Ella Purnell has appeared on billboards across the world and appeared opposite Hollywood luminaries such as Angelina Jolie and Margot Robbie. But her greatest achievement might just be perfecting her American accent – to the point that many have no idea she’s actually British.
Case in point: Sweetpea, her new Sky Atlantic show in which she uses her actual London tones. “Somebody commented on the trailer and said, ‘Wow, she's got a really good British accent,’” Purnell laughs. “I'm very very proudly British. I feel like I'm a very British person. I think, isn't it obvious? But I suppose it must not be.”
It might not be, because Purnell’s biggest roles have all had an American accent. In the past 12 months, the 28 year old has appeared as the villainous Jinx in animated Netflix series Arkane, as Lucy in Prime Video’s blockbuster computer game adaptation Fallout – which involves her biting off somebody’s finger and stabbing several others to death – and then there’s her turn as cheerleader Jackie Taylor in the Lord of the Flies-esque Yellowjackets.
It isn’t just the accent that links them: they’re also shows that all involve a fair amount of gore and violence. When we meet – she’s bubbly and animated even at the end of a three-day press tour – it’s hard not to wonder why.
“It’s not a conscious choice, I guess it's just maybe what I'm attracted to,” she says. “I just want to do different things. If I read a script or I read a part I feel like I've done before, or I could do very easily, [or] I feel like it doesn't scare me or challenge me in some way then, I'm not really interested.”
Born in Whitechapel and raised in east London, Purnell started young (she tells me stories of “brutal” auditions she attended for West End shows as a child), pivoting from stage to screen as a teen and going onto star in films like Maleficent (alongside Jolie), Kick-Ass 2 and TV show Sweetbitter.
A brief career wobble – where she debated leaving the industry for good – ended when she was cast in Tim Burton’s film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in 2016. She hasn’t looked back since, but the shows have become progressively darker. And Sweetpea is yet another pitch-black role to add to the collection.
Purnell plays Rhiannon: a woman who is lost, grief-stricken and routinely ignored. That curdles into becoming vengeful, increasingly confident and (of course) homicidal. The role sounded challenging, she says – and therefore appealing. So appealing that Purnell came on as an executive producer as well as a lead.
“The way it was pitched to me was, we’re telling the story of a female serial killer,” she says. But one that makes the audience want to root for her, “without necessarily relating to her actions… it scared me. I didn't know if I could do it. And so I really wanted to be a part of it.”
This is an underdog story: one that Purnell and her colleagues have branded a ‘coming of rage’. Rhiannon is continually overlooked by her peers, dismissed by her sister, and treated to some pretty galling workplace sexism by her newspaper editor boss.
“A lot of the stuff that [Rhiannon] goes through are things that most women, if not all women, have dealt with,” she says – in particular, the way women have to be careful about the way they express themselves, especially their emotions.
“We have to be so delicate and diplomatic about the way we say things, the way we ask for what we want, so that we don't get labelled hysterical or dramatic or emotional or any of those things that we would never use for men. So that kind of biting your tongue and just smiling through it, while people take the piss? That's very relatable.”
Have people ever talked down to her? She’s coy. “Doesn't every woman have an experience where they feel like their true potential is not being seen or recognised?”
Which is why Rhiannon eventually snaps, a satisfying moment for the audience – if a little unnerving to see a doe-eyed young woman stab a man repeatedly in the chest with a pocketknife. “Female rage is so underrepresented,” Purnell says frankly. “That's what makes it so terrifying, because we can't predict it; because we don't see it very often. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Putting that sort of uninhibition on screen still scares her. “I don't practice it. I don't know what's going to happen. I just bring all my emotion up to the top and then just like, take the final pin out and just let it go and you know, it's not always easy. I don't always get it.”
And there’s another thing to consider. “The internet is generally not very forgiving to messy women,” she says. “The internet is just generally not forgiving to messy people. It’s difficult with social media, I think. Everything is so sort of perfectly placed and perfectly packaged; everybody's always comparing each other's lives.”
Purnell knows all about social media storms. In 2017, false reports emerged that she was dating Brad Pitt. She was 21 at the time, and was plunged into a media frenzy she later dubbed “insane”.
Or when she was quoted as saying she hated period dramas – something she yelps about when I ask. “I would like to clarify. I do not hate period dramas.” She waves her hands around. “I prefer doing things where I get to be messy and do stunts and be covered in dirt and blood. I prefer doing those things than playing roles where I feel constrained.”
That said, there are historical dramas she would do in a heartbeat: The Great, for instance, “one of my favourite shows of all time. I don't hate period dramas, guys. I'm British; how can I hate you? I just prefer being covered in fake blood, I suppose. There’s something wrong with me, probably.”
In 2024, being famous is also a dangerous place to be. Recently, Chappell Roan – a pop artist whose star hasn’t so much ascended as skyrocketed in the past 12 months – made the headlines for an Instagram post in which she pleaded with fans to keep their distance from her friends and family.
With her own star increasingly on the ascendant, can Purnell relate? “I mean, I can't imagine what her life is like.” she says. “I'm not super familiar with her. And I respect any woman who speaks out and stands up as I know that that's hard. For me personally, I feel like British people don't really come up to you as much as American people. In my experience anyway. I feel like people don't really care.”
Either way, she adds, she has a great support system. “I keep my life very small. There are definitely odd moments, and moments of like, you know, when you see yourself on a bus: that's not normal. That's very strange.”
