Ella Purnell has grown very comfortable with copious amounts of blood on screen. Earlier this year, the actor starred in the first season of Prime Video’s Emmy-nominated post-apocalyptic video game adaptation “ Fallout ,” playing a sheltered young woman who ventures into a violent wasteland to save her dad. Now in Starz’s “Sweetpea” — the six-episode limited series premiered Oct.
10 and drops weekly on Fridays — she’s Rhiannon Lewis, a meek wallflower who reaches a breaking point after her father dies and proceeds to go 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 t.
