Created and written by Hania Elkington and Simon Duric, the drama series The Innocents (available to stream at Netflix) tells the story of teenagers Harry (Percelle Ascott) and June (Sorcha Groundsell), who run away from their families to be together, when they unexpectedly learn of June’s ability to shape-shift. As they struggle to figure out how to control this scary and dangerous new power, their bond is tested as June is faced with the choice of reuniting with the mother who deserted her and the possibility of a cure, or risking everything for love.

While at the Netflix presentation at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with show creators Hania Elkington and Simon Duric, as well as co-stars Sorcha Groundsell, Percelle Ascott and Guy Pearce (who plays Halvorson, a man with mysterious motives), to talk about how this story evolved into what we see now, getting to establish their own rules for this world, casting the two lead characters, having so much human emotion to play with, and some of the funniest moments on set. Be aware that there are some spoilers discussed.

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Image via Netflix

Collider:  I love the whole mood and feel of The Innocents, and how it leans much more toward serious drama rather than melodrama.

SIMON DURIC:  Thank you!

HANIA ELKINGTON:  Thanks! That’s great! That’s a very good start.

Simon and Hania, when you started working on this, where did it all start? Was it with the kind of story that you wanted to tell, or was it the specific characters? 

ELKINGTON:  We wanted to tell a really bold and transformative coming-of-age love story. Simon had been looking into shape-shifting, human-into-animal, brother-sister stories, and I’d been turning over this idea of this young girl coming-of-age. We each had two different halves of an idea. In spending time together, the two fused into this hybrid idea. The brother and sister became a young couple, and June came to the fore, in terms of this female shape-shifter and how her changing form might challenge the love story. There were a lot of crazy nights spent in beer gardens with us building out the world and the family, the threats, and the mythology. It excited us to find a bit of dramatic territory that hadn’t been over trodden, like vampires and werewolves, and so on. There are lots of terrific stories about them, but with shape-shifting, we had the chance to really establish some of our own rules and go, “This is where it comes from, and this is how it works,” which felt really thrilling.

It’s cool because it seems like sometimes you almost have to remind yourself that that’s an element of the show, since it’s not the only thing you’re focusing on. These characters are going through so much.

DURIC:  All the way through writing, every single time it came to a shape-shift, we always said, “If we take that out and there’s no shape-shifting, what’s the piece of story that we’re telling? What’s the drama? What are the characters going through?” If the shape-shifting makes it, then it’s probably not working, so we worked really hard at that.

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Image via Netflix

How did you start looking for the actors for your two young leads at the center of this? Did you have any idea what you were looking for or what you might find?

ELKINGTON:  We never dreamed that we would find a Harry and June as compelling and as heartbreakingly glorious and talented as [Sorcha Groundsell and Percelle Ascott]. We were consistently blown away, going through the series.

DURIC:  There were many cold sweats that we weren’t going to find the actors, but they delivered so much. We knew how much weight we were putting on their shoulders, and then there was also the added thing of needing that chemistry, which you can’t fake and you can’t create. There are a million filmmaking tricks, but you’ll never be able to create that.

ELKINGTON:  And the series lived or died on it, so there was no pressure on them, at all. We had a great casting director, Daniel Edwards, and he went out and just scoured drama schools and theaters. The talent out there is amazing, and we got the two that we were looking for. It was a very exciting process to be apart of. We had very few specifications on what Harry and June might look like, who they might be, and what kind of background they would be from. We just knew the real kernel to each of them. There was a purity and otherworldliness to June that we just wanted to feel something completely different and unusual and full of possibility, and with Harry, there was that devotion and that sense of commitment. Those were the two defining qualities that we wanted to feel on screen.

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Image via Netflix

Once you had cast them, was there anything you had to go back and adjust or change?

ELKINGTON:  I think anything we went back and changed, it was because we realized that they could deliver over and above what we had written. That was the same with every role, actually. It was all so collaborative, and we discussed the scripts and characters as the episodes came in. Each of the roles adapted a little bit to the cast member, but it was always because they had great suggestions, or they could deliver more, or we wanted to do something with them. It was just a real testament to the quality and the specificity of [the actors]. From what was on the page, initially, each of those characters just really kept blooming and evolving.

The relationship between Harry and June is so important because, if you’re not heartbroken by what they’re going through than everything just falls apart.

ELKINGTON:  Absolutely!

Guy, how did you feel about Halvorson?

GUY PEARCE: Like the rest of the show, there is an unpredictable nature to Halvorson and where he goes, even for him, within himself. He’s got something that’s much bigger than he is really capable of handling. It’s fairly precarious stuff. He doesn’t know what it’s gonna lead to, and I don’t think even he knows what he’s capable of. With his ego and his fear about losing what it is he’s discovering, the stakes are pretty high for him, so it triggers behavior that he probably didn’t know that he was capable of. It was great to play because it’s always tricky, if you’re playing somebody who ends up doing what they end up doing. If it’s truly in the psychology of a character to actually get to a certain place, and then go, “How did I even get here?,” that’s great to play because it’s honest and it’s messy.

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Image via Netflix

Sorcha and Percelle, was it easier to understand where your characters were coming from and what they were going through because there was so much real human emotion there to deal with, and not just the supernatural element?

PERCELLE ASCOTT:  Yeah, absolutely! If we just had the supernatural element or the sci-fi element to focus on, I wouldn’t be able to ground or work out what else is happening or to discover the depth of what the characters are going through. The writing had all of that, with the stakes and the motives. And then, we can add who our characters are to that mix. I just remember going through loads of scenes and being like, “I can’t wait to play that scene.”

PEARCE:  If characters are well realized on the page, that’s the most exciting thing. It really is. Then, you just don’t have to do any work. If you have to work in a way where you’ve gotta come up with something and give it a backstory, and you’ve gotta cobble something together and you’re band-aiding stuff, it’s a challenge. If it’s there on the page, with all of the dimensions and complexities, it’s so exciting.

SORCHA GROUNDSELL:  We had the real spectrum of emotions. I certainly have never done a job where I had such a variety of different types of scenes to play, and that was such fun, as an actor, to be able to really push things, and dive into the physicality and the emotional stuff. Also, in terms of having a female protagonist, it was very refreshing to be playing a young female character who is not defined by her relationship with a guy, or any of those other factors. It was very much a self-discovery, and that, in itself, was really fun to explore.

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Image via Netflix

It really seems like an equal relationship between Harry and June

GROUNDSELL:  And they’re both fully fleshed-out characters, too. The balance of drama and complexity is not weighted, with one or the other, which is really unusual, from my perspective, with the scripts that I’ve read.

ASCOTT:  And you see that play out in Episodes 5 and 6, when we don’t see the same perspective and we go on our journeys because of that.

Was it very emotionally and physically draining, especially with the heightened emotion of getting stuck in the shifts?

GROUNDSELL:  It was almost the end of Episode 8, and I remember that we were shooting it for ages. Me and Ingunn [Beate Øyen], who plays Runa, were stuck in this shift state of trying to maintain that level of emotion and physical exhaustion, for however many days that we were shooting it, to do every piece of coverage. It was really technical, and it felt like it just went on forever. That was a mammoth week.

PEARCE:  That’s where you’re really tested, as an actor. It’s not just about getting to a place. It’s also about the practicality and the technical stuff of maintaining it, and then doing it again and again. And then, you have to get back to it tomorrow. That’s where you use those skills.

Percelle, did you ever have any moments of humor, in having this relationship with this girl that you love, but then she’s trapped looking like a guy with a beard?

ASCOTT:  Yeah, absolutely! Jóhannes [Haukur Jóhannesson] is a character. It was a great shoot.

PEARCE:  I remember Ingunn getting really pissed off on the day that she was holding the gun on me, and Jóhannes had eaten all of the dried fish, just before this particular scene. He was standing behind her, watching her with the gun on me, and I was against the wall. Eventually she just went, “Jóhannes, the bloody fish!” The smell was just terrible. He kept going back to Iceland and coming back to where we were filming in London, and he would bring dried fish to everybody and keep eating dried fish because it’s a delicacy.

ASCOTT:  It’s nice when you can just escape a little bit, with the other actors on set.

GROUNDSELL:  Otherwise, you’d just go completely insane when it’s so dark.

The Innocents is available to stream at Netflix.

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Image via Netflix
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Image via Netflix
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Image via Netflix