“I didn't know parts like this existed for women,” Louisa Harland revealed about her role in Disney’s Renegade Nell during the TCA Winter Press Tour. Written and created by Sally Wainwright, the action-adventure-fantasy series follows Nell Jackson, a woman in 18th-century England who unexpectedly becomes one of the most notorious highwaymen. “Everything about the character was a challenge for me, and that made it all the more exciting and fun. It was just a real dream come true.”
(Disney/PictureGroup)
“I got to be on wires; It's always been a dream of mine to do that,” revealed Nick Mohammed, who plays Billy Blind, a character based on folklore. But that wasn’t the Ted Lasso actor’s only attraction to the series. “It just felt so original, fun, adventurous, rambunctious. At the start, it's so funny. There's so many great gags in it and great characters in it. I was automatically drawn to it with Sally [Wainwright]'s name having penned it. It was a world away from Ted Lasso, and to be honest, it was a world away from anything else I'd ever done. That's what really drew me to it. It was incredibly freeing not just because I was flying around the place, but it was just so different to anything else I'd done.”
“I'd worked with Disney years before in 101 Dalmatians (1996), and loved working for Disney,” explained Joely Richardson about joining the series as Lady Eularia Moggerhangar. “To take Disney on one hand and then Sally Wainwright on the other and the team, it was sort of a dream combination because Sally's dialogue is very, very dense. It's really sophisticated as well as really humorous. It's very edgy. And, so, when they offered it to me, it was kind of a dream role. Larger than life. And I'd never done anything like that before.”
For American actress Alice Kremelberg, who plays Sofia Wilmot, the chance to work in the United Kingdom was another dream fulfilled. “I was there for eight months,” Alice shared. “We shot in these castles two hours away from London. Most beautiful scenery and things I don’t see here. New York is an amazing place, but it's a completely different landscape. And I really felt it was very romantic. There's so much history, and the theater is incredible. It felt like a dream, truly, to be able to be from the States and to be doing a show in the U.K. I'd hardly heard of that happening, so I really thought it was a shot in the dark.”
(Disney/PictureGroup)
Executive Producer Ben Taylor, who directed the first two episodes, was hoping to keep working with series creator Sally Wainwright. “I just came off three years of Sex Education,” Ben recalled. “I knew I needed to do something very different to that, and I got sent a script and was a mega-fan of Sally's. And it was extraordinary because it was this and that, a bit more. And I'd say the ‘a bit more’ is superpowers. You can imagine a world where that isn't the addition, but it's such an excellent addition, and I think it is what makes it truly the sort of Disney fantasy DNA… Sally writes brilliant, real heroes, real in every sense, but that based in the real world, that's what she's always done, and it's female heroes. And I think it was just that Sally had chosen to do that with the supernatural element that was just irresistible.”
“Every member of the family will connect with this,” Luisa Harland promised. “It is really, really refreshing to see such strong, funny, flawed women portrayed onscreen. And I think a fabulous sign of our times, here, we have got right at the very center this strong, powerful, and also really important vulnerable woman. She's a woman. She's a man. She's everything. She's a shapeshifter of some sort. But I think that goes throughout the series, these extraordinary characters. What's so exciting about the writing is that each character is iconic in its own right.”
New legends are born in Renegade Nell, with all eight episodes now streaming on Disney+.