Ella Purnell has grown very comfortable with copious amounts of blood onscreen.
Earlier this year, the actor starred in the first season of Prime Video’s Emmy-nominated postapocalyptic video game adaptation “Fallout,” playing a sheltered young woman who ventures into a violent wasteland to save her dad. Now in “Sweetpea” — the six-episode limited series premiered Oct. 10 on Starz, with new episodes dropping weekly on Fridays — she’s Rhiannon Lewis, a meek wallflower who, after her father dies, reaches a breaking point and goes on a killing spree. The main target of Rhiannon’s ire is her childhood bully (Nicôle Lecky), who is now a real estate agent in charge of selling her dad’s home.
Though she’s been working since childhood, Purnell’s star has risen exponentially over the past couple of years, in part thanks to her work on “Yellowjackets” as queen bee (and eventually cannibalized corpse) Jackie. But “Sweetpea” also represents a step forward for Purnell, who has aspirations to write and direct: It’s the first series on which she has also served as executive producer. In this edited interview, she discusses her ambitions as well as how she prepped to play someone who kills.
Why was “Sweetpea” a show you also wanted to produce?
A story about a female serial killer is intriguing enough, and then it’s a dark comedy, which is my favorite genre. The way that they wanted to tell this story was to make the audience feel conflicted. Attempting to get the audience to relate to her emotions and not necessarily her actions … it sounded challenging, and I wanted to be a part of it. I’ve always wanted to direct, produce and write, and I’ve been doing more of those things over the last couple years. I was just holding out for the right project because I want to do it properly, and I want to feel like I actually have something to contribute, and I wanted to wait for the project that I felt like I really understood. With “Sweetpea,” just right off the bat, I really connected with that character, and I also felt like I really knew what they wanted to do with it, and I felt like I had ideas for them.
You mentioned that your favorite genre is dark comedy, which I think certainly aligns with what we’ve seen you do the past couple of years. “Yellowjackets” has dark comedy to it, “Fallout” certainly has dark comedy. What draws you to that?
Primarily, I think that’s just how I cope with life, laughing and joking about it. The way that I heal and process negative emotions is by laughing [and] finding things to laugh about. It’s a very British thing, I think, that self-deprecating, slightly twisted humor that we all kind of share. I think you actually need moments of levity when you’re tackling quite dark and heavy themes, to allow the audience to take a breath when you are watching something that’s heavy. And also I think you laugh harder if you’ve just cried and you cry harder if you’ve just laughed. It’s taking you on this roller coaster. It can also sometimes help those heavier themes become slightly more digestible. It almost makes them hit harder because it makes it more human, actually.
In all these projects, you can also laugh at the bloodshed. It seems like you are comfortable with projects that get pretty violent.
I would say so. When you’re working on the project and you have limbs flying around, and blood and diarrhea and whatever else it is that you’re dealing with, it’s very technical. It’s like any stunt scene: On camera it feels so shocking and so fast, and you’re swept up in that moment. But really, when you’re filming it, it’s like a dance.
In “Sweetpea,” Rhiannon’s body language starts to shift as she commits murders. How did you approach her physical changes?
I am mostly interested in character transformation. And that might be why I love TV so much and I’ve done so much TV recently. I feel like there’s such a larger scope for that progression. I love not knowing actually what happened, and being slightly informed by what you’ve got in your head but mostly informed by the scripts that you’re probably only getting a week before you start filming.
When I came into “Sweetpea,” what I pitched to [director] Ella [Jones] was like, “I love where we’re starting with her, and I imagine that the story you’re telling is that she becomes less invisible.” She becomes more visible as she develops this intoxicating taste for murder because what can be more visible, more permanent than taking a person’s life? And as you are seen, really seen for the first time, how does that change the way that you interact with the world? When you like the way you look, you hold yourself with more confidence, and that will change the way that your voice sounds because when your diaphragm is opened, you have a louder voice, you have more clarity, you don’t swallow your words the way that you would if you’re hiding.
How did you prepare for playing someone who is driven to murder?
This has definitely been the most challenging project I’ve ever done because I didn’t know how to get into the mindset of somebody that kills people. I did a lot of research into female serial killers and the psychology behind it, and it helped to a point, but I still couldn’t really connect. So I actually looked up people that had played villains and how they talk about that. One of the things I learned, I forget who said it, but the bad guy never thinks they’re the bad guy. And also never judge your character. It’s hard sometimes when your character is doing these unspeakable, unthinkable things. But it really helped me understand that you don’t need to understand how and why she’s able to plunge a knife into another human being because Rhiannon doesn’t even understand that. She can’t even face that. She’s not sat down and journaled and gone, “Why do I like to kill?” In fact, the whole series is about her running from the truth of the matter. Instead, I focused on the emotional component — it’s not rage that leads her to kill. She doesn’t kill because she feels anger in that moment. She kills because she is addicted to the feeling of being seen, I think as a result of having been invisible for so many years. That led me to the root of her feeling of invisibility, which is the childhood trauma, being bullied. Rhiannon’s perspective is perhaps warped by her victim mentality. Not all the people that she kills are fully bad. Her moral code can no longer stand.
You’ve portrayed complicated female relationships on both “Yellowjackets” and “Sweetpea.” Why do those interest you?
It’s more interesting to show that in female friendships than in a heteronormative relationship because for me, female friendships are the most important thing in my life, and so maybe that’s why I seek that out.
Was there anything new you learned about working with blood on “Sweetpea”?
By the time I got onto “Sweetpea,” I was pretty experienced with the blood gags. I learned this on “Fallout,” but it’s a good hack. The only way to get fake blood out of your skin when it’s been sitting on there for a couple of hours and it’s really soaked in and it’s staining: shaving cream. Put shaving cream, leave it like 10 minutes. You might need to do a couple of passes, [but] it’s the only way to get that out of your skin.
With “Fallout” and “Sweetpea,” what has the experience of this year felt like?
It’s been a weird year to be me. It’s been amazing. I feel very lucky, and I feel oftentimes that I don’t deserve it. What human does deserve it? It’s an insane lottery game that I just happen to have gotten lucky at this year. I’ve been doing this since I was a child, and I have been exposed to the industry long enough to understand that moments come and go. My personal philosophy is that this is not a sprint. This is a marathon, and I hope that my career will be long and lovely, and I’m not putting all my eggs in any baskets.
