Inside The Split actress Nicola Walker’s private life with famous husband who hasn’t ‘forgiven’ her

Nicola Walker is set to reprise her role as Hannah Stern as The Split returns to screens for a two-episode special tonight.

The actress, 54, has held a wide-ranging career on stage and screen, after rising to fame in the 90s and going on to be nominated for several awards.

One of her most beloved characters is now making a comeback, with The Split, starring Stephen Mangan and Annabel Scholey, returning after three seasons came to an end in 2022.

The fan-favourite BBC drama followed the Defoe family through familial romance, affairs, grief, and the trials and tribulations of modern marriage.

Ahead of The Split’s shock return, we’ve taken a look at Nicola’s private life and career, including her famous husband.

Where have you seen Nicola Walker before?

Nicola’s first big roles came in various episodes of Chalk and Touching Evil from 1997.

She went on to play Harriet Ambrose in The Last Train, before the role she’s now best known for as Ruth Evershed in Spooks, which ran from 2002 to 2011, and saw Nicola star alongside the likes of Peter Firth and Matthew Macfadyden.

Following the BBC spy drama, Nicola appeared in the likes of Broken News, Torn, Inside Men and A Mother’s Son.

In 2012, she began her role as Gillian Greenwood in Last Tango in Halifax, alongside Sarah Lancashire.

She was nominated for a Bafta TV award for best supporting actress and a Satellite award for the same category, and remained on the show until its last season in 2020.

Nicola then played roles as DCI Jo Fontaine in Prisoners’ Wives, Justine in Heading Out, and Sharon Franklin in Babylon.

Continuing with her police procedural drama reputation, she played DCI Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten and DS Jackie Stevenson in River, before playing Jane Oliver in Collateral.

More recently, Ruth played the title role in Annika, starred opposite Sean Bean in Marriage, and has played various characters in theatre over her stage career, including in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, for which she won an Olivier award in 2013 for best actress in a supporting role.

Nicola has also held roles in films including The Circuit in 2016, The Turn of the Shrew in 2009, a 2007 adaptation of Oliver Twist, 1994’s Faith and 1997’s Cows.

Who is Nicola Walker married to and does she have any children?

Nicola keeps her private life away from the spotlight and is married to fellow actor Barnaby Kay.

As well as appearing in a 2004 episode of Spooks, the 55-year-old has starred in the likes of The Bill, Silent Witness, Midsomer Murders, Prime Suspect and Holby City.

He’s also appeared in smaller roles in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Prat One, The Deadfall, and Shakespeare in Love.

Barnaby is son to Coronation Street star Richard Kay, and has played various parts on stage over his three-decade career.

According to reports, the couple met in 1994 when they both starred in a production of The Libertine.

They got married and welcomed their son Harry in 2006.

She previously told Radio Times: ‘Me and my husband, because we both lost a parent young, we thought, after we had a child, we ought to get married, in case one of us dies, so that the legalities are clear.

‘Which is not the most romantic reason to get married but is probably the only thing that would have got me to sign a piece of paper.

‘I’m not a great advocate of marriage in real life.’

In a recent interview with The Times, Nicola reflected on her past comments, saying: ‘When we did publicity for the first season of The Split, someone asked me about my marriage and it came out very strangely.

‘I don’t think any of my family, or Barney, have forgiven me. It didn’t paint us in a very good light, or our marriage, but we really did get married because we’d had a child together.’

What has Nicola Walker said about The Split’s return?

With The Split’s return hitting screens tonight, Nicola teased what we can expect from the new episodes, saying: ‘What’s brilliant about them is that you get to see where they are a few years on.

‘There’s no sense we’re picking up where we left off, we are not, stuff has moved on, their lives have moved on.

‘And we get to see them out of their normal environment in Barcelona for my daughter’s wedding, and it’s all very sunshiny, and exactly what we all need in dark December here.

‘But of course, the Defoes are the Defoes and there are little implosions, emotional explosions throughout this wedding weekend.’

Talking about the programme returning two years after the third (and what was thought to be the final) season, she went on: ‘We were all thrilled we were getting to come back and see each other. We were very happy, in whatever way it was coming back, we just wanted to be in front of the camera with each other saying Abi’s [writer Abi Morgan] words.

‘We didn’t expect it to come back. Abi had written what I think is a brilliant ending to the season, I thought what was so clever about her ending was that you had a sense that these people were going to get up and live their lives, they were all going to keep going.

‘I think endings are really hard to write, but I thought Abi had written a beautiful one, but we’d always secretly, well actually, not that secretly, we all very openly hoped that there might be a time further down the line.

‘So when this happened, we were just thrilled and to get to do it in another country, to take these characters out of the environment that we’re all used to seeing them in, that felt really exciting as well, because the great joke for me when I read the scripts was, “Oh, they’re just even more like themselves in Barcelona, we haven’t lost anything, they are just like themselves turned up to 11”.’

The Split: Barcelona will air on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday 29 and Monday 30 December. Both episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer from 29 December.

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