‘I can die now!’ laughs Nina Conti, reflecting on how she’s come full circle in Edinburgh terms. Over 20 years ago, the virtuoso ventriloquist appeared in a Fringe play, Finding Bin Laden. Now the BAFTA nominee is back with her latest stage show, Whose Face Is It Anyway?. Moreover, she’s premiering her directorial debut Sunlight, in which she co-stars with her co-writer (and partner) Shenoah Allen, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. If that wasn’t enough, Allen is bringing his stand-up act to the Fringe while her mother, Kara Wilson, is performing a one-woman show, Beryl Cook: A Private View. ‘Her first Fringe, aged 80!’ Conti exclaims. ‘We’re like the von Trapps!’

In Sunlight, Conti plays Jane, a woman who flees a toxic relationship and meets the suicidal Roy (Allen). While they go on the road together, Jane hides away in a monkey costume: a nod, of course, to Conti’s own ventriloquist act and her straight-talking ‘Monkey’ character. ‘It’s quite personal actually, to me,’ she explains over Zoom. ‘The desire to hide is me. In tougher times for sure... the entrance into an alternative persona is a great unburdening and that’s what I’ve done, to an extent, all my life. I’ve kept Nina alive alongside Monkey, which is a much truer version of myself.’

With Conti remarkably directing her film from inside the monkey suit (‘it focuses the mind incredibly’), life also imitated art as she fell for her co-star. ‘I was acting with Shenoah, but I was very quickly falling in love with him from deep inside this suit, thinking this is the most unusual seduction I’ve ever done! It might just work: who knows!? There was a chemistry. I mean, there was a chemistry with the monkey and Shenoah. Never mind me and Shenoah! So I can relate. Would it be the same if it was just me? Probably not.’

Sunlight is also executive produced by the legendary comic actor Christopher Guest, who first cast Conti in his film For Your Consideration. ‘I called him and asked “would you help me?”’ she reveals. ‘Because I hadn’t done it before, and I was quite scared. And he’s such a steady pair of hands. He was really, really grounding. Every time I called him... I was in a panic. Because it was a road movie... you had to shoot everything in a car, and that’s so limiting. Especially on a tight budget. He was just like “drive! Film it.”’

Since Sunlight, Conti has won a small part in the long-awaited sequel to the classic ‘mockumentary’ This Is Spinal Tap, in which Guest will reprise his role as heavy-metal guitarist Nigel Tufnel alongside his fellow Tap bandmates. ‘It slayed me,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know what to do when I saw them in their wigs. I was just like “oh, that’s them. They’re there! They’re alive!” I mean, funny as hell; between takes, just milling around in those wigs, getting a coffee or something, or having a serious conversation with someone. I wanted to take pictures of them all the time.’

As for Conti’s Fringe show, Whose Face Is It Anyway?, it comes after her hugely successful The Dating Show, which paired off audience members. How will it differ? ‘I hope it’s better. I mean, I think it is.’ Originally, she planned a show around the topic of family. ‘I thought “I’ll do families because families have fascinating dynamics”. But families have all kinds of horrible pain! I did a preview about families, and then thought “I’ve got to leave everybody’s family out of this.”’

In this latest show, Conti will invite audience members onstage and put masks on their faces before launching into her hilarious ventriloquism, using them as conduits to speak through. I wonder if she’s ever had any unwilling participants. ‘God forbid... I’m so scared of that,’ she gulps. ‘Anyone who looks like they might not have a good time are not coming up anywhere near it... I don’t want to get anybody up who is unwilling.’

On ventriloquism, why does Conti think it isn’t anywhere near as popular on TV now as it was in the days of Keith Harris and Ray Alan? ‘Well, it’s not very cool, I suppose. And often the people who are drawn to doing comedy or doing stand-up are people who are very funny in their own right, and don’t need that sort of thing. I needed it. Once I picked it up, I thought “oh, this is for me”. And it’s been the right pen in my hand all this time.’ 

Despite being the daughter of Wilson and iconic actor Tom Conti, she’s never been totally in sync with traditional acting. ‘I was comfortable in weird pieces, like Ken Campbell’s The Warp, which was 24-hours long,’ she explains. It was the late actor, writer and experimental-theatre guru who convinced Conti that ventriloquism was her calling and wrote her a half-hour show. ‘And then I just never looked back. It was so different to be able to write your own stuff as well and put on your own gigs and not wait for someone to give you a job. I’ve always been very bad at getting jobs.’

Unlike her family, it seems. Not only did Conti’s father recently appear in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winner Oppenheimer, playing the key role of Albert Einstein, but her son Arthur now has a role in Tim Burton’s sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which opens the Venice Film Festival this month. ‘It’s quite incredible, really,’ she marvels. ‘It’s a big movie. The lunch budget on that movie would have paid for our film.’ Seems like the Contis really are the modern-day von Trapps. 

Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway?, Pleasance Courtyard, until 25 August, 7.30pm; Sunlight, 17–20 August, venues and times vary; Shenoah Allen: Bloodlust Summertime, Just The Tonic At The Caves, until 25 August, 7.45pm; Beryl Cook: A Private View, Pleasance Courtyard, until 25 August, 2.05pm; main picture: Steve Best.