‘Everyone’s shocked at how sexy it is!’: how a gory witch drama became TV’s most fun feminist call-to-arms
It starts with a familiar setup. Boy meets girl, boy takes girl back to his flat, boy won’t take no for an answer. Fortunately for the girl, he’s drastically underestimated her and she tosses him on to his back then uses her powers to feast upon his life force.
This exhilarating moment of feminine retribution is not just a gripping introduction to the BBC’s new supernatural series, Domino Day, but the first moment that crystallised in the mind of show creator Lauren Sequeira. “I had that scene right from the start,” she says. “I want you to feel she’s in danger, think she’s the victim, then flip it and empower her.” The man, as well as being a douchebag who brags about his pay packet and orders what he’d like her to drink, is a sadly familiar figure to many women. But to make him more odious still, it turns out he was secretly filming the entire thing, hoping to capture the sexual assault. That, too, is based in reality. “In sixth form, there was a guy that used to film girls,” says Sequiera, “and I bet it happens more now – so it went into the show.”
It’s the sort of confrontation you might get in Oscar-winning movie Promising Young Woman – in which Carey Mulligan pretends to be blackout drunk to lure out rapists. Except that Domino goes a little harder.
“I do love that movie,” says star Siena Kelly, who plays the eponymous character. “But I assumed it was going to be more violent than it was.” Domino’s formidable magical powers are rooted in witchcraft, although she also has a vampiric element and must feed off people in order to stay alive. She has chosen to select only abhorrent men as victims, and endures hideous date after hideous date to stay alive. Kelly says her heart breaks for her character as she “feels so ashamed of what she has to do to survive. Her way of making it OK is by targeting dangerous arseholes.” The combination of sharp satire and supernatural flourishes makes the show one of the most fun feminist calls-to-arms on British TV.
Kelly, who is best known for her Bafta-nominated role as a young porn star in Adult Material, makes Domino vulnerable, conflicted and a total badass. The part was very physical, with Kelly having to take men down and contort her body into a near pretzel shape in the sex scenes where her powers pour out of her. Luckily, Kelly has “been in dance classes since I was three years old. All through my childhood and teenage years, every weekend was at some sort of competition.”
While so many of the men Domino targets are irredeemable characters,
Sequeira emphasises that the actors themselves are “really lovely!” Kelly (who is also a qualified yoga instructor) showed them how to do stretches before and after the scenes that saw them writhing in pain. “We’d have to do all these feeds again and again. It’s a physical thing to do, and some people’s backs were really twinging!”
But just as Kelly is a triple threat (assuming yoga counts as a third threat), Domino is not a straightforward witch. Throughout the show, we see her discover the reason she needs to feast on others – she is a “lamia”, a witch that traditionally fed on children, but with some versions that also fed on men.
She’s helped to that realisation by a group of strong supportive women – another key part of the show’s appeal. Domino is taken under the wing of a coven of chic botanists, which makes more sense than it might initially seem. After all, it’s a day job that’s “witchy, rooted in nature and a form of selling potions,” says Sequeira. “But what was most important to me was having strong, nurturing Black women.”
Domino Day also features plenty of wry satire. As the lead character isn’t about to start chowing down on toddlers, digital romance platforms become her hunting ground. Sequeira saw it as an opportunity to skewer “this app culture which rarely fosters true connections”. She laughs when admitting she’s recently gone back on them. Still, at least she can now spot red flags straight away: “Guys in a topless shot – or ones with him with lots of friends out on the lash.”
But this is not a world where all men are monsters. Leon (Percelle Ascott) charms Domino over a game of bowling, and Sequeira “really wanted to show a Black man as a nice guy who’s got his shit together”. Ascott proved so magnetic that Leon went from being in a single episode to a key figure in Domino’s journey. Eventually, after battling powerful enemies and her own self-loathing, the show makes room for the joy of intimacy and romance. Sequeira smiles. “I think everyone’s shocked at how sexy it is!”
• Domino Day is on BBC Three and iPlayer soon.