‘Riches’ Star Sarah Niles Explains Why She Wasn’t Sure About Her Role as Claudia (Exclusive)

Sarah Niles is known for her work on the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso. But fans are about to see the British actress in a new light as she is starring as the vicious Claudia Richards in the new Prime Video series Riches. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture, Niles explains why she wasn’t sure about playing Claudia at first.

“When I was first approached to play this part, I was like, ‘I’m not sure I’m the one to play this part,’” Niles exclusively told PopCulture. “When I have that feeling, I’m absolutely the person to play that part. So I was just like, you’re stepping into a space that you are not used to playing. Those kind of characters are quite few and far between in the UK, so to play a part of that and you are head-to-head a lot of the time with another woman like [Deborah Ayorinde’s] character, Nina, it’s great. You have to step into those. You have to be brave and step into those roles and yeah, I was really excited to step into that.”

Claudia is the matriarch of the Richards family and is looking to take over the company owned by her husband Stephen Richards (Hugh Quarshie) who died suddenly. As Niles mentioned, Claudia goes head-to-head with Nina Richards who is Stephen’s daughter from his first marriage.

“I think she’s challenged by anybody that might pose a threat, male or female,” Niles said of Claudia. “I think she’ll take them out. Nina is a much more difficult character for her to take out. Every time she keeps pushing her down, she keeps coming back up. She finds all different tactics to do that. But she’s also threatened by the fact is that she’s another bloodline to Stephen. She’s an older daughter to Stephen and there’s a past, there’s a history and she knows what she did to get into that position, Claudia did to get into that position. She knows there’s going to be some retribution because of that. And also, Nina’s definitely skilled in running a company. She has her own company. So those things are all threats and challenges for Claudia.”

Niles went on to talk about how much she enjoyed working with the cast as much as they enjoyed working with her. “I missed people when I didn’t get to see… Sometimes I had one scene, one proper scene with Simon and I was like, oh, I want Claudia and Simon to meet again,” Niles explained. “It was good fun. Then that came and went. It’s such a short series. You want more space. As you’re working on it, you start to grow and you think, oh, that works and before you know it, it’s over.”