Focus on: Lucie Pohl

Things have changed for Lucie Pohl since her last Fringe solo in 2016.

"My crazy life began two years ago when I started doing the voice on this video game," she says. “Suddenly I’m doing Comic-Cons all over the world and I’m in these green rooms hanging out with the Hulk and Batman, and Christopher Lloyd wanders in with a newspaper under his arm and Mia Farrow’s just there hanging around."

Pohl’s description of "doing the voice on this video game" is something of an understatement. Overwatch is a global phenomenon with over 60 million registered users worldwide. She voices Mercy, one of its central heroes.

"At first I had a bit of arrogance about it, like 'it’s just a video game, it’s not my main thing'," she recalls. "Then I started getting recognised in the street and travelling the world meeting these amazing fans who were obsessed with us and everything we do."

It was the jarring contrast between this celebrity lifestyle and the reality of her home life which inspired her upcoming show Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Real. "I’d come back from the five-star treatment and there’d be a dead mouse in the middle of my floor and my neighbour would be getting arrested," she says. "My career wasn’t going how I wanted it to go: I was in the middle of a huge heartbreak, a lot of stuff happened with my family last year and it was all in the midst of me riding this video game celebrity wave." In a time of "smoke and mirrors" when people have very separate social media and offline lives, "I wanted to say, well, what is reality?"

It’s a question her newfound fandom has presented her with: "when you meet someone who tells you they’ve played 2,000 hours on your character, part of you wants to say 'No! Get out of the basement and stop playing games!' But the truth is this person has found something that makes them happy, they feel good, they’ve made friends – they’re just living in a completely alternate universe."

Overwatch fans have been hugely supportive of Pohl’s own work, coming to see her comedy live and seeking out her past appearances. But while she’s excited about the fandom’s response, Pohl also hopes the show resonates with a wider audience. "I’ve pared it all down this year and taken out a lot of the theatrical stuff that I used to do because I want to make it about the story, the time... I'm really excited about trying something different."