Actress Kiran Sonia Sawar

Change can come from anywhere and so why not from a bunch of women in Victorian times with superpowers?

The story about empowered women fighting back against fear and oppression couldn’t be more timely.

It may involve a gang of female superheroes taking on supernatural forces in Victorian times but for Kiran Sonia Sawar the themes in TV blockbuster The Nevers perfectly reflect the struggles going on in the world today.

The 29-year-old Glaswegian, who joins a mainly female ensemble cast for the glossy Sky Atlantic show, said she has seen gender and race barriers coming down in her industry over the past few years but the good fight was still going on.

She said: “Change can come from anywhere – and so why not from a bunch of women in Victorian times with superpowers?

“In reflection of the modern world, it’s changing, I like to think its changing and getting better. But there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“A lot of people are more considerate about people’s ethnicities when casting now with the pressure that society as a whole has put on them. There’s still a long way to go and still a huge disparity, especially for me as a working-class Glaswegian. In terms of class, that’s the biggest disparity over ethnicity and gender.

“I don’t think anybody should be scared about it. It’s the way the world is moving and it’s all about adapting and change, and change is always going to be for the better.”

Since the rise of the Me Too

Kiran Sonia Sawar

Zachary Momoh, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ann Skelly, Laura Donnelly, Tom Riley and Rochelle Neil in The Nevers movement in 2017 there has been a wave of revelations from female actors about the misogynistic and toxic behaviour they have endured on set.

And it is perhaps ironic that The Nevers creator Joss Whedon is now at the centre of bullying claims from women whom he worked with on previous projects.

Whedon, who was the brains behind cult horror series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, was set to serve as writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner on The Nevers before he quit last November, citing exhaustion.

But months later former cast members, including Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia in

Buffy before moving to its spin-off series Angel, accused Whedon of abuse.

When asked about the claims, Sawar, who first began work on the show two years ago when it was under the charge of Whedon, said her own experiences had only been positive.

She said: “All I can do is speak on my experiences, which were absolutely wonderful. But I do understand by saying that I don’t mean to negate anybody else’s experiences from the past. I can only take it on face value from what I experienced, but I also understand that other things could have happened. I don’t know.”

Described as a cross between

The X-men and Oliver Twist, the epic drama, which launches tomorrow night, follows the girls at a special orphanage led by clairvoyant Amalia True (played by Laura Donnelly) as they face supernatural enemies and look to change the world with their special talents.

Sawar plays one of a group of the “touched” girls and women given powers following a mysterious phenomenon that grips London at the end of the 19th Century.

After auditioning for the part of a chambermaid, Sawar got to make the part of gifted orphan Harriet her own – Scottish accent and all.

She said: “Harriet is very strong-minded, very book-smart