“It’s just so poignant isn’t it?” she said. “This play deals with the liberation of African people and this was the centre of the cotton trade.
“You can still see the trading board from when it was the cotton exchange. It makes you think ‘this is where it all went down; this is where this city was built on the exploitation of enslaved people’.”
Nicola is playing Dorothy Pizer in Liberation which the Royal Exchange is staging as part of the Manchester International Festival.
It is based on the true story of the fifth Pan African Congress which was held in Chorlton 80 years ago which helped sow the seeds of African independence at a time when colonialism was still a driving force behind the economy.
“It was a long old fight,” said Nicola. “When you think they’d already had four congresses before this and it wasn’t really until the Sixties that countries started to gain their independence.”
Unless you are a major history buff, the Pan African Congress of 1945 and Dorothy Pizer are both a complete mystery.
“I didn’t know anything about it to my shame before we started rehearsals,” said Nicola. “But I soon went down the rabbit hole and now I do.”
Dorothy was the partner of activist George Padmore, originally from the West Indies, who was one of the key figures in the early independence movement.
“Dorothy was a remarkable woman,” said Nicola. “She facilitated George.
“She was Jewish and grew up in the East End probably without much education. The way to get out was through education, so she went to secretarial college; she taught herself French and became fluent in it.
“She was a member of the Communist party and was on Cable Street fighting the Fascists. She was very politically charged as you would have been growing up Jewish in the East End at a time when anti-Semitism was on the rise.
“She met George at Communist party meetings, and their minds met. They were both fighting for equality.
“She brought all her skills to him. She did all his typing for him, she transcribed his speeches. I guess you could call them a real power couple.”
Relatively little is known about Dorothy, so how does Nicola approach playing someone who was a real person?
“My dad’s mum grew up in London in the war, she was a real EastEnder,” said Nicola, “so I’ve been thinking of her a lot and and that steeliness she had.
“Dorothy would have lived through two world wars, although my nan was slightly younger; she was in her 20s when the war was on and she’d tell me stories of what it was like. There was a real matter of factness about it all; she was as tough as old boots.
“It’s nice that I’ve got her to guide me; people like my nan and Dorothy they had that strength and stoicism that as a generation now we don’t have.”
For Oldham-born Nicola, the chance to perform at the Royal Exchange is something she’s always wanted to do.
“This is my first play at the Royal Exchange,” she said. “Growing up I’d come to see plays here and I’ve always wanted to work here.”
Nicola attended North Chadderton School which proved a veritable hotbed for young actors.
“I went to the theatre workshop at the Coloseum but it was at school where we had a wonderful drama teacher Colin Snell that really shaped me,” she said. “A lot of that cohort at the time have gone on to work in the business.
“Mathew Dunster is now an amazingly successful director, he’s directing Hunger Games in West End; Paul Hilton has just worked constantly, Jeff Hordley has been in Emmerdale for ever, there was me and Jo Hartley, there were loads of us at that school.
“It was Chadderton, a dead normal comprehensive school but Colin Snell just encouraged us. While most teachers would say ‘you do realise most actors are out of work most of the time, you need something to fall back on’, he never did.
“He’d just say ‘let’s make our own theatre company and go to the Edinburgh Festival’ which we did.”
Nicola is probably best known for her TV work, notably playing Margaret in Brookside for four years in the early 1990s including ‘that kiss’ with Anna Friel which shocked viewers.
She’s also been in Holby City, Waterloo Road and Emmerdale and many drama series.
“I’ve been very lucky to do lots of telly work,” she said, “and the two worlds of TV and theatre are quite separate.
“But I have done a couple of plays at the National Theatre and also at Hull Truck but this is my first time at Exchange.
“There are an additional set of skills you need for doing theatre. You get looked after a lot when you’re doing TV; you get picked up, you get a cup of tea brought to you, you get the star treatment a bit.
“In the theatre you have got to look after yourself. You have got to be what I call show fit, you are there to do eight shows a week, there are no understudies; you have just got to do it and I absolutely love it, I’m the luckiest person in the world.”
So what is Nicola’s message to anyone unsure about seeing a new work about an event they may know little or nothing about?
“I’d just say don’t be daunted,” she said. “It’s quite exciting that we are all playing real people. You’re getting a snapshot of history and everybody loves history.”
Liberation opens at the Royal Exchange on Friday, June 27 and runs until Saturday, July 26. Details from www.royalexchange.co.uk