The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with
Fallout
star Ella Purnell.
During her conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Purnell revisits her journey from Tim Burton’s
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
to the new hit Prime Video series.
She also revisits playing Jackie on
Yellowjackets
, and reveals some of her own theories.

If you’re a frequent Collider Ladies Night viewer/reader/listener, you’re likely well aware of my Yellowjackets obsession. I’ve been lucky enough to welcome many Yellowjackets cast members to the show, including Christina Ricci and Jasmin Savoy Brown, but there’s a certain someone who I was extremely disappointed to have missed out on while she was on the show — Ella Purnell. However, the time has finally come. Not only did I get the opportunity to talk a little Yellowjackets with Purnell, but we also got to celebrate yet another exceptional show of hers, Prime Video’s Fallout.

Purnell plays Lucy in the series adaptation of the hugely popular Bethesda game. She’s a vault dweller living safe and sound in Vault 33. They’ve got food, water, and a kind community with a neighborly vibe. Above ground, however, it’s the exact opposite. 219 years since nuclear bombs decimated the surface, everyone else is just trying to survive in an apocalyptic wasteland with little to no rules or morals. In an effort to find her father (Kyle MacLachlan), Lucy opts to do the unthinkable, leave the comfort of sheltered vault life behind to venture out into the ruthless outside world.

In celebration of Fallout’s big debut on Prime Video, Purnell joined me for a Ladies Night conversation to recap her journey in film and television thus far, and discuss how her career priorities have changed over the years.

One constant in Purnell’s career through all the ups and downs, and twists and turns? Her A+ agents.

Given it can be quite intimidating to speak up on a film or television set, especially when one’s first starting out, I often ask Ladies Night guests to recall the first time they did that and felt the power of their own voice. Purnell didn’t reference a past project, but instead, opted to give her team credit for giving her that moment. She explained:

“It was probably when I was a little younger, maybe around 15, 16. I have an incredible team. I’ve been with my US and my UK agents for years and years and years. But realizing, ‘You know, I don’t wanna do nudity,’ or, ‘I don’t want to do a love story,’ or, ‘I don’t want to do this, this, this,’ and actually, being a little bit embarrassed the first time you ask those things, because you feel like,
‘Am I less of an actor? Am I less professional?’ And having them really validate my feelings, like, ‘No, it’s okay to have preferences. It’s okay to not feel comfortable doing this, doing that.’
My first kiss was on screen in a movie. That took me a couple of years to reckon with, and then to actually be able to be like, ‘No, I think I need to take a break. I wanna do comedy. I wanna do action,’ and then have someone actually value that opinion and that preference is really, really empowering, and important for a child actor to have that validation.”

Purnell Let Go of the Need to “Be Liked”

Further leaning into career goals, I borrowed a key line from Fallout. In Episode 2, Lucy encounters Michael Emerson’s Wilzig who warns her of the dangers in the wasteland and suggests she return home. When she insists on staying to find her dad, he tells her she’ll have to adapt and then posits, “The question is, will you still want the same things when you have become a different animal altogether?”

Turning that idea toward her career, I asked Purnell to pinpoint something she valued early on that she’s come to realize isn’t all that important after all. Here’s what she went with:

“Being liked. That’s probably something that most people, most women, have to reckon with at some point in their lives, is just letting go of the conditioned need to be liked and be likable, right? Because you know people don’t like you, but you just have to always appear likable. I sound like an old person, but with social media and everything like that, it’s so hard not to read the comments, and it’s so hard to not care what the critics say about your work because, as entertainers, it’s easy to believe that’s your job, to make stuff that people like. It’s not your job to make stuff people like.
It’s your job to make stuff. Whether they like it or they don’t like it, it doesn’t matter to you. You’re done with your job.
It’s freeing, actually, to come to that conclusion. And maybe
Yellowjackets
, in a way, helped with that because it was my first time playing a character that I honestly thought wasn’t likable and people wouldn’t like. I had a real fear, is anyone gonna care when Jackie dies, because she’s such a piece of work sometimes? But she turned out to be a fan favorite, and it was really like, ‘I really get to do whatever I want.’ Now I want to play a villain. I want to play someone really evil. I want to go
there
.”

Related Ella Purnell Helped Incorporate ‘Fallout’ Players’ Game Choices Into Lucy’s Story Purnell played the games in preparation for her role as Lucy and brought some of the game’s quirks to her performance.

With the need to be liked off the list, something else has emerged as a top priority for Purnell — finding contentment. But it has to be a particular kind of contentment, one of balance. Here’s how she put it:

“This might be a cheesy answer, but I think redefining contentment. I was asked the other day, ‘Do you feel like you’ve made it,’ and it was a really thought-provoking question, because what is ‘it’? Made what? I think it’s a personal definition. Some people might believe that that’s winning an Oscar. Everybody has different goals. I think for me, my life has been so crazy, and there’s been a lack of stability. It’s [up and down] all the time, and
you have to redefine what contentment, happiness looks like for you. When I was younger, I thought of that as career success, and now I think of it as balance
. Of course I want to be successful, but successful to me isn’t being rich or famous or having awards, it’s doing work that I feel proud of and doing work that challenges me. If I can find a way to do that and balance it with having a family and friends and richness in my life that isn’t just my work, that’s contentment. It’s really hard. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out.”

Jonathan Nolan Gave Ella Purnell an A+ Note in This Key ‘Fallout’ Scene
Image via Prime Video

Related Ella Purnell Thinks Jackie Would Have Forgiven Shauna in ‘Yellowjackets’ While on Collider Ladies Night, Purnell also revealed the crushing reason why she thinks Jackie would never have survived the wilderness.

Purnell is certainly accomplishing quite a bit when it comes to tackling challenging work she can be proud of. Not only is Yellowjackets a phenomenally complex and engrossing show, but now she’s got Fallout, which boasts similar qualities, but via a wholly different tone and style.

Purnell’s Lucy is a fish out of water in the wasteland. She’s lived every single day of her life in Vault 33 abiding by The Golden Rule and wholly convinced she’s contributing to an important mission to rebuild America above ground. Every step of Lucy’s journey, she encounters more violence, depravity, and blunt disregard for the well-being of others. While she does do everything in her power to hold tight to that agenda and her morals, cracks in that composure form.

One particularly striking example? When Lucy arrives in Filly and visits Ma June’s (Dale Dickey) store and gets someone else’s opinion on the vaults and who has access to them. It’s an especially brilliant performance beat for both Dickey and Purnell, who beautifully shows off the beginnings of Lucy’s inner turmoil — her desperation to believe in the mission while learning about the reality of life above ground.

“That was a really fun scene because we did so many different things. One of the
best
notes that Jonah ever gave me was, ‘When you’re saying this line about how vault dwellers are gonna rebuild America, just look around you.’ I did it, and then there was this shame that sort of started to creep up because as she’s saying it, she realizes what she’s saying. Like, what does she sound like? It’s kind of like she’s repeating this corporate lingo that has been drilled into her from Vault-Tec handbooks for centuries and centuries. As she’s saying it, she realizes how privileged it sounds and self-righteous. These people don’t need saving. America has rebuilt itself without them. There’s all of these realizations. It’s the first time her worldview is challenged in that way, and it can be, I imagine for Lucy, quite destabilizing.”

Ella Purnell Quit Smoking for ‘Fallout’
Image via Prime Video

That scene right there is one of many Purnell should be quite proud of, so you can bet I was thrilled to ask her a popular Collider Ladies Night mainstay question; what’s something she accomplished while making Season 1 of Fallout that she’s especially proud of? Here’s what she said:

“Oh, that’s such a lovely thing. How nice is that? I am proud of my stunt work because I am a clumsy, uncoordinated, not-fit person. Or I was. I did break a few props, but I didn’t hurt anyone and I didn’t hurt myself [laughs], and I stretched and I warmed up and I got fit, and I quit smoking. That’s not something I ever thought I could do, so I’m proud.”

Looking for even more from Purnell on Fallout, Yellowjackets, Sweetbitter, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and more? You can catch our full Collider Ladies Night conversation in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to it in podcast form below:

Fallout In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.Release Date April 11, 2024 Seasons 1 Streaming Service(s) Prime Video

Fallout is available to stream on Prime Video.

Watch on Amazon Prime