Interview | Nathalie Lunghi

We caught up with rising young star Nathalie Lunghi, who recently appeared in The Palace and will soon be gracing your screens again in BBC3 teen drama The Things I Haven’t Told You.

How would you describe The Things I Haven’t Told You?
It’s a David Lynch style, dark thriller but also young and exciting – full of twists and turns you don’t expect. Every character has a secret, so much so that a lot of the actors didn’t even know what they are. All of the characters are petrified that their secrets are going to come out and ruin their reputations.

Is it still a teen drama at heart?
I don’t think of it as a teen drama because there is so much other stuff going on that you wouldn’t typically associate with one. None of us are fans of the usual teenage shows, to the point of being anti them. Everyone who made the show was young so it feels uniquely real and not patronising. It’s an observation of teenagers put in extremely stressful situations and seeing how they deal with them. It deals with the dark side of the internet for example and is definitely darker than most teen dramas at the moment. The writers have told us it will only get more shocking if it is turned into a series. Some of the secrets are certainly unexpected.

Did you know what was going to happen to your character, Geri, when you started filming?
We all agreed at the beginning that it would be helpful not to know each other’s secrets if that was how it was written for the characters. But I did know Geri’s secret, although there’s still a lot they haven’t told us – as it were – about where those secrets will lead and how they will develop.

So you would be as frustrated as the viewers if it didn’t become a series?
Yes, definitely. It’s also an incredible drama and like nothing else on TV. The director has made something incredibly visual which you don’t see every day.

Geri is the school bully. Was it difficult for you to play her?
It was difficult because I’m not a bitch like her! When I was at school I was bullied a bit so it was hard to play the bully for a change. It was fun eventually and you respond to how the other people react to you when you’re filming. I enjoyed the power after a while. I didn’t enjoy being mean to people who I had become great friends with and felt I had to say sorry to some of the others after a particularly nasty scene. In the original script I was shocked by how vicious Geri was, but in auditions and rehearsals they kept saying take it further – be really mean! In fact, she’s not just a spoilt bitch and she has her reasons. I think she’s started to believe her own hype too much. Also, she lives in a huge house without her parents around a lot so she’s not got a lot to fall back on. Without anyone to care about her, she’s been let loose to behave how she wants.
And what will happen to her nemesis Aisling [Elizabeth Day], seeing as her death starts the story?
The story is told in flashback by Aisling, but it’s going to be as much about what happens after she dies as it is about what happens in the build up to her dying, which is what makes the idea of a series so intriguing. We’ll have to wait and see.

You’ve starred in ITV1’s The Palace this year too. What else is coming up for you?
I have my fingers crossed about both The Palace getting a second series and The Things I Haven’t Told You being commissioned. I can’t say yes to anything else until I know, and I don’t really want to move on from them yet either. The Palace was great fun to film. Spending three months in Lithuania was fantastic and the cast were amazing. I learnt so much from the older actors and I was pleased that my character, Princess Isabelle, got to be so rebellious! I know what would happen to her if there is a second series and her story has some interesting turns to come. She becomes even nastier in her rebellion against her family. While her sister, Princess Eleanor [Sophie Winkleman], wants to be queen, Isabelle doesn’t believe in any of it. She doesn’t want anything to do with it.

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