character from cheeky humor to gimlet-eye resolution as quick as a weather change on the English coast, she has won an Olivier award (for “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”) and received multiple BAFTA nominations for her work in television.In 2015 alone, she headlined three hit series (“Last Tango in Halifax,” “Unforgotten” and “River”) and a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.” (“Even my own family members were getting tired of seeing my face,” she says.) Since then, she has starred in a National Theater production of “The Corn Is Green” as well as the TV series “Marriage,” “Annika,” “Mary and George” and “The Split.” So Walker knows the business.

What she didn’t know, at least until she did the new comedy “Alice and Steve,” which dropped on Hulu on Monday, was a Disney-owned-streamer level of publicity.The set-visit stories, the many interviews, the debut on La Croisette at Canneseries festival (where “Alice and Steve” won multiple awards, including best series) and a recent press trip to New York (where I spoke with her, via Zoom.)“It’s definitely a different level,” she says.

“If you do press for the BBC or ITV or production companies in England, you’re led into a small dark room with some sandwiches and awful coffee and 10 people come in and talk to you.”This may explain why her name recognition is perhaps not what it should be in the U.S.Not that Walker cares — she’s thrilled that streaming has made it possible for 20-somethings to approach her on the Tube to gush about her role in the early aughts series “MI6” (formerly known as “Spooks”).But those of us who have loved her...