Firstly she couldn’t tell friends she had landed the key part of Keya Marki in Netflix drama Andor – and secondly she knew next to nothing about the iconic franchise.
“It was during Covid and I was living at home, so I told my mum and sister, but to my wider family and friends I just said I had good news and was cast in a TV show that was a big franchise,” says Elizabeth.
“I had only vague memories of watching Star Wars as a child, so I came to it with totally fresh eyes as an adult.
“In Andor the original trilogy hasn’t happened yet, so I focused on watching the prequels with Natalie Portman which were part of my characters’ lived history.
“It landed on me just how much this world means to its fans and to make sure I took care of the little corner handed to me.”
To play a ruthless spymaster organising a rebel network against the evil Empire, Elizabeth leaned on a troubling period of history.
“I researched life in Nazi Germany, and in every single scene I thought ‘how can I make myself feel terrified?'” says the actor, who sported a signature 1940s-style hairdo for the part.
“Walking into this room with baddies from the Empire I thought of them as Nazi officers and myself as an undercover spy working for the Allies. That part of history is still very evocative and it felt so real.”
Dulau is transported to the Victorian era for her latest role at Hampstead Theatre playing Mary Ann Evans – aka George Eliot – in Bird Grove.
Alexi Kaye Campbell’s new play is a tale of father-daughter love and the tussle between his expectations and her desperation to live her life differently.
“I came in not knowing an awful lot about George Eliot so it’s been a real joy to get to know her,” says Elizabeth.
“It’s interesting how little explored her life is in comparison to Jane Austen or the Brontës, but the more I have learned about her, the more I have developed an enormous appreciation for how brilliant and brave she was in how she lived her life – it makes you reflect on your own life – how could I be braver?”
The play starts with the future author of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss in her early 20s moving into the house Bird Grove with her father.
“She’s not yet a writer, not yet George Eliot, she just has those secret dreams,” says Elizabeth.
Mary Ann is surrounded by a father, brothers, friends and a wider society that expects her to marry.
“She has a deep well of emotion that lives inside her that will break out. She is nervous to speak her terms out loud, but that love and passion bubbles over, and by the end of the play we lift the veil on her personal world you get a more fully formed woman,” says Elizabeth.
“It’s poignant, some of the choices she has to make are relevant to the world we are living in now. There are three themes, the exploration of what real faith is, what true unconditional love means, and the question how do you live alongside others that have views that are fundamentally different from your own?
“If you love them and are loved by them how can you navigate that relationship if you disagree? Ultimately Mary Ann comes to it with a sense of love and makes the choice out of love.”
Elizabeth speculates that writing under a male pseudonym meant Mary Ann could “assume the role of George Eliot which enabled her to write more honestly”.
Alongside Andor, her on screen roles include House of Guinness, Gentleman Jack, All The Light We Cannot See and the forthcoming adaptation of hit play First Face.
When she was at drama schools she assumed she would work on the stage – after being cast in a production of Hamlet as a teenager near her home in Suffolk.
“I realised professional actors were normal people and I could do this too – you don’t have to come from a particular background or have family in the business,” she says.
Adding: “I want to do a mix of theatre and screen. I love theatre so much I want to do plays like this, or a strange indie film, or something like Andor spending weeks in Blackpool which has been turned into a tropical planet.”
Bird Grove runs at Hampstead Theatre from Feb 13 until March 21.
