[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘SWEETPEA’ STAR ELLA PURNELL IS LEANING INTO THE COMING-OF-RAGE
TREND: ‘FEMALE EMPOWERMENT DOES SEEM THREATENING’ TO SOME PEOPLE
 
[[link removed]]


 

Samantha Bergeson
October 8, 2024
IndieWire
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ "There is something about female rage that feels incredibly raw and
untapped," Purnell, who makes her debut as an executive producer on
"Sweetpea," told IndieWire. _

Ella Purnell attends the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards at Peacock
Theater on September 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California, Getty Images


 

Ella Purnell [[link removed]] is done
hiding her own rage.

“In a climate where we’re just getting increasingly silenced,
[women] have a lot to say, and the more you try to silence someone the
louder, in my experience, you want to scream,” the
“Yellowjackets” and “Fallout” actress
[[link removed]] told
IndieWire.

So it makes sense that Purnell’s latest series — and her debut as
an executive producer — is with “Sweetpea,” a show that is like
the “female ‘Dexter’ meets ‘Fleabag,'” according to the
star.

The Starz official series description bills the dark comedy as a
“deviously twisted coming-of-rage story,” something that also
resonants with Purnell. And while the “rage” emphasis has been
made trendy from creatives such as Taylor Swift to Diablo Cody,
“Sweetpea [[link removed]]” puts a
murderous twist on finding your voice.

Purnell plays Rhiannon Lewis, a woman whose life passes her by…that
is, until she finds power in wielding an ax. The show is based on C.J.
Skuse’s book of the same name, and co-stars Nicôle Lecky, Jon
Pointing, Calam Lynch, Leah Harvey, Jeremy Swift, and Dustin
Demri-Burns.

“I really latched on to ‘Sweetpea.’ It just felt like something
I hadn’t done before. It was something challenging,” Purnell said
of her first meeting with Fanboy producer Patrick Walters. “I have a
deep and long-lasting love for psychology, and I had never really
given much thought to female serial killers and the way that they’re
different to male serial killers. We [as women] get held to a
different standard; we navigate and interact with the world in a
different way. There’s just subconscious beliefs that everybody
holds that maybe make you judge women a lot more harshly than you
judge men.”

Purnell was drawn to how “Sweetpea” set out to “confuse” the
audience as viewers would be “so conflicted by relating to the
emotions, but not the actions” of lead character Rhiannon. The goal
was to make Rhiannon feel “as authentic of a person as possible”
while still maintaining the heightened coming-of-age serial killer
origin story.

“There’s a fine line between a sweet coming-of-age story that
involves growing up and finding your voice, and a story of empowerment
that feels threatening to others,” Purnell said, before joking,
“Again, it’s not necessarily relatable with the murders.”

She continued, “However, I think female empowerment does seem
threatening to some people and an untapped female rage is something
that because we never see it because it’s so rarely represented
onscreen. It’s like the boogeyman: it’s terrifying because we
don’t know what it looks like. There is something about female rage
that feels incredibly raw and untapped. It’s something we don’t
see very often. It’s something that we don’t allow ourselves to
feel very often, certainly don’t allow ourselves to express as often
as we might feel it.”

['Sweetpea']

‘Sweetpea’Starz

Purnell added, “It’s also just good storytelling. Everybody loves
a serial killer drama.”

In a meta twist, “Sweetpea” also serves as Purnell’s own
coming-of-age milestone with her first time as an executive producer.
The series further brought Purnell back to Starz, the network where
she made her TV [[link removed]] debut
with “Sweetbitter” back in 2018
[[link removed]].

“That was a really big moment for me,” Purnell said. “I was 21
and had just moved to New York. I was a kid. I didn’t know anything.
I was terrified. And I really felt like I had my own coming-of-age,
growing up and finding myself story when I did that show. So it is
really nice to come back at this point in my life and have another
‘first’ as an EP as well.”

Purnell reflected on how the “Sweetpea” script was presented to
her at the “right place and right time.”

“I’ve been looking for a project to produce for a really long time
and really wanted to hold out until it was the right thing, something
that I felt like I could really contribute properly the way that I
wanted to,” Purnell said. “I didn’t want a vanity producer
credit. I got very lucky and here we are.”

And “Sweetpea” also fit into Purnell’s love of “survival
dramas” — except this time, it’s Purnell’s character trying to
survive her own psyche.

“There’s a reason why I love survival dramas or jobs where I get
to just break a character down,” Purnell, who made her film debut
at age 14
[[link removed]] in
“Never Let Me Go,” said. “I like seeing what happens when you
push a human to their brink. You really don’t know how you’re
going to respond to a certain situation until you get there. What I
like about what I really like about the ‘coming-of-rage’ tagline
is that there’s a fine line between love and hate.”

_“Sweetpea” premieres Thursday, October 10 at midnight on the
Starz app. The series will debut on the Starz channel at 8 p.m. ET/PT
in the U.S. on Friday, October 11. The following week, “Sweetpea”
will move to Fridays for the remainder of the season._

Read More:

* Ella Purnell [[link removed]]

* Interviews [[link removed]]

* Sweetpea [[link removed]]

* TV [[link removed]]

Daily Headlines

Daily Headlines covering Film, TV and more.

Subscribe [[link removed]]

* sweetpea
[[link removed]]
* Starz
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]