“Sally, I think, is rewriting history a little bit, and that’s something lovely about the show.”
Sally Wainwright’s new show, the first to arrive following the end of the highly acclaimed Happy Valley, takes the writer in an entirely different direction.
Renegade Nell is a new fantasy series for Disney Plus, which stars Louisa Harland in the title role as a young woman who finds herself framed for murder – and unexpectedly becomes the most notorious highwaywoman in 18th-century England.
The series also stars the likes of Joely Richardson, Nick Mohammed and Adrian Lester, as well as Ényì Okoronkwo, who plays a former slave who becomes a whistleblower, and joins Nell and her family in their quest for justice.
Harland spoke about how Wainwright tackled difficult historical topics such as slavery in the series, explaining: “With Ényì’s [Okoronkwo] character, Rasselas, [spoiler] at the end we discover his true name. He didn’t want to shy away from the fact that Rasselas was formerly a slave.”
Harland continued: “I love the relationship between Rasselas and Sofia (Alice Kremelberg) and Thomas (Jake Dunn), just that dynamic (of the landed gentry vs the stable boy) and how they saw each other is just fascinating.
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“The nice thing about this world is I feel like it’s a new world we’ve created, and apart from a throughline of historical accuracy, we can kind of do whatever we want.
“Sally, I think, is rewriting history a little bit, and that’s something lovely about the show.”
Lester also recently praised Wainwright’s writing for the series, while he was appearing on The Graham Norton Show.
He said: “It is really good fun. It’s very different for Sally Wainwright. She’s put political intrigue, sprites, magic, lots of fighting, highway robbery and Regency England in a big pot, gave it a stir and out came an amazing idea.
“It is really good writing, and I ha[d] a really good time being bad.”
Renegade Nell is coming to Disney Plus on Friday 29th March.
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