ELLA Purnell

The 27-year-old actor on finding light in the darkness

After surviving a nuclear war and navigating life in a post-apocalyptic

Los Angeles, Ella Purnell knows a thing or two about going through hell. We’re speaking fictionally, of course. In Prime Video’s buzzy new series Fallout, Purnell plays Lucy, a young woman trying to protect herself from end-of-the-world mutants and bandits.

This isn’t Purnell’s first action-fuelled adventure, having also starred in the hit TV series Yellowjackets and the

2021 film Army of the Dead, among others. She describes the genre as her outlet against societal expectations.

“It’s nice to see when women get messy [they] don’t have to be just perfectly packaged,” she says. “There’s this sort of conditioned thing that we have to be likable and pretty and together, and it weighs on us every minute of every day. It takes a lot of work to undo that.” Purnell counts Hollywood icons Angelina Jolie, Keira Knightley, and Margot Robbie among her role models, and is fortunate to have previously worked alongside all three, in the films Maleficent, Never Let Me Go and The Legend of Tarzan, respectively.

While the setting of a futuristic hellscape in Fallout sounds bleak, Purnell skillfully lends a lightness to the series. “I loved the show’s humour and ability to find the levity in those difficult moments,” she says. “Somehow they managed to make the apocalypse funny.” After getting to bend her funny bone, is comedy something she’d like to pursue? “I’d love to do a comedy and also a musical,” she says. “I don’t know if I can sing. But I do say there are no rules about singing.”

– Harriet Sim