Hilde is trying to make the world a better place for people she loves
Home Before Dark follows a schoolgirl investigative reporter. Georgia Humphreys meets stars Jim Sturgess and Brooklynn Prince and writer Dana Fox
Few TV shows have an 11-year-old leading the cast – but that is the case with Home Before Dark.
In the Apple TV+ Original, American child star Brooklynn Prince – who’s been acting since she was two, and starred in 2017 film The Florida Project – plays Hilde, a schoolgirl who moves to her father’s small hometown where she unearths an unsolved cold case.
Inspired by the real-life reporter Hilde Lysiak – who scooped seasoned professional journalists on a local murder case aged nine – the show is returning for a second series, set a year after the events of season one.
It sees Hilde refusing to let go of the mystery of Richie Fife’s disappearance from the first series – but, while there are intense scenes, Brooklynn had fun in between takes, revealing that she and Jim Sturgess, who plays Hilde’s dad Matthew, “sing and dance our hearts out”.
“Brooklynn, you’re giving all our secrets away; we’re supposed to be pretending we’re really intense, thorough actors!” laughs the English star, when I speak to the duo over Zoom.
The pair certainly seem to have a lovely bond. Asked if she has had any good advice from 43-year-old Londoner Jim – star of films such as One Day, 21 and Cloud Atlas – Brooklynn says: “He’s so good at being there for you, during an emotional scene, a happy scene – being in the moment with you. Even when the camera’s not on him and you can barely even see him, he’s all in it for you. The advice he’s given me is not with words, it’s with actions, which is the best type of advice.”
Home Before Dark’s co-creator Dana Fox, who worked as a producer on TV’s New Girl, and has written rom-coms like How To Be Single and What Happens In Vegas, says it is important that the show’s set is “emotionally safe”, considering how young its leading lady is.
“I take it on as a very deep and important responsibility, to make sure that all of the kids that are on the show have a good experience, because I’m a mother of three young children,” the producer explains.
“I never want her to cry unless she feels it as a person,” she continues, discussing Brooklynn’s acting. “She has very deep and profound feelings about who Hilde is as a character. She met the real Hilde and feels really beholden to her.
“She would always come with all of her lines memorised, totally researched,” Dana continues, “figuring out how she wants to perform the moment on the day. And then the emotions that you see in the show – those are Brooklyn’s real emotions. She’s an incredibly empathetic person, and she feels very deeply.”
In the new series, we see a mysterious explosion at a local farm, that results in Hilde following a trail of strange animal deaths and toxic chemicals that lead to the most powerful figures in Erie Harbour.
But it becomes clear that the suspects in her investigation may have put her family – and the entire community – in grave danger, and so Hilde must fight the biggest corporation in town to save the people she loves most.
Dana says that they were determined to maintain the emotional intensity of the first series. I was really struggling,” she reveals. “‘How do we figure out how to tell a story that is as emotional as that, and primal as that feeling actually is?’ And where we landed, I think was really great.
“It just involves the fact that Hilde, her search for truth is always about trying to make the world a better place for the people around her and the people she loves.”
He’s so good at being there for you, during an emotional scene... being in the moment with you... Brooklynn Prince on Jim Sturgess
Home Before Dark Season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday June 11