Katherine Pearce

Katherine Anne Pearce was born in August 1990 in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside.^[1][2] She had appeared in productions of Cats and Chicago as a teenager as part of her local dramatic society, NADOS. ^[3]

She trained at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, graduating in 2012. Her first credited role was in the BBC Radio 4 drama The Righteous Sisters as Ismay Brown.^[4] In 2013, She subsequently went on to make her stage debut in Port at the Royal National Theatre by Simon Stephens.^[5] She also appeared in Our Pals at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, before being chosen to be part of the groundbreaking Secret Theatre collective at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. The collective created several shows including adaptations (Woyzeck, A Streetcar Named Desire), staged new writing (Chamber Piece, Glitterland, A Stab In The Dark),^[6] as well as devising the critically acclaimed Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts. ^[5]The same year, Pearce made her television debut as Katy in the pilot of the BBC military drama Our Girl.^[7] She also played Freya in the podcast series The Confessions of Dorian Gray.^[8]

In 2016, Pearce appeared as Daisy in Young Hyacinth, a one-off special set prior to the events of the 1990s sitcom Keeping Up Appearances.^[9] She also appeared as Gertie Coomer in the play Husbands and Sons which toured the Royal National Theatre and Royal Exchange, Manchester.^[5] In 2017, Pearce appeared as Emily Stone in the BBC drama Three Girls, before making her film debut appearing in My Cousin Rachel, as well as appearing in the films The Last Photograph and England is Mine respectively, as well as starring in the stage plays Low Level Panic and The Last Ballad of Lillian Bilocca.^[5][10] In 2018, she portrayed Charlene in an episode of the ITV drama Vera and appeared as Sonia in the comedy series Girlfriends. She was also part of the 2018 Paines Plough Roundabout Season, starring in three new plays: Sticks and Stones by Vinay Patel, How to Spot an Alien by Georgia Christou and Island Town by Simon Longman, for which she won The Stage Edinburgh Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018. She was also the voice of Fabia in the audio drama Cicero.^[5][11]

In 2019, Pearce joined the cast of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street as Lolly, a school friend of Kate Connor's (Faye Brookes).^[12] Her character becomes involved in the planning of Kate's wedding to Rana Habeeb (Bhavna Limbachia) and damages the latter's wedding dress, which results in Rana being inside in a fictional factory at the time of the roof collapse, ultimately causing her death.^[13] She also provided the voice of Alice Pritchard in the audio drama The War Master.^[14] That same year, Pearce appeared as Cardinal Pandulph in King John and Juliet Gilkes-Romero's play The Whip ^[15] as Horatia Poskitt at the Royal Shakespeare Company Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. The run was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, she appeared in the BBC drama series Rules of the Game as Carys Jenkins.^[16] In 2023, Pearce joined the cast of the revival series of the BBC school drama Waterloo Road as Amy Spratt, an early career teacher in English and drama.^[17] She appeared until the fifteenth series when her character decides to resign.^[18] Following her exit from the show in 2024, Pearce played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Barbican Theatre.^[19]

As of May 2025, she is due to play Mistress Ford in a new version of The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare's Globe,^[20] directed by Sean Holmes.