Dolly Wells has this vibe. You know the one. She’s the friend who is slightly panicked but somehow also the most competent person in the room. She doesn’t just act; she sort of vibrates with a specific, British awkwardness that feels so real it’s almost painful to watch. But you can't look away.
Whether she’s playing a nun who doesn't believe in God or a math tutor who accidentally finds a hard drive full of nightmares, she brings a grounded, messy humanity to everything. Honestly, looking at the full list of Dolly Wells movies and tv shows, it’s weird she isn’t a household name in the "everyone knows her face" kind of way yet.
Maybe it’s because she spends so much time being the secret weapon in other people's projects. Or maybe it’s because her best work often happens in the uncomfortable silences. Either way, if you haven't been paying attention to her filmography, you're missing out on some of the smartest comedy and drama of the last decade.
The Sister Agatha Shift: When Everything Changed
For a lot of people, the "wait, who is that?" moment happened in 2020. BBC and Netflix dropped their Dracula miniseries. It was... divisive, sure. But everyone agreed on one thing: Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha Van Helsing was a masterclass.
She wasn't just a gender-swapped Van Helsing. That’s a lazy way to describe it. She was an "atheist nun" who treated a vampire like a particularly annoying lab specimen. She was sharp, dry, and terrifyingly smart.
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"I didn't know at the beginning. I just knew that she was a crazy cool woman, the coolest woman I'd ever read on the page." — Dolly Wells on her Dracula role.
It turns out she didn't even know she was playing Van Helsing when she first auditioned. The creators, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, kept it a secret. They just told her she was a nun who liked to make jokes and didn't really believe in anything. It worked. It worked so well that she basically walked away with the whole show.
From Doll & Em to Hollywood's Sidekick
Before she was hunting vampires, Wells was busy dismantling the "best friend" trope in Doll & Em. If you haven't seen this, go find it. It’s semi-improvised and stars Wells alongside her actual real-life best friend, Emily Mortimer.
The premise is simple: Em (Mortimer) is a big Hollywood star. Doll (Wells) is her childhood friend who is going through a rough patch, so Em hires her as a personal assistant.
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It is the most uncomfortable thing you will ever watch. It digs into the petty, jealous, weirdly competitive side of female friendship that movies usually ignore. They wrote it together, and you can tell. It feels lived-in. It feels like they’re airing their own dirty laundry for our entertainment.
The Stealth Queen of the Supporting Role
Wells shows up in the most random places. You've probably seen her and didn't even realize it.
- Bridget Jones's Diary (and the sequels): She plays Woney. She’s one of the "smug marrieds." She’s been in the franchise since the start and even returned for the 2025 installment, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
- Can You Ever Forgive Me?: She plays Anna, the bookseller who develops a crush on Melissa McCarthy’s Lee Israel. It’s a quiet, tender performance that breaks your heart because you know Lee is going to ruin it.
- The Outlaws: She plays Margaret, the daughter of Christopher Walken’s character. Seeing her trade barbs with an Oscar winner is a highlight of the show.
- Inside Man: This one is dark. She plays Janice Fife, a math tutor who gets trapped in a basement. It’s a brutal role, but she plays it with this stubborn, irritating righteousness that makes it impossible to simply feel sorry for her. You're fascinated by her.
Stepping Behind the Camera
In 2019, she decided she was tired of just acting and wrote and directed Good Posture. It’s a Brooklyn indie film through and through. It stars Grace Van Patten as Lilian, a girl who moves in with a reclusive author (played, naturally, by Emily Mortimer).
It’s a "snack" of a movie—short, sweet, and observant. It doesn't try to change the world. It just tries to show how two very different women can accidentally fix each other's lives. It has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason. People who like "low-stakes, high-vibes" movies tend to obsess over it.
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Why We’re Still Talking About Her in 2026
She just keeps working. Recently, she’s been in And Just Like That (as Joy, a potential love interest for Miranda) and the mystery thriller A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, where she actually directed several episodes.
She’s also in Babygirl, the 2024 film where she plays a therapist. It feels like the industry has finally realized that if you want a scene to feel "real," you just hire Dolly Wells and let her be slightly weird in the corner.
The Best Way to Watch Dolly Wells
If you’re new to her work, don't just jump into the big blockbusters. Start small.
- Watch Doll & Em first. It’s the DNA of her entire career.
- Move to Dracula Episode 1. You can honestly skip the rest of the series if you want, but she is legendary in the first hour.
- Check out The Outlaws. It shows her range in a more traditional ensemble comedy-drama.
- Find Good Posture. It’s a great Sunday afternoon movie when you want to feel like you’re living in a brownstone in New York.
The thing about Dolly Wells is that she never feels like she’s "performing." She feels like she’s just existing, and someone happened to have a camera running. In an era of over-produced, AI-shiny content, that kind of authenticity is worth its weight in gold.
If you want to keep up with her latest projects, keep an eye on British indie lists. She usually has two or three small, brilliant things in the works at any given time. Check out the BBC iPlayer or Netflix's international section—that's usually where her best "secret" projects end up landing first.