After decades of playing posh, smug supporting roles, comic actor Punch finally has the opportunity to star as a posh, smug lead in her own BBC show, ‘Amandaland’. She tells Hannah Ewens about the drama involved with making the ‘Motherland’ spin-off, her own approach to parenthood, and how she was gifted her big break by Woody Allen. Lucy Punch thinks she lacks a lot of mothering skills. But there is one area, the comic actor concedes, where she truly thrives: in making every day fun and silly for her two sons, aged seven and three. Even after wildfires came dangerously close to her house in Los Angeles, where she lives with the boys and her mystery husband (Punch, I discover, is very private), she managed to keep the children entertained.

Returning home after being evacuated, one of them acted as though he’d been on holiday because he’d had such a brilliant time. “Meanwhile, we’d been looking at our phones, going ‘F***ing hell, help,’ and crying,” the 47-year-old says, her elastic features miming her hysteria, hunching over an imaginary iPhone. “It’s such a small window when you’re a kid, so I’m just trying to make it magical until they’re confronted with teenagerdom and the reality of life.”.

That Punch is now synonymous with motherhood has almost everything to do with a hit BBC One comedy, in which she starred as the blow-dried alpha mum of the playground, the devil in a Land Rover. In Motherland, which ran for three seasons and two Christmas specials until 2022, her character Amanda was the person viewers loved to hate, whether she was whipping her battalion of fellow mummies into shape, or using any opportunity to put down the beta parents.

When she’s not playing the school run’s pretentious elitist, Punch is usually on screen being sneaky and faintly evil. Think of her doomed thesp in Hot Fuzz, or the passive-aggressive thorn in Cameron Diaz’s side in Bad Teacher. But now, for the first time, she has a well-deserved starring role, in her character Amanda’s very own spin-off, Amandaland. Really, it’s Punch’s biggest career moment yet. “I haven’t thought about it too much, otherwise I’d have freaked out a bit,” she says demurely. “I’ve never been front and centre; I’m used to playing a supporting character, and I like that. It’s less pressured.”.

In person, though, Punch is absolutely the centre of attention. When we meet at a restaurant in central London, she bounds over to co-conspire with me, hyperactive and unignorably tall; she is strikingly chic, distinctive and very blonde. She must have looked me up online because she knows where I used to work – her brother worked there too. “Don’t you want a coffee? I want a coffee,” she asks, standing quite close. It’s 5pm and dark outside. “Otherwise I’m going to be bleurgh!” Cue: a comic dead face.

I tentatively copy her order to match her energy, though it only hurts me and doesn’t seem to have touched her sides. My bag is complimented. She mistakes me for younger than I am, and convinces me to have a brioche with ice cream. She’s delightful to be around, a whirlwind. Her vivid mannerisms make me feel as though I’m speaking with an angelic Amanda on a Light Mode setting. How does someone so charming get typecast as a snide character? “Maybe it’s the beady eyes,” she says, staring intensely into mine. It’s probably more to do with what her friend and fictional mother, Joanna Lumley, says about her own typecasting: the posh voice. The two have an uncanny resemblance, having played mother and daughter not just in Amandaland and Motherland, but previously in Ella Enchanted. Then of course there’s the fact that her surname is Punch, Judy’s terroriser. “At school I played Miss Havisham, so I was a twisted, bitter old woman when I was about 17, and I was also in a musical where I played a nasty fascist pig. So I was really getting typecast from a very young age,” Punch offers drily.

She discovered she’d be getting her own show with all the glamour of a cold email from her agent. Obviously she was thrilled, but she had the same concerns Motherland viewers might have about the new spin-off: “Amanda is this unlikeable villain, so how is she going to be more centralised? And can that character carry a show and have people care about her and be invested?” Cleverly, the Motherland writing team, which included Sharon Horgan, had planted seeds of potential for a softer side to the role. “Even when she was a more minor character, it was important that she was really devoted and loving, because otherwise she’s despicable,” says Punch.

When we meet Amanda in her own world, nothing is going well. She’s firmly ensconced in her small, post-divorce life, her regional boutique Hygge Tygge is long closed, and her kids have to go to a new state school. The horror. About the only thing she has going for her is her steadfast pushover pal, Anne, a returning character from Motherland. “I’d always thought of Amanda as a teenager in Motherland,” says Punch. “Now, she’s had her coming-of-age and she’s in the real world, scrambling like everyone else. She’s not as evil at all now; she’s far more fragile and damaged.”.