Netflix's Arcane acts as a prequel to Riot Games' hit multiplayer online battle arena title League of Legends, telling the origin story of some of its iconic champions including Jinx and Vi. The series explores how the tensions between Piltover and Zaun will divide families, transform humans into monsters and spark a revolution.
In time for the series' debut, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Arcane star Ella Purnell to discuss bringing the fan-favorite Jinx to life, the challenges of her first voiceover job, and more.
Screen Rant: Arcane is such an interesting series, I was not familiar with the source material prior, but now I definitely want to check it out. What about this show really drew you to it?
Ella Purnell: It was the character. I knew League of Legends, I think I feel like everybody knows it; I never played personally, but I didn't really care so much about that. I know there's probably fans around the world where that's death to their ears. But I didn't and I think that's a testimony to the show itself, that the show is that good and the character is that well written and that interesting that even without all of that stuff, I wanted to be a part of it.
We very rarely get to see these interesting, violent female villains, and it's not something I necessarily aspire to be, but it's fun. The other person that people often draw contrast between is Harley Quinn, but other than Harley Quinn, we don't have that many [characters] who are this new level of craziness. It was just a lot of fun and I've never done anything like that before.
Once you did find yourself interested in the show and the character, did you have any interest in diving into the game as research for it?
Ella Purnell: I did, but I suck at all video games and I'm very competitive. If I'm not good at something, I don't want to do it, because I'm a child, apparently.
I do want to play, I will play, I just haven't really been in one place long enough to get the whole setup, but if anybody hits me up and wants to play, I don't know how, but we'll figure it out.
What would you say were some of the biggest creative challenges finding the heart of this character and bringing her to life?
Ella Purnell: Quite a few, this was my first ever voiceover audition and my first ever voiceover job. So I was super nervous and intimidated and just way out of my depth coming into the room. I had no idea what I was doing and made sure everybody knew that and then I had a little bit of trouble at first like letting go and learning how to do it. Because it's a completely different medium, I came at it doing quite naturalistic performances and we'd sat and talked about it, and then they said, "We need to go for like 150," and I was like, "You're sure because my 150 is like a lot?" They were like, "No, do it" and we did it and they were like, "That's the one."
Somehow I got the part and we ended up here and it's funny, these own sort of internal blocks you have, like, I don't want to do that it's embarrassing. It's like that natural human instinct, which maybe some actors don't have that, I do, I find everything very embarrassing all the time. But once you sort of learn to let go and really lean into the b-tsh-t craziness of who she is, it's so fun and so liberating and just freeing, especially coming off the back of some of the other quite constricted parts I've been playing lately.
With a character like this, oftentimes in live-action, it does allow room to improv, but obviously, with animation, it can be harder to do. Were you allotted that opportunity at all with this character?
Ella Purnell: I was, I mean, I struggle with improv when I'm not in my natural accent, just because sometimes I say like British terms in American accents and people look at me like I'm crazy. So I just generally avoid it, but there were a few times where I have been able to do that. The animation is finished and completed at various different stages for the different episodes, so sometimes there'll be fully-fledged finished animated episodes in which you're matching that, and other times, they just have sketches or very rough, early stage animatics.
What they would do is put a camera to record my facial expressions, and just little quirks and things. They could actually copy that and put it onto her, which did allow me some freedom to play around, especially when we really found her groove. It really felt like a collaboration, like I didn't want her to be tough and strong or mean all the time, that just isn't who she is, she's childish. She's stuck in the age of nine, which is when she was traumatized; and she's a scientist and she's creative, and she hears voices [and] has mental health issues.
But she is very much up and down and up and down, so in between the lines, I would add these noises, which probably wouldn't have made any sense had you just heard them, but because they could also see me, they would understand that the noise is a laugh or like a grunt or sniff. They used a few of them, I watched it last night, which is cool to see, because you never know what they're gonna chop and change.
Since this was your first time doing voiceover work, what was it like working with those various stages of animation to visualize and imagine this intricate world in your head with the script?
Ella Purnell: It's a good question, I haven't really been asked this or spoken about it, but it was hard, actually. But it's good, I've been acting for 15 years and I am getting a little, I don't know, restless, I think is the word. I really want to branch out and that's partly why I took this character.
Then to suddenly be thrown in the deepest of the deep ends, in something new that you've never done before, that you're a beginner at, it was fun. It had its challenges, but I like to think that I really embraced those, just being like, "Ah, something new that I'm not used to doing, cool!"
This is like two or three years ago now, so I have to try and remember, but like one incident, in particular, I didn't really understand the language that they were using, because they have the slang, the animations slang. I wouldn't ask questions, because I was sort of [being] proud and trying to pretend like I have my sh-t together, it led to this really funny mix up where they'd like wanted something and I didn't want to tell them I didn't know what that meant, even though they all knew that I didn't know. [Laughs]
I ended up just screwing up the whole thing and it was funny, after that, we all got a little closer. But yeah, it was weird having to learn how to do something again from the beginning.
Given that you mentioned this was done a few years ago, did you get the opportunity to work alongside some of your co-stars in the voice booth, or was this mostly just you with the directors?
Ella Purnell: I never worked with another actor in the booth and I still haven't. I mean I've only done two projects, but I've never worked with someone in there. I wonder how it would be. I am interested to see how that would go, but no, we were all from different parts of the world. It's one of the things I love the most about the show, I like the variety of accents that we have, so we never really managed to be in the same place, and then obviously, COVID happened, so there's that.
Arcane premieres on Netflix on November 6 at 7 PM PST.