Maggie Jacobs

Maggie Jacobs works background jobs on film sets alongside her best friend Andy Millman, dreaming of nothing grander than getting through the day without saying something disastrous. She's guileless to a fault, blurts out whatever she's thinking, and means well constantly — which makes the trouble she causes all the more excruciating and all the more forgivable.

Ashley Jensen plays Maggie's tactlessness as innocence rather than stupidity, so every cringe-inducing line lands as accidental honesty rather than cruelty. The show could have made her a punchline; instead she's the moral centre of Extras, the one person too straightforward to survive show business, and Jensen makes that decency funny without ever making it small.