Sweetpea, which premieres today, stars Ella Purnell as Rhiannon Lewis, who often goes unnoticed by most people, blending into the background. She’s frequently passed over for promotions at work, faces unrequited love, and deals with her father’s grave illness. However, everything changes when her life takes a dramatic turn and she reaches her breaking point and snaps. The once invisible Rhiannon becomes a formidable woman as she gains strength from her transgressions and now seems capable of anything, but can she keep her killer secret hidden?

Star Purnell recently spoke with SciFi Vision about taking on the role and getting into the mind of a serial female killer, about Rhiannon’s empowerment, working with blood effects, and much more.

Watch the full interview or read the transcript below and be sure to check out the first episode of Sweetpea, premiering tonight on Starz.




SCIFI VISION:   To start off, why did you want to be a part of the project? What did it mean to you?

ELLA PURNELL:   For me, I was really drawn by the initial pitch to the idea of playing a female serial killer [for] multiple different reasons. I've always been very interested in and drawn to psychology. I really wanted to get to know this character and what makes a person do those things and be that way, as well as the sort of slightly more technical challenge of playing a female serial killer in a way that makes the audience feel conflicted. We really wanted to show Rhiannon in a way that would make the audience empathize with her emotions, relate to her in that way, but not her actions, and kind of feel that push and pull as you root for her, but also you can't root for her, because she's doing these terrible, unthinkable things. That felt difficult, and it scared me, and so therefore, I thought, “I must do it.”

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, I was going to say, I kind of felt like some of it was even empowering, I guess, just because, I mean, she's finally standing up for herself, maybe not in the most healthy way possible. [laughs] Did you feel like that?

ELLA PURNELL:   Totally, if you take away the murders, it's quite a sweet coming of age story about a woman who's sort of healing in a way. She's gone through this horrible childhood trauma, and she's sort of stuck in the past. She can't move on. She can't process what happened to her, and also, as a child, doesn't have the vocabulary or the emotional understanding to understand why it happened to her, as often happens, and she's really stuck there. And as she, yes, murders, okay, you're right, not the best thing, as she does that, she starts to feel more confident. She finds this power that becomes absolutely intoxicatingly addictive, and the sad thing is, had she just maybe gone to therapy and not killed a bunch of people and found that confidence on her own, it maybe would have been a better outcome for Rhiannon. As she gets more confident, people do start to see her; they do start to notice her and stop overlooking her. But you know, just a shame about all the murders, really.

SCIFI VISION:   [laughs] Yeah. Because there is a lot of murders, obviously, there's a lot of fight and action scenes and blood and all that kind of thing. Do you enjoy that? I mean, I'm sure it's sticky and not totally comfortable.

ELLA PURNELL:   It is sticky. I'm glad you said it's sticky, because it's so sticky, and it stains your hands. These are the things no one tells you. Yeah, I do. I love it. I really do. There must be something wrong with me, because I just I love to do stunts and [the] screaming and crying and get in the dirt and be covered in mud. It's fun for me, because in real life, I'm quite together and organized. And, you know, especially as women, we have to be so emotionally careful. We have to be very careful about the way we express emotion, so as not to get labeled hysterical or crazy, or any of these other things. So, yeah, anytime I get to get permission to just, like, throw it all out and be a little wild, that's fun. That's really fun.

SCIFI VISION:   Did you do any special prep, like journalism research or anything like that for this?

ELLA PURNELL:   Not so much journalism research, actually, because I didn't really feel like [it was] the main sort of sort of string. I don't know if that makes sense. But I did do a lot of research into trauma, grief, loss, trichotillomania, the hair pulling, obviously, serial killers, female serial killers specifically. The research I did on male serial killers, I very quickly realized did not - it's different. I didn't realize there was such a huge distinction, how few female serial killers there are and have been in history, and it's quite fascinating. I honestly, I sat on the plane one time, and I was flying, and my list of Amazon things was like, women on death row, female serial killers. The woman next to me had a baby. She sort of slowly moved her baby away from me. I must have just looked like I was planning to do something really terrible. I really went there. I found it fascinating.

SCIFI VISION:   [laughs] Oh, I get that. Yeah, they definitely underestimate her in a lot of different ways. But in that way, for a while, maybe that's helpful, I guess.

ELLA PURNELL:   Well, it's interesting, because there's a theory that there's actually not as few female serial killers; it’s that they get away with it more, because people don't suspect women. Also, women usually use poison over any other method. I think that also, if you think about the psychology behind that, it's less violent, it's less messy, it's neater, it's tidier. There's a lot that you can pull from that. Obviously, Rhiannon went for something messy and a bit dramatic as is Sweetpea’s way.