Ben Chaplin, Anna Devlin, Vinnie Heaven, Amy Manson, Zackary Momoh, Rochelle Neil, Denis O’Hare, Viola Prettejohn, and Kiran Sonia Sawar introduce us to their characters and talk HBO’s The Nevers.
The Nevers is a Victorian-era sci-fi thriller that stars such an incredible ensemble that we can’t fit them all in the headline – ps. that’s not even half of them! There’s also Laura Donnelly (Outlander), James Norton (Little Women), and Pip Torrens (The Crown) to name a few! With such a unique and substantial cast of characters, The Knockturnal‘s Kinsey Schofield wanted to know more about the Touched!
Viola Prettejohn plays Myrtle, one of the most extraordinary characters in The Nevers! “Myrtle can speak every language in the world but she can’t control which one comes out at any given time,” explains the sweet and petite Prettejohn. “So, she knows exactly what she means, she’s confident in what she means, but absolutely no one else has any idea what she’s talking about. So that’s a pretty unique challenge for her!” How does one prepare for such a role?
“I did do a lot of languages at school,” she explains. “I learned Chinese, Ancient Greek, and a bit of Italian and some French. So, I had a little bit of grounding in those. I was given all of my lines in English and then me and my dialect coach would translate them all and we had some help from students at my school who would send in recordings so I could get the pronunciation correct. We just sort of played around with different combinations of translations just to find out what rhythmically felt right for me and what language I was drawn to. I love Russian and I love doing a bit of Italian and there were some really odd languages that I’d never heard of before that we got to use. So that was really interesting for me.”
Anna Devlin plays Primrose, “Well, Primrose is 10 foot tall,” laughs Devlin of her superpower. “She’s a 16-year-old girl and she’s quite gentle and introverted.” In the above interview, we discover how Devlin navigated shooting scenes as a giant and the not-so-subtle co-star that appeared on-set to support the big concept.
Also hear from Ben Chaplin, Vinnie Heaven, Amy Manson, Zackary Momoh, Rochelle Neil, Denis O’Hare, and Kiran Sonia Sawar about their experience on The Nevers. New episodes of The Nevers air Sunday nights on HBO. Season one part two will follow at a later date.
Kinsey Schofield is a contributor to The Knockturnal and you can follow her on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.