Karen  Johal

British South Asian actor Karen Johal is best known for playing Nicole Shelley in the Emmy Award-winning Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso.

Born and raised in Birmingham, England, Karen developed an interest in performing from an early age. Inspired in part by the Nickelodeon sitcom Taina, she moved to New York in 2014 to pursue a career in acting.

A graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, she began building her career with Off-Broadway work including The Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar as part of Shakespeare in the Park, The Journey to America at Carnegie Hall and Charly Clive’s Camel.

In 2017, she originated the role of Nasim in Douglas Carter Beane’s musical Me and the Girls, starring opposite award-winning Scottish actor Alan Cumming.

Most recently, Karen filmed a role in the upcoming fourth season of Netflix’s The Diplomat, due to premiere in October. She can also be seen in the first two seasons of the BBC drama Phoenix Rise, playing the recurring role of Noreen Khan. Her further screen work includes the MTV short film The Waves, directed by BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker Sindha Agha, Frank’s Plan for Amazon Prime and the award-winning psychological thriller Man on the Phone.

Alongside her screen career, Karen has an extensive theatre background, including lead roles in David Harrower’s Blackbird, Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes and Ayad Akhtar’s The Who and the What, performed at The English Theatre of Hamburg in Germany. Other credits include Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the lead role in Good Fit and the titular role in Lysistrata.

In 2023, Karen returned to her hometown to perform at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre in Mismatch, directed by Iqbal Khan. The following year, she played the lead role in Why Are You Here? at An Táin Arts Centre in Dundalk, Ireland. Her work also includes commercials, national and international campaigns for TikTok, WhatsApp, TK Maxx, Northwell Health and Aramco Global.

From Birmingham to New York and now working across the UK and internationally, Karen continues to build a career defined by ambitious storytelling, complex characters and a desire to keep pushing herself into new territory.