Actress and OSD Alumni Charity Wakefield was back in an OSD rehearsal room recently, leading a week of development workshops with our Third Year Actors as part of their London Season.
We talk a lot about the London Season and why it’s such a fantastic part of the training here at OSD. The ability to be in professional rehearsal rooms working with creatives such as Charity is invaluable to our students. Moreover, to do so right at the end of their training serves as a fantastic transition from the structure of Drama School into the life of freelance creatives.
It allows students to truly step into their professionalism and to work as actors rather than actors-in-training.
This week in particular was an incredible opportunity for our grads to meet and work with Charity, who has had an incredibly successful and varied career.
Charity Wakefield: Career to Date
Charity Wakefield is a double SAG award-nominated actor who graduated from the Three-Year Course in 2003. Since graduating, she has appeared on stage in numerous productions at venues such as Chichester Festival Theatre, Theatre Royal Bath, Hampstead Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, The Bristol Old Vic, The National Theatre, and on the West End.
In 2010, Charity was nominated for the Ian Charlson Award, an award celebrating classical stage performances by actors under 30, for her role in Jessica Swale’s The Rivals. Then, in 2011, she was cast in The Cherry Orchard at The National Theatre alongside Zoë Wanamaker. The production was streamed live into cinemas as part of the National Theatre Live programme and is now available to watch on demand through National Theatre at Home. Later, in 2018, Charity took on the role of William Shakespeare in the all-female production of the new play Emilia at Shakespeare’s Globe, which later transferred to the West End and won an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play.
Charity’s screen career has been just as successful as her stage career. In 2008, she was cast as Marianne Dashwood, the lead in the BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. She then played Land Fothergill in Channel 4’s adaptation of the William Boyd novel Any Human Heart before joining the BBC’s Wolf Hall as Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn (famously portrayed by fellow OSD grad Claire Foy).
Most recently, Charity starred alongside Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult in the SAG Award-winning TV series The Great where she played Georgina Dymov, friend and lover to Hoult’s Tsar Peter III of Russia, in all three seasons.
Charity and the cast of The Great earned two consecutive Screen Actors Guild nominations for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2021 and 2022, alongside multiple other international award wins and nominations for the show.
Charity has a number of projects coming up, including the feature film Preschool, directed by and starring Josh Dhumal. As you can see, her career has been wonderfully varied, with a host of incredible stage, film, TV, and radio credits under her belt, as well as producing and directing credits. What an incredible person to have on board as part of our London Season!
Charity Wakefield: In The Room
Charity was working with our Third Year Actors on a feature film project currently in development with Writer Laura Hart. We don’t want to give too much away about this very exciting project, but here are some photos from her week-long development workshop! Featuring the graduating class of 2025, whose profiles can be found here.
All that’s left is to say a huge thank you to Charity for her time and for organising such a wonderful week for our actors.
We can’t wait to share more about her forthcoming project as and when!
We’ve written about a number of 2025 London Season highlights, so if you’re interested in learning more about the London Season, be sure also to check out the Research and Development diary from grad Abigail Berry and our Inside Rehearsals blog from our recent production of Nostos by Georgia Bruce.