Jessica Knappett could have been onscreen royalty, albeit exceptionally distant in line to the throne.

The Avoidance and Taskmaster star was cast alongside Ed Gamble to play Poppy Carlton, a clueless British aristocrat meeting Americans with her brother Georgie in E4's 2014 faux-reality show Almost Royal.

But Knappett had to step aside after she landed her own series on the channel as the writer and star of Drifters (pictured), Amy Hoggart, her replacement as Poppy, has revealed.

Originally airing on BBC America, Almost Royal was Hoggart's big break on US television, as she subsequently became a correspondent on TBS's late-night satirical show Full Frontal With Samanatha Bee, before landing her own show on TruTV, It's Personal With Amy Hoggart.

And appropriately for a mockumentary about minor royals, the erstwhile stand-up landed the role of Poppy through her connections.

A former member of the Cambridge Footlights, her final show monologue for the society was directed by none other than Gamble, even though he was an alumnus of the Durham Revue.

And Hoggart, who began her professional career as the "insufferably cute" character Pattie Brewster on the London stand-up circuit, had been born in Washington DC, thanks to her late, journalist father Simon working there as a US politics correspondent for The Observer in the 1980s.

Once Knappett dropped out, Almost Royal's producers were "looking around" Hoggart told comedian Jim Daly and children's author Giles Paley-Phillips on their Blank podcast.

"So I was like, 'can you tell them I have an American passport and I'm friends with Ed, we have a rapport?'" she recalled.

"It was so fun. It was such an incredible time, just dicking around in America and being silly."