In Break Clause, recent graduates Lil and Ben move from Leeds to London after the former lands a job at an architecture firm. Yet as soon as the couple start settling into their new flat, everything goes horribly wrong. Ben ( Samuel Bottomley ) reveals he slept with someone else at their leaving drinks the night before, so Lil (Lara Ricote) immediately ends the relationship – but quickly discovers their rental contract is far harder to get out of. Cue an agonising six months of cohabitation and a novel will-they-won’t-they (get back together) setup for a winningly bittersweet new sitcom.
You may recognise Ricote from recent appearances in two other Channel 4 comedies: Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping and Sam Campbell’s crackers Make That Movie (although probably not from the “funny and crazy” telenovela she briefly worked on as a teen). But Break Clause is the Mexican-American comedian’s first leading role. It also happened to be the “best case scenario” for Ricote’s debut: let’s just say getting into character wasn’t a problem.
Shortly before filming began, the 29-year-old broke up with her own long-term boyfriend. Then she moved to London for the first time. She originally played Lil in Break Clause’s 2024 pilot, meaning creator Jess Bray had already shaped the character around Ricote when writing the full series – like Ricote, the character is Latin American and hard of hearing. But now the pair were in eerily similar emotional states, too. Bursting into tears at the drop of a hat was easy. “I’m not even an actor – I was just grieving!” says Ricote. The job ultimately allowed her to “process things. It was kind of a gift to be able to go to work and cry every day.”
Mercifully, however, her real-life living situation was less stressful: she currently houseshares with actor and comedian Charly Clive, who offered her a room after they met on the set of Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping (and who also happens to play Lil and Ben’s neighbour in Break Clause).
Ricote isn’t at home when we speak via video call; it’s early August and she’s in Edinburgh, sitting on the bed she’s sharing for the month with her sister Maya, a clown, in a flat belonging to a woman who answered her Instagram plea for a room to rent at the fringe. She’s at the festival to perform her latest standup show, Inkling , which will go on to receive universal praise for its zany braininess, as well as a nomination for the main Edinburgh comedy award (the winner will be announced on 29 August).
Inkling is partly themed around the aforementioned breakup – itself precipitated by an argument with a man in a museum who refused to speak more clearly even after she told him she was hard of hearing.
Your feelings are messages from you to you, and you should be checking those out!
Despite the disconcerting subject matter, Ricote’s natural buoyancy means it’s hard to imagine Inkling being anything other than life-affirming: she begins our conversation by expressing her astonishment at the lyrical genius of David Byrne , whose oeuvre she only recently discovered. I presume her personality also provided the inspiration for Lil’s sometimes ludicrous exuberance (in one scene she impulsively joins in with a troupe of baffled street dancers), but she says that’s closer to Bray’s vibe. Ricote’s style is slightly more cerebral; her comedy is often powered by a goofy yet genuine sense of awe at the human condition. Inkling centres on her epiphany that “your feelings are messages from you to you, and you should be checking those out!” she says with evangelistic urgency.
Related: Lara Ricote: Inkling review – this fizzy standup’s smart new set is her best yet
Yet much of her wonder is reserved for the strange path her life has taken. The daughter of a telenovela actor (hence that early role as “Maria” who “just loved her dad, loved to go to church and was brokenhearted by her mom’s alcoholism”), she grew up in Miami, before moving to the Netherlands to study politics. There, she started performing comedy and soon found acclaim in the UK, winning the Funny Women stage award in 2021 and the Edinburgh newcomer prize the following year. Nowadays, she is a core part of the alternative – and increasingly, thanks to her primetime TV appearances, mainstream – British comedy scene, something she finds utterly bizarre. “There are so many elements that have nothing to do with what I thought was my life 10 years ago. I’m grateful but very confused.”
Filming Break Clause in Manchester opposite 25-year-old Yorkshireman Bottomley (“I had a real sense of: I don’t know anybody like you”) was also “surreal”. That said, Ricote has managed to find a way to rationalise her standup success. The UK has a comedy scene that embraces difference; Ricote can “operate in that space because I’m from random places for you guys – I’m Mexican, but I’m also American, but I’m also Venezuelan, and Latin America isn’t really a continent that [Britons] are relating to that often”. The fact that her other qualities are also quite “random” (“the way I talk is kind of weird,” she says – she has previously described her voice as “Bart Simpson with a lisp”) means she has avoided being pigeonholed, often an advantage for a comedian.
Another upside is that she rarely gets starstruck. Break Clause’s supporting cast is full of great up-and-coming comedy talent – Cat Cohen, SNL UK alumni Jack Shep and Hammed Animashaun – plus a bona fide legend in The Fast Show’s John Thomson. Ricote’s co-stars were “freaking out” at his presence; she was nonplussed. “I was like, that’s so special that I get to meet him … but also not yet for me.”
What is very special, thinks Ricote, is Break Clause itself. As a viewer, it’s incredibly difficult to decide whether Lil and Ben should get back together – something Ricote has a typically deep take on. She views the show’s ambiguity in this area as an antidote to kneejerk judgments and an allegory for the unpredictability of life. “The premise, basically, is that people are continuous – people aren’t one action. And that’s such a hopeful thing to bring into such a rigid world. You want so badly to just decide: bad guy. And you can’t in the series. You gotta wait. You have to see it out,” she says. “You never know what things are gonna mean for you.”
• Break Clause is on Channel 4 this autumn
You may recognise Ricote from recent appearances in two other Channel 4 comedies: Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping and Sam Campbell’s crackers Make That Movie (although probably not from the “funny and crazy” telenovela she briefly worked on as a teen). But Break Clause is the Mexican-American comedian’s first leading role. It also happened to be the “best case scenario” for Ricote’s debut: let’s just say getting into character wasn’t a problem.
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Rachel Aroesti. Published 28 Aug 2026, 04:00 am.
