Coming-of-age thriller Hanna is back with emotion and lots of action

WHEN David Farr wrote action thriller Hanna, he had his two daughters in mind.

“It was with this feeling that my daughters were not being given a broad enough canvas of female characters they could really enjoy,” reflects the Guildford-born playwright, screenwriter and stage director.

Released in 2011, and starring Saoirse Ronan as the title character, the film is the story of a fierce 16-year-old who, while being raised in the wilderness of northern Finland by her father, an ex-CIA operative is trained as an assassin.

At the end of season one of the TV spin-off, we saw Hanna, played by Esme Creed-Miles, discover that she is not the only young woman with unparalleled skill and elite training. In fact, the Utrax programme has produced a whole contingent of highly trained teenagers, whose next phase of development sees them relocate to an elusive facility called The Meadows.

In series two, we see Hanna risk her freedom in order to rescue her friend Clara (Monet Price), with the help of a former nemesis, CIA agent Marissa.

As she does so, she finds out

more about the Utrax’s assassin programme, leading her to question who she really is. On what to expect from series two, Creed-Miles hints we see Hanna dealing with grief, and also “building incredibly complex bonds and relationships.

“I think the show is fantastic entertainment; it combines drama and thriller brilliantly and to have the opportunity to explore both of those themes, in one show, I think is very unique and I feel very lucky to be doing that.”

Joining the cast this series is Hollywood star Dermot Mulroney. The 56-year-old takes on the role of John Carmichael, who we learn took over Utrax from Marissa after Hanna’s escape. Virginia-born Mulroney explains he had help from Farr in shaping the character.

“My first impulses were to darken it up and be ‘that bad guy at the computer’, but he was like ‘look, this is a guy who does this for a living, he really cares about the programme’,” he recalls.

“It takes the entire season to really get why John Carmichael operates the way he does.” Hanna Season 2 is on Prime Video.

Esmé Creed-Miles returns as Hanna