Fry’s pointy-eared obsession
Australian actress Lucy Fry tells James Croot why her role in Netflix’s Bright really is a dream come true.
She’s played a mermaid, a vampire and the wife of Lee Harvey Oswald. But now 25-year-old Australian actress Lucy Fry is taking on her highestprofile role yet as Tikka the elf in Netflix’s big-budget gritty fantasy feature Bright.
It’s the perfect job for a young woman who has dreamed of portraying a pointy-eared creature ever since Sir Peter Jackson first put Tolkien’s version on the big screen in 2001.
We’ve heard that you’re a bit of a nerd. How did that happen?
It’s true and when I’m in New Zealand, I’m always running around pretending that I’m Aragorn or Arwen around the hills.
And you’ve managed to acquire a few props over the years?
I started off with all the books and then like The Guide to Tolkien, The Silmarillion and all the other associated stories, and now I’ve got things like Arwen’s sword and Arwen’s necklace. It’s been a bit of a process, but recently a lot of them have been presents because people know how obsessed I am.
And you haven’t been afraid to share that obsession have you?
Ah, it’s so embarrassing. Actually, it’s not really, I own it. When I met my agent in Los Angeles for the first time they said, ‘Okay, what are your life goals, dream roles? What would you want to play?’ And I said, ‘I want to play an elf’. And they looked at me like I was totally insane. But then, when the script came in last year for Bright and I read it, I was like, ‘this is it, this is my elf. She’s ethereal and magical in the way that elves are, but really dangerous in a real-world, present-day Los Angeles’. This is the best way I could tell the story of the elf character that I’ve always dreamed of playing.
Am I right in thinking that you even spoke some elvish during the audition?
Yeah, I was lucky that I’m such a Lord of the Rings nerd that I knew some elvish sounding words that I could throw some out there and hope that something stuck.
What about the elvish in Who came up with that?
It is totally new. David Peterson who created the Game of Thrones‘
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How did playing Tikka compare to characters you’ve played in the past?
It was definitely a lot more intense. She is a very powerful and quite a transformative character and, more than any of the other fantasy worlds I’ve been a part of, this was definitely about building a character. With Tikka, I felt like I just had to get out of my own way and let her happen because, with the ears and eye contacts and the teeth, once I had gone through twoand-a-half hours of makeup and been transformed into this character, there was no way of being Lucy. Every time I was in the costume and make-up, I felt this kind of desperation of Tikka and David Ayer [the director] would be like, ‘‘I want you to be like you’re on a magic high – the walls are talking to you’’. Cambridge, acts this year include Michael Ball, James Blunt, the casts of 42nd St and Annie, Paloma Faith, Alfie Boe, Kelsey Grammer, The Killers, Jason Manford, and Seal.
"I'm such a Lord of the Rings nerd that I knew some elvish sounding words that I could throw some out there and hope that something stuck." Lucy Fry
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– James Croot