New Worlds Alice Englert Q&A
Red Carpet News were treated to a very special screening of the first episode of New Worlds and enjoyed a Q&A afterwards with the exciting young cast that includes Jamie Dornan, Alice Englert, Joe Dempsie and Freya Mavor. The cast talked about making the action packed series and how its themes might just inspire young audiences to engage with both history and modern day politics. Alice Englert plays a passionate young American called Hope here’s what she had to say during the Q&A.
Q. New Worlds has a lot of different themes and subtexts, what does your character specifically represent and bring to the series?
For me Hope and Ned are the original young American. For me Hope was someone who at the beginning of the series really does see things in that simple American Dream way. It’s about good and bad, it’s a belief that I’m good and I’m going to keep doing that. The Colonials in her mind are good and the Indians are bad. She’s driven very much by revenge and the puritanism in her religion; as the series progresses she begins to become repressed into the puritan community. She gradually realizes that her instinct and her feelings are now being judged as well. She can’t condone or understand anymore and the world becomes a lot more complicated. I personally enjoyed exploring that character because it’s also an exploration of why the American dream has its faults. It was built on something so fundamentally wrong and to admit that is quite confronting. I really enjoyed working with Joe in that part of the story.
Q. It’s an action packed series what was that like?
I didn’t have much training but I did have a lot of accidents. I’m quite good… I loved it it was great.
Q. How did you research this period of history?
Google babe! No seriously I talked to Martine a lot and I watched the Devil’s Whore. I was reading Wolf Hall and Bring out The Bodies, they were good reference to gauge the lives that people lead. People did have their lives on the line and id die for the things that they cared about. That was what I found to be very important just for gauging the emotion of what people were going through.
Q. Do you think people will see parallels between the evens in the show and what is happening in the world today?
I hope people will feel that but I don’t know. I think the reason I love TV and Film is because it’s often the way that I felt myself educated emotionally about the world. It’s the place where you try and tell the truth ironically. It’s interesting playing these characters because they were in a situation where the consequences of the monarchy were very present in their lives. Now we live in a world where you can so easily not be confronted by what’s happening it’s easy to not make changes. I think that’s why there was such heroism and courage in those days. Everybody died. You all died really soon and generally painfully. You had to do some living, you had to do it. Now I can google what happened and be like oh how terrible.
I think another thing that this show talks about is courage and the courage to do the right thing. It doesn’t end with happy joy and the American dream. The greed for power is so strong that it takes a long time for that courage and hope to get through. A lot of people do suffer, you see it and this show looks at it in quite a true light.
It’s something I’m only aware of on a basic level but there’s still a strong class system in the UK. It’s something I’ve become aware of since living here, even if as an Australian I’m not as familiar with the politics. There still seems to be a policy that money looks after money in situations. I only think it went as far as a basic level with comparisons.
Q. Do you think the show will make a younger audience want to engage in politics more?
For me, I find politics difficult when it stops becoming personal. A lot of political ideas can make sense if you don’t think about it personally. I mean for me in Australia there’s the whole immigration issue and asylum issues. There’s a lot of political ideas about why you shouldn’t help but if you see someone in the water frickin’ drowning you go get them! It a weird thing. That’s why I like political drama because it has to combat that issue. People often sit on one side or the other; those that pay attention to politics and those who sit on the couch and look at the nice costumes. But in a drama like this, there’s no right answer but you have to acknowledge the complexity of being a human being and realize that there’s also a machine at hand that you’re a little cog in. I don’t have an answer and I think it’s something obviously we’re always working at. That’s what I enjoy and think is important in drama.
Q. Do you think the show is going to have a strong appeal for an American audience as well?
I think so, it might, although we probably don’t have enough sex for them!
Q. Has the project made you personally more politically aware or motivated?
I don’t know if the project itself has made me more politically engaged but actually I was quite interested in the serious stuff already. Although I am a fiction head so I am worse than I should be.
Q. Did you like you costumes and did you keep any of it?
Freya and I stole quite a lot of tracksuit bottoms actually. I don’t know why but costume departments always have the best warm relaxing clothes.
Be sure to check out our other Q&A posts to see what the rest of the cast had to say as well.
New Worlds Joe Dempsie Q&A
Skins and Game of Thrones star Joe Dempsie joined his co-stars for a Q&A about new historical drama mini-series New Worlds. Joe plays Ned Hawkins a young man living in the aftermath of the English Civil War, caught up in brutal struggles in both England and the untamed new territory of Massachusetts.
Q. New Worlds has a lot of different themes and subtexts, what does your character specifically represent and bring to the series?
To be honest one of the things that really drew me to the script initially was the fact that Ned as a character throughout the course of the series goes on the longest journey, for lack of a less drama school term. He becomes the moral compass of the piece. You saw in episode one there the seeds of doubt starting to be planted in his mind. He’s very much being groomed to take over his father’s company as the biggest landowner in Massachusetts’s. As most men do at that age he thinks his father’s infallible and absolutely doing the work of god. That starts to chance as the series progresses he begins to question whether the enclosure of Indian land is the right thing to do and he gets involved in the revolutionary cause in England as well. He’s active, he gets about. He’s constantly being taught new things and people are constantly being taught the reality of things. In episode one it’s Goff in America and then in episode two it’s Abe in England. It’s a real education for Ned
Q. It’s an action packed series what was that like?
I managed to hit myself on the head with my own gun, which takes some doing. I couldn’t do it again if I tried. Doing the action stuff is always a real test of your metal in a way. It’s always fun for about half hours then you’re just looking forward to sitting in a well lit room again saying words to another actor. So much of the moral ambiguity of the series is in the conversations, so for me in a way I found the dialogue a lot more interesting.
The pistols are quite long and heavy. So if you’re trying to hold someone up your hands end up shaking after a while. When I went for my training I was told that there might be like a second delay when you pull a trigger before the gun actually fires because of the charges and how they work. So I asked if in theory that means if someone shot at you back then you actually had time to move out the way. I was told yes, but it would have been ungentlemanly to move out of the way.
Q. How did you feel about your hairstyle?
I was quite happy when I was told I was going to be wearing a wig because that meant I get to keep my real hair how I like it. I’d spent the year constantly getting my head shaved for parts. I looked like a bit of a nutter. Then on the first day of actual filming it was really manic and they were trying to glue my own hair out of the way of this wig. The makeup designer just turned to me and asked “How attached are you to your hair?” I knew what she was acting so I said just do it. So within about five minutes I was bald again. I either had too much hair or not enough.
Q. Do you think people will see parallels between the evens in the show and what is happening in the world today?
Things never actually seem to change for a long enough period of time. The interesting thing when we were filming this was that it was about the same time of the uprising in Egypt and that was an interesting parallel to draw. It highlighted the difference between the Britain that we see now and the Britain you see in New Worlds. You saw what was going on in Egypt and what we filmed in New World and you wondered whether that sort of thing would be possible in Britain now. Whenever any historical drama series tries to address some sort of social issue it’s amazing how there’s always some parallel to draw with what’s going on today. In modern screenplay’s it’s very rare that you play men of conviction that have beliefs and then go and do something about it! The closest thing we have these days to someone like Abe Goff is Russell Brand. All you can do is go n news night really you can’t shoot people.
Q. The show is great fun to watch was it as much fun to make given some of the serious subject matter?
I’ve never been on a shoot that’s experienced that experienced quite so many obstacles and difficulties. But the crew and the people put together for it just clicked. It made it seem like it wasn’t hard work at all even though I’m sure the producers would tell you it was.
Q. Do you think the show will make a younger audience want to engage in politics more?
You’d always like to think so. It looks beautiful and It’s a great story, the characters are very interesting characters anyway. For me though the political message is always going to be the most important in the show. So yeah you really hope that young people are going to engage with it.
Q. Do you think the show is going to have a strong appeal for an American audience as well?
I think it’s something Americas might well find interesting. It might also be a distant enough part of their history that they might not find it as hard to engage with as something like 12 Years A Slave which has been quite hard for some parts of American society to confront. But I suppose I’m not that aware of how that period of History has been taught, you’d assume that everyone knows the basic details at least.
Q. Has the project made you personally more politically aware or motivated?
I’ve always been quite interested in politics, but for me New Worlds was more about history. I actually had to study Oliver Cromwell for my history A Level, so for me it was like going back to school. That’s what grabbed my attention most, although is quite natural really for actors to like History because it’s essentially just storytelling.
Q. Did you have fun with your costume?
We had a really warm summer at the time we were filming and I thought it was going to be great. But then I had four weeks standing in a field in the West Country wearing shirt which is essentially a big old bed sheet wrapped around, then a waistcoat a jacket, a cloak and a big ginger wig! I started getting really hot!
Be sure to check out our other posts for the rest of the Q&A and what the rest of the talented young cast had to say.