Red Carpet News were treated to a very special screening of the first episode of New Worlds and enjoyed a Q&A afterwards with the exciting young cast that includes Jamie Dornan, Alice Englert, Joe Dempsie and Freya Mavor. The cast talked about making the action packed series and how its themes might just inspire young audiences to engage with both history and modern day politics. Alice Englert plays a passionate young American called Hope here’s what she had to say during the Q&A.

Q. New Worlds has a lot of different themes and subtexts, what does your character specifically represent and bring to the series?

For me Hope and Ned are the original young American. For me Hope was someone who at the beginning of the series really does see things in that simple American Dream way. It’s about good and bad, it’s a belief that I’m good and I’m going to keep doing that. The Colonials in her mind are good and the Indians are bad. She’s driven very much by revenge and the puritanism in her religion; as the series progresses she begins to become repressed into the puritan community. She gradually realizes that her instinct and her feelings are now being judged as well. She can’t condone or understand anymore and the world becomes a lot more complicated. I personally enjoyed exploring that character because it’s also an exploration of why the American dream has its faults. It was built on something so fundamentally wrong and to admit that is quite confronting. I really enjoyed working with Joe in that part of the story.

Q. It’s an action packed series what was that like?

I didn’t have much training but I did have a lot of accidents. I’m quite good… I loved it it was great.

Q. How did you research this period of history?

Google babe! No seriously I talked to Martine a lot and I watched the Devil’s Whore. I was reading Wolf Hall and Bring out The Bodies, they were good reference to gauge the lives that people lead. People did have their lives on the line and id die for the things that they cared about. That was what I found to be very important just for gauging the emotion of what people were going through.

Q. Do you think people will see parallels between the evens in the show and what is happening in the world today?

I hope people will feel that but I don’t know. I think the reason I love TV and Film is because it’s often the way that I felt myself educated emotionally about the world. It’s the place where you try and tell the truth ironically. It’s interesting playing these characters because they were in a situation where the consequences of the monarchy were very present in their lives. Now we live in a world where you can so easily not be confronted by what’s happening it’s easy to not make changes. I think that’s why there was such heroism and courage in those days. Everybody died. You all died really soon and generally painfully. You had to do some living, you had to do it. Now I can google what happened and be like oh how terrible.

I think another thing that this show talks about is courage and the courage to do the right thing. It doesn’t end with happy joy and the American dream. The greed for power is so strong that it takes a long time for that courage and hope to get through. A lot of people do suffer, you see it and this show looks at it in quite a true light.

It’s something I’m only aware of on a basic level but there’s still a strong class system in the UK.  It’s something I’ve become aware of since living here, even if as an Australian I’m not as familiar with the politics. There still seems to be a policy that money looks after money in situations. I only think it went as far as a basic level with comparisons.

Q. Do you think the show will make a younger audience want to engage in politics more?

For me, I find politics difficult when it stops becoming personal. A lot of political ideas can make sense if you don’t think about it personally. I mean for me in Australia there’s the whole immigration issue and asylum issues. There’s a lot of political ideas about why you shouldn’t help but if you see someone in the water frickin’ drowning you go get them! It a weird thing. That’s why I like political drama because it has to combat that issue. People often sit on one side or the other; those that pay attention to politics and those who sit on the couch and look at the nice costumes.  But in a drama like this, there’s no right answer but you have to acknowledge the complexity of being a human being and realize that there’s also a machine at hand that you’re a little cog in. I don’t have an answer and I think it’s something obviously we’re always working at. That’s what I enjoy and think is important in drama.

Q. Do you think the show is going to have a strong appeal for an American audience as well?

I think so, it might, although we probably don’t have enough sex for them!

Q. Has the project made you personally more politically aware or motivated?

I don’t know if the project itself has made me more politically engaged but actually I was quite interested in the serious stuff already. Although I am a fiction head so I am worse than I should be.

Q. Did you like you costumes and did you keep any of it?

Freya and I stole quite a lot of tracksuit bottoms actually. I don’t know why but costume departments always have the best warm relaxing clothes.

 Be sure to check out our other Q&A posts to see what the rest of the cast had to say as well.