Thaddea Graham to Be Honored at the Oscar Wilde Awards (Exclusive)

Thaddea Graham, the actress from Northern Ireland known for her turns on Sex Education at Netflix and Bad Sisters and Margo’s Got Money Troubles at Apple TV, will be honored at the 21st annual Oscar Wilde Awards.

Organized by the US-Ireland Alliance, the event is set for March 11 at the Ebell in Los Angeles in its traditional evening spot three days before the Academy Awards. It celebrates the work of those who are Irish — and some who are not — who contribute to film, television and music.

Irish American actor Jack Reynor was announced last month as an honoree. Guests also will be treated to a performance by the Irish synth-pop singer Shobsy.

Graham, 29, will receive the Wilde Card Award, “which is presented to someone we expect you’ll hear a lot more from,” US-Ireland Alliance president Trina Vargo said. Previous honorees include Saoirse Ronan, Barry Keoghan, Sarah Bolger and Bad Sisters actress Eve Hewson.

Graham last year appeared alongside Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, and she has reunited with the Italian director on the upcoming hot-button film Artificial, which stars Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

She also played the personal assistant of George Clooney’s actor character in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly (2025).

Graham was discovered as a baby on the steps of a building in Changsha, China, when she was a few days old. She was adopted at 13 months and brought by her parents to County Down as one of the first Chinese-born children adopted in Northern Ireland.

“I always say I would not be here had it not been for the kindness of strangers,” she told The London Times in April. “From the earliest days of someone stopping and seeing I’d been left, picking me up and looking after me, I’ve seen that kindness throughout my life, from my parents, who are wonderful, through school and the support of my teachers. My primary-school teacher introduced a Chinese New Year celebration, which she continues even though I’m not there anymore.”

In 2021, Graham portrayed the head of Sherlock Holmes’ band of street urchins on Netflix’s The Irregulars and recurred on the BBC’s Doctor Who.

After playing the therapist O in 2023 on the final season of Sex Education, she sparkled as the stubborn detective Una Houlihan on the second season of Bad Sisters in 2024 and as the roommate of Elle Fanning’s character this year on Margo’s Got Money Troubles.

After an FYC Emmy event last year for Bad Sisters, Graham told the Times that she “had a lot of people coming up to me from Asian backgrounds saying, ‘It’s amazing seeing you in this show. It’s amazing seeing you as one of the lead characters. We so admire the kind of representation people are taking over there. And also for you to have a different accent — for you not to have the accent people might expect.’”

Shobsy last year completed a U.K. and European tour with SO Recordings labelmates MY BABY, then took the stage at SXSW.

In July, he performed at an Irish music industry showcase hosted by Ireland’s president, Catherine Connolly, at her Dublin residence, and he recently released the EP The World Will Not Remember alongside a new single, “Perfect.”