The HBO drama series His Dark Materials is back for Season 2, with a new world and higher stakes as Lyra (Dafne Keen) has followed Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) across a bridge into the unknown and on a dangerous path. Once in this mysterious abandoned city and alongside her new friend Will (Amir Wilson), Lyra tries to stay far enough out of the reach of Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson) to fulfill her destiny.

As part of the virtual press junket to discuss the second season, Collider got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 with Ruth Wilson about the show’s built-in fan base and the expectations of fans of the books, her key to understanding this world, what she loves about Mrs. Coulter, balancing the human side with the depth of her evil, the importance of the daemon relationship, how Season 2 is different from Season 1, and her favorite episode this season.

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Image via HBO

COLLIDER: This is a TV series where so many people love the property and that gives the show a built-in audience. How does that make being a part of this show the best job and how does that also make it scary or challenging?

RUTH WILSON: Initially, I hadn’t read the books. I’d heard about the books. And so, when I read them, when I was offered the part, I was like, “These are extraordinary books. This is such a good story. These are kids and adults.” They’re so brilliantly written, and the themes are so wide and ranging. It’s not just fun. It’s very philosophical as well, and very psychological. And playing Mrs. Coulter, she is iconic. She’s such an extraordinary character. There’s huge pressure knowing that Nicole Kidman had already played her and audiences all have their own version of who Mrs. C is. Playing a literary icon, you have to struggle with that a little bit, but it’s also such a privilege to be playing her. [Writer/executive producer] Philip [Pullman] has given us freedom to explore her. Certainly in Season 2, you get to play out things that don’t exist in the book and it’s a deep privilege to be able to take her away from the books slightly and delve more into her psychology. I hope the audience loves that. We see sides of her that we don’t get to explore in the book so much, and that’s really exciting. I feel very privileged to be able to do that.

This is certainly dense, challenging, complicated and complex material. What was the way into the story for you? What was it that reeled you in and helped you understand the world as it’s being established around you?

WILSON: For me, it was the daemon and the relationship with oneself. That, to me, is the heart of the psychology of all of these books and of Lyra’s journey. The relationship with that animal side of yourself, or that yin-yang, is always in conflict. Your brain or the voice in your head can challenge you or incentivize you. It’s that relationship with yourself. For me, I realized quite early on that Mrs. C’s relationship with her monkey is so unique to everyone else’s. Her monkey doesn’t speak or have a name, and that is key to understanding who she is. There’s some part of herself that she is silencing. There’s some part of herself that she’s suppressing. That was my key into understanding her.

I had to find out what she’s suppressing and why, make my own choices around that, and then start finding ways in the material to play that out, and that was my joy. It’s so joyful because it’s such an interesting dynamic, and I get to play it with this guy who puppeteers my monkey called Brian Fisher. I always talk about him because it’s a collaboration. Early on, we did a workshop of what our dynamic is and what the psychology is. Every day on set, in every scene, I’d be like, “Okay, where’s Monkey at? Where’s Mrs. C at? What’s going on between them and how do we play the scene together?” I love that. It’s like having an acting buddy on set with you all the time. That’s how I’ve accessed the material, through that relationship with herself and her daemon.

And it’s such an interesting element that is specific to this world.

WILSON: Yeah. In the book, what happens is that Mrs. C would be completely cold and unreadable, and then the monkey would give away things, but that’s not particularly interesting to play for an actress or actor; to always just be completely passive, or not show anything, and then monkey gives things away. I wanted to be able to show that stuff, too. It became more of a tussle. It’s about the dynamic of whether Monkey agrees with what she’s doing in certain moments, or whether there’s something she hates about herself and she hits her monkey. It’s all about the self. It’s about where she is in her own relationship to what’s happening, and this physical manifestation of some part of herself is there by her side the whole time. That’s really exciting and interesting.

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Image via HBO

When you play a character like this, how do you approach humanizing her and how do you approach making her depth of evil even more frightening, and having that balance between those two things?

WILSON: You’ve always gotta find a balance. I’m always looking for characters that are not black and white but that are gray, and I think people are. They are many different things. They have the capacity to be horrific and lovely at the same time. For me, every character I play has that dynamic. So, if a character is essentially considered evil or nasty or villainous, then it’s finding the humanity in that person and the reasons why that person might be who they are. And vice versa, if someone’s essentially good, it’s just about finding those weak spots where they could go outside that box, or get in the way of themselves somehow. So to me, it’s always fascinating to find the gray in a character. That’s always what I try to do.

How do you feel this season and the book that it’s based on are most different from the first season? How would you describe the mood and the tone, especially as it pertains to your character?

WILSON: When I read the books, number two was my favorite and I think it’s because it’s quite intimate about relationships. The relationship between Will and Lyra is really beautifully drawn in the books. It’s about a very honest and truthful friendship that develops. You didn’t see that so much in Season 1, but it’s really about that human connection between this young boy and young girl. With my character and what happens in Season 2, we have a parallel story being told with how adults interact. You see me interact more with Boreal, a character that featured in Season 1. Mrs. C and him come into contact with each other, and he basically is her right-hand man. They both work for the Magisterium and are allies, in their own way. That’s a relationship that’s based on manipulation and cat-and-mouse and a dishonesty and a power play. In contrast to Will and Lyra, it’s these two manipulative adults. You see this bad relationship that’s formed and a very good and honest one that’s formed. It’s the contrast of those two things – adults that are locked in a world of manipulation and power bargaining, and kids that are just honest and innocent and full of hope and love. I think that’s really interesting in Season 2. You see that play out quite a lot. And there’s the mother-daughter relationship and a father-son relationship playing out. There are lots of personal, intimate human relationships at play in Season 2.

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Image via HBO

In the first episode of Season 2, Mrs. Coulter vows never to fail again, which seems a little scary. How determined will that failure make her in Season 2, and should we be very afraid?

WILSON: Yeah. What happens in Season 2 is that she’s burned all of her bridges. She’s a woman alone. She no longer has the Magisterium to back her up. She’s burned her bridges with Asriel. She’s burned her bridges with Lyra. Her work has been destroyed. She has no purpose. A woman with no purpose, and a woman who’s that determined and ambitious and driven with no purpose is very dangerous and scary. She’s out to get control of her life again and have control of her child. Her child is very powerful and she’s obsessed by it. If she can’t have it, then she might destroy it. She’s a frightening figure because she’s out of control and her whole life is about not failing. It’s that idea of, “I know what I’m doing, I’m in charge, I’m five steps ahead of everyone else.” If she can’t be that, then she doesn’t know how else to exist. So, in Season 2, you see her losing the plot a bit because she doesn’t have those tools at hand and she’s not in control, and her daughter was way ahead of her.

How do you view her? Since no villain ever sees themselves as the villain, who does she see as the villain of her story?

WILSON: That’s an interesting question. Maybe Asriel. Maybe not entirely. I haven’t been asked that before. Probably her father, is my deep psychological analysis. Maybe Asriel in this story because she’s the one that’s had the blame, the shame, and everything attached to what happened in their past and their relationship. They had an affair and a child but she’s the one that’s been blamed by society because she was the absent mother. He’s an absent father. He’s as bad as she is, but she’s the one that gets the brunt of the blame because she’s a woman. So, even though she probably still loves him and has a deep attraction to him, he’s the one that has got away with it and she hasn’t, as a woman. She’s always in conflict with that. And now, her daughter’s obsessed by him and is following him, and not her. He’s the hero that everyone worships and she’s the one that’s the sinner.

What makes her unlike any character you’ve played before? What is it that makes her special to you?

WILSON: I think she’s so extraordinary. She’s so determined. She doesn’t wanna fail. She’ll keep getting up. She’s persistent. She’s not gonna cool under a rock. What I love about her is her journey. What’s so lovely about playing this is that you’ve got books and you know what’s coming, as an actor. You know where you’ve gotta pitch to get to that. You know the arc of her journey. She goes on the most extraordinary journey. With her, I get to play every facet. I get to play the vulnerability of motherhood, or the loss of it, with this incredible power and violence and anger. What I always love about playing her, and certainly in Season 1, is that men on screen always get to be really violent and feral. They get to express that a lot. Women don’t. Actresses don’t get to do that much. I was like, “Mrs. C is violent as hell, and I’m gonna play that. I’m gonna be really feral in moments.” I also got that from Dafne [Keen] because Dafne plays Lyra in such a feral way. I was like, “Okay, there are elements of that kid that are supposed to be in me, so I’m gonna take some of her feral qualities and bring them into my character.” I love to do that. I love the fact that I get to really express that anger and violence that can come from so much suppression and silencing and compromise in your life. I get to really express it in not a feminine way. I actually quite like pushing edges of that and making her quite feral. You don’t get to see women doing that on screen much, and that’s why I love playing her.

Without spoilers, do you have a favorite moment this season?

WILSON: There’s a specific episode that I really love, which is Episode 6, because we get to explore Mrs. C outside of the books. There’s stuff that Philip Pullman has allowed us to indulge in, discuss and explore, when it comes to why she is who she is and at what cost that has had for her, emotionally. It’s her starting to reckon with that, or recognize that in herself, and understand that the choices she’s made in her life have had huge consequences for her, psychologically and emotionally, and that she may never be able to come back from it. For me, that’s a really exciting episode. It also deals with women and the lack of choice that women have had in certain scenarios and what that pushes them to do. That episode is my favorite episode.

His Dark Materials airs on Monday nights on HBO, and is available to stream at HBO Max.

Christina Radish is a Senior Reporter of Film, TV, and Theme Parks for Collider. You can follow her on Twitter @ChristinaRadish.