Ella Lily Hyland: ‘Feeling watched is different to feeling seen’

As Ella Lily Hyland poses for photos, her black spaniel Nina trots about the studio, stopping occasionally to be stroked. “She always wants to be close,” says the 26-year-old Irish actor as we settle down to chat once she’s out of stilettos and back in her comfy leggings and sweatshirt, long limbs curled beneath her, dog nestled under her seat. “She’s really shy.”

Nina’s a fairly recent addition to Hyland’s life, but has fitted right in with her increasingly busy schedule, keeping her company on photoshoots and even visiting the set while Hyland filmed her latest project, a BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero, co-starring Anjelica Huston and Clarke Peters. Hyland plays Audrey, an upper-class English woman unpicking her relationship with cheating husband Nevile (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and attempting to take back control with, by 1930s standards, a scandalously public divorce. Of course, there’s a murder, and we’re left to untangle the secrets of Audrey, Nevile and the other inhabitants of a remote country house.

It’s the third major role for Hyland in as many years. She gave a scene-stealing performance in Netflix’s 2024 spy thriller Black Doves, as steely, dry-witted Irish assassin Williams. When I tell people I’m interviewing Hyland and mention Black Doves, faces light up. Her deadpan delivery was the perfect comic contrast to all the gore, whether thoughtfully considering if she might be a psychopath or subjecting her compatriots to withering retorts: “If I do get the strong urge to suture myself with a fanny pad, I’ll let you know,” she jibed after being shot. Despite starring alongside Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley, it seems she was everyone’s favourite character; the Standard called her “the breakout star”.

She was surprised to hear how hilarious viewers found Williams’s sarcastic ripostes. “I didn’t think my character was that funny. She used to really annoy me because everything was so serious. But she was so much fun to play.”

The success of the show, watched by 10.8 million people in its debut week, means Hyland is being recognised more and more. “It feels nice, I guess, but different or weird. And fluky, because the job just felt like I was having a laugh, so part of me is like: no, no, I don’t deserve it.”

Hyland often pauses to consider her answers, becoming more animated, words tumbling quickly, when she recalls pieces of theatre and artists that have moved her, speech littered with “Do you know what I mean?”. She grew up in Carlow, in the east of Ireland, an hour’s drive from Dublin. “It was a great childhood,” she says. “Because it’s a small town, you get a lot of freedom very young. We used to all play around housing estates, it was really fun.”

She didn’t get on with school and was regularly suspended. “There’s a lot wrong with the educational structure, I just don’t think it suits the majority of people,” she says. “Especially in certain communities, where the values are different and people need to work earlier to make money earlier, it doesn’t function for that.”

Extracurricular activities were more appealing. She started drama classes aged five. Her grandad Dinny Hyland was a record-breaking Irish pole vaulter, and her sporty dad took her to do pole vaulting and long jump until she was 16. “I did it for a while, then I got bored and tried something new. I was all right at it. I’d say I was definitely better at creative stuff.”

Her mum was the creative, running a hair salon, regularly decorating the shop window with her artist cousin. “My ma’s family especially are really big storytellers, there’s 10 of them on her side and I grew up listening to stories about the family, and they’d sing and dance and laugh.”

It was in her mum’s salon that she overheard girls talking about youth theatre and decided to tag along. She loved it, would beg to do extra scenes: “I was so brazen.”

After finishing school at 17, Hyland headed to the Lir Academy, Dublin’s prestigious drama school, whose alumni includes Paul Mescal. It was a refreshing change: “You didn’t have to do essays. It was practical, learning the trade of acting with your hands on, the way you would in an apprenticeship.”

At the Lir, she fell in love with theatre, especially knotty dramas. Seeing On Raftery’s Hill, Marina Carr’s tale of familial abuse, “was a huge moment”, she says. “There’s a really difficult character – the dad, Red Raftery – a really twisted man, but the audience were laughing with him. I remember thinking: it’s so important that we look at those dark parts of ourselves. Everyone has the capability of anything.”

Before Black Doves, she starred in 2023 drama Fifteen-Love, as tennis prodigy Justine, who accuses her former coach (played by Dubliner Aidan Turner) of sexual abuse. There are shades of Justine in the character of Audrey, both charismatic women entwined with manipulative men. “I love people who are a bit complicated and nuanced as characters,” Hyland says. “I thought [Audrey] was fascinating. She has such a strong mask, and I found that challenging at times, and her wealth was such an alien world for me, that kind of cold, stuck-up-ness.”

Getting inside the character’s head is part of the job, she says, but she stays aware of where that takes her. “Our thoughts in a lot of ways do dictate our reality, so when you’re thinking as another person, and they’re thinking dark things, it’s funny how that gets in.” Having her dog around is a good distraction, Hyland says, one of the “little touchstones that bring you back to reality”.

Hyland’s performance in Black Doves drew on Maura Higgins from Love Island (one of the shows that helps her switch off from work: “I just watch shite things”). She sought muses for Audrey, too. “The tone of Towards Zero, there’s a kind of Hitchcock-y edge to it, so I was looking at a lot of Lauren Bacall stuff. That really informed how [Audrey] held herself. We read a lot about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Their dynamic was really informative.”

Director Sam Yates and intimacy coordinator Louise Kempton helped Hyland inhabit Audrey. Even after filming, she found herself moving like her. “For ages, I was really slinky,” she says, striking an Audrey pose. The whole cast have fantastic 1930s outfits, but Hyland and Mimi Keene (playing Audrey’s love rival) are blessed with the most glamorous looks, all set waves and red lips.

Playing English characters and now living in London, she hopes people don’t mistake her for a Briton. Williams was the first screen role in her own voice, but she’d love to do more. “There’s a really particular accent in Ireland, from where I’m from but much stronger than mine, and I never really see it on screen,” she says. “It’s such a shame that more work, especially Irish work, doesn’t see those voices and communities.”

She has “a strong desire” to change that. “I have something to say about the people who taught me how to be a storyteller and what they sound like,” she says. “So I think it’s important for me not to be seen as British.”

She’s been working on her own screenplay, a story set back home, exploring intergenerational relationships and addiction. “It’s quite a universal story, about family, how much strength it takes to break the cycles that we’re born with.” Conversations With Friends star Alison Oliver, Hyland’s friend from the Lir, is on board to executive produce. Hyland is inspired by film-makers such as Molly Manning Walker (How to Have Sex) and Andrea Arnold, and the rebellious spirit of Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes. “I love writing so much, hopefully it can get made some day.”