While Disney+ is home to Disney’s classic animated productions and major IPs such as Marvel and Star Wars, its sibling streaming service Hulu continues to build an impressive catalogue of mature entertainment. The upcoming Alice & Steve is a six-part British series created and written by Sophie Goodhart, whose writing credits include Sex Education and Rivals, and directed by BAFTA-winner Tom Kingsley. Produced by Clerkenwell Films, the company behind Baby Reindeer, the series stars Nicola Walke and Jemaine Clement as Alice and Steve, respectively, two lifelong best friends whose three-decade bond devolves into mayhem. ComicBook sat down with both leads for an exclusive conversation about what it took to bring these two unraveling characters to life.
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“The first time you see these two together, they are after a funeral,” Walke explains about Alice & Steve. “They’re reverting to versions of themselves when they were much younger, and they’re drinking and taking very, very old drugs because they don’t really take drugs. But, you know, Alice has got a tiny packet under her bed, and they are sort of plugging into versions of themselves when they were younger.” That opening sequence sets the tone for the show, as two middle-aged people cling to a shared history as the world around them falls apart, as the comfort of nostalgia suddenly turns into a rift.
Alice & Steve Uses Dark Comedy to Explore Trauma
In the series, the friends’ grief-soaked reunion turns into an open war when Steve announces that he has begun a relationship with Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith). What follows is a methodical, mutually assured destruction, as Alice escalates her attempts to dismantle the relationship and Steve, fully aware of her campaign, fires back. The friendship that once defined both of their lives becomes the primary weapon against each other, and the collateral damage extends to everyone in their orbit. Both Walker and Clement are candid about the moral complexity of their characters.
“I think they’re just people,” Walker tells us. “And I think people can be terribly selfish in one moment and selfless in the next. I think they’re just ordinary people. Honestly, I think that what Sophie’s done so well is to say we are all capable of this. Under the right circumstances, if you put enough heat on somebody, they could behave like these people.” Clement also underlines how the death of a dear friend is the catalyst for the conflict. “They were each other’s moral compass,” Clement says. “And they’ve both lost that. They’ve both lost the person that would talk them down from doing the crazy things. So when they don’t have that, they do the crazy thing to each other.”
Despite the intensity baked into the material, both performers describe the fun they had shooting Alice & Steve. “I’ve never done a job where I felt so great at the end of each day, like, I take costume off and makeup off, and I’m like ‘I feel great, I don’t know why. It’s been wonderful,’” Walker reveals. “It’s like I took everything out. It was all left on the dance floor.” Clement, meanwhile, was equally enthusiastic about watching his co-star operate at full capacity: “We have scenes where Nicola causes and creates dismay and distress for every other character,” he said. “And you can tell she’s reveling. She has so much power. She controls the mood.”
Alice & Steve premieres June 8, 2026, with all six episodes available simultaneously on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ internationally.
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