June 2026 has been a seismic month for Ella Hunt. Her debut album, Blindspot, was released on 5 June, just three days after the premiere of Not Suitable For Work, the Disney+ comedy series created by Mindy Kaling in which Hunt plays co-lead AJ.

She’s been imagining the release of her debut album since she was six years old, although she also admits, “If childhood me was writing this chapter, I would have put out an album before I was 22. So in that regard it feels like a long time coming.”

The 28-year-old actually thinks it’s kismet that Blindspot and Not Suitable For Work are coming into the world so close to each other. “I’ve been talking about this a lot in relation to Not Suitable For Work. Your early 20s are the first moments when you can act on all your childhood fantasies of adulthood. It makes for a very ripe period of storytelling, because expectations are met with the reality and fear of figuring out your place in life.”

If you haven’t caught the first five episodes yet, Not Suitable For Work follows the lives of best friends Davis (Will Angus), Josh (Jack Martin), and Kel (Nichola DuVernay), and their neighbours Abby (Avantika Vandanapu) and AJ, who has just moved to New York from Boston to become an analyst at prestigious investment bank Fisher Stassen.

It turns out that AJ previously had a one-night stand with Josh. Davis soon becomes smitten with her too, a dynamic complicated by the fact that he also works at Fisher Stassen. What follows is a sitcom very much in the mould of Friends and New Girl, with each character comedically struggling to balance their professional ambitions with their chaotic personal lives, all while romantic feelings bubble beneath the surface.

Hunt was on night shoots when she first read the scripts for Not Suitable For Work. “I was so sleep-deprived but I read the sides and they were so funny,” she says. Hardly a surprise given Hunt was already a huge fan of Kaling — who, after rising to fame for her role as Kelly Kapoor in The Office, created, produced and starred in The Mindy Project, before creating Never Have I Ever, The Sex Lives of College Girls, and Running Point.

Despite her overnight production schedule proving so hectic she wasn’t actually able to read through the scripts for Not Suitable For Work, Hunt had so much trust in Kaling that she auditioned on tape for the show anyway. “I don’t normally do that. But Mindy is such a legend,” she explains.

Thankfully for Hunt, when she did finally get around to reading the scripts, they left her crying with laughter. It also helped that she had never played a character as “intense, quirky, driven, and ambitious” as AJ. “I’ve almost exclusively played the straight guy. So it was really fun for me to play a corporate baddie. Even if I still don’t fully understand what AJ does.”

As a huge Nora Ephron fan, Not Suitable For Work gave Hunt the opportunity to live out her dream of starring in a New York-based rom-com like You’ve Got Mail or When Harry Met Sally. “I feel like AJ is quirky in a Meg Ryan way,” she says. “I love how nostalgic the show is. I feel like it’s really comforting and we could really all do with some comfort TV right now.”

While Not Suitable For Work certainly taps into the tropes of classic romantic-comedies and sitcoms, like all of Kaling’s work, it does so through a modern lens. “Mindy unapologetically puts ambition at the centre of this show in a way that’s novel for a show about Gen Z,” explains Hunt, who believes there’s a misconception about the work ethic of this generation, with many critics insisting they’re lazy, distracted, lack aspiration and are afraid of hard work.

“I don’t think you could survive in a city like New York or London without some ambition,” insists Hunt. “That’s why it’s really fun to be part of a show centred around all of these differently ambitious people.”

Filming on Not Suitable For Work prompted Hunt to reflect on her own memories of moving from the UK to New York. She did so at the age of 20 after being cast opposite Hailee Steinfeld in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ comedy Dickinson. “Working on this show gave me permission to be more forgiving of the kind of embarrassing, giddy, naivety that I had when I first turned up in New York.”

Hunt, who married musician Thomas ‘Doveman’ Bartlett in January 2026, now splits her time between London and Brooklyn. The couple met very early on into her time in New York, bonding over their shared love of music, and it was Bartlett who helped Hunt approach her work as both a singer-songwriter and actor in a more free-spirited and less intense manner.

“As an actor in my teens I was very professional. I always wanted people to know that I was an adult,” recalls Hunt, who says she got into singing and performing at a very young age while growing up in North Devon. After starring in a school production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, Hunt was spotted by an agent and soon began winning on-screen roles in the likes of Les Miserables and Cold Feet.

By this point, Hunt was already infatuated with songwriting. “I started writing songs when I was 10. I’m very dyslexic. I couldn’t read sheet music. So I started writing them and following my ear. It just became an addictive catharsis and helped me to process the day when I got home.”

While her first major influence was Avril Lavigne, Hunt’s musical ambitions were confirmed when she watched Lady Gaga at Glastonbury aged 11. “We lived close to Glastonbury so we would go all the time. If I wasn’t already hell-bent on being a musician, seeing Lady Gaga on the Pyramid Stage changed my life.”

As she landed more and more acting roles — including parts in Anna and the Apocalypse, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Saturday Night, and all three chapters of Horizon: An American Saga — music and playing live became vital to keeping Hunt grounded. “Music was the thing that I did to feel good. I would hang out with other musicians in the studio or just at home.” Her favourite New York memories are playing at the Owl Music Parlor in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, as well as at Reservoir Studios in midtown Manhattan surrounded by her musician friends.

Speaking of her debut album, Hunt says, “Writing the music was really quick but rallying the troops around it, getting the songs ready, and getting the album out, took a long time.” Hunt is fully aware that actors who release music can sometimes be judged more harshly but, as someone who has been writing songs alone in her bedroom since before she was a teenager, she insists she doesn’t have anything to prove with Blindspot.

“With actors who release music, people can think they’re piggybacking off their success into another field and that they haven’t done the steps to be there,” she says. “But I’ve never struggled personally as a musician to feel legitimate. I know I’m a musician. I don’t need to be told. One of the pleasures of getting older is feeling like I don’t need to say who I am to be who I am.”

In fact, now that Blindspot is out, she’s already dreaming of the follow-up — “I’m ready to learn from this process and make another album right away” — and already has plans for the next steps in her acting career and the type of roles she wants to dive into. “I want to play messy people. I really like being messy on screen. I want to be surprised by the characters. I’m always looking for things that feel surprising and are different from what I’ve just done.”

As she readies herself for the next phase of her creative journey, Hunt can’t help but see parallels between herself and her Not Suitable For Work character. “I remember, when I first got to New York, Thomas taught me how much fun you can have when you’re making things. He helped me realise that it doesn’t always need to be so serious. What I learned in New York at that time is really similar to what AJ experiences in the show. Your personal life can actually positively impact your creative life.”

Not Suitable For Work is streaming on Disney+ now.

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