Dark drama delivers

Young actor tackles fascinating role among all-star cast, delving into the depths of the female pysche, writes

JESSICA Barden straddled two different centuries while she was in Australia working on Lambs of God.

The British actor stars opposite Miss Fisher favourite Essie Davis and The Handmaid’s Tale’s Ann Dowd in the four-part Gothic mini-series about three nuns living on a remote island forgotten by the Catholic Church and the wider world.

“Sister Carla is really pure and kind-hearted – a very sweet nun – and then Iwould be going tobondi and having drinks with my friends,” Barden tells The Guide.

“We had lots of jokes like ‘Oh Sister Carla having a whisky at Bondi again’.”

Barden, Davis and Dowd went through a “nun crash course” to portray the Sisters of St Agnes, who grow their own food, make their own clothes and live completely off the grid.

But their idyllic, quiet lives are disturbed when they are visited by a young priest (Father Ignatius, played by Samreid), whowants to turn their crumbling home into a resort for the wealthy.

“We got to learn how to knit, we tried spinning and making the wool frombeginning to end, which was great for the atmosphere that Jeff (Walker, the director) and Sarah (Lambert, the writer) created for us,” she says. “It was perfect for me, Essie, Ann and Sam to spend all that time with each other.”

The 26-year-old was intrigued by the idea of portraying a young woman who had never met a man and was completely naive to the ways of the modern world.

“You have this young woman who has never been influenced by amale’s expectation or gaze in any way. It felt important forme in this world of social media, where it’s so