[Editor's note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 3 of The Great.]In Season 3 of the Hulu original series The Great, Catherine (Elle Fanning) and Peter (Nicholas Hoult) are going through a roller coaster of emotions, trying to make their marriage work and learning that sometimes love just isn’t enough to overcome the seemingly insurmountable. And while Peter busies himself with fathering the son that Catherine doesn’t seem to have time for, the young ruler of Russia strives to make a name for herself, among nobles and peasants alike, and stretching beyond borders.

During this interview with Collider, co-stars Fanning and Hoult talked about taking big risks with their performances, what they’ve most enjoyed about the journey they’ve taken with their characters, how making The Great compares to Hoult’s time on Skins, how differently their characters are taking to parenthood, whether they think Catherine and Peter’s relationship is toxic, playing badminton, how Fanning fractured her wrist, the shocking death scene, and possibilities for Season 4.

Collider: There’s always something so crazy and fun about this show, and it’s so absolutely delightful to watch the two of you together. It’s not just that you guys have great chemistry, which you do, but you seem to share the same sense of freedom and play when it comes to the work. When you started on this journey with this show and these characters, did you know that you had this in you? Did you go into this completely game for anything, from day one, or did you feel safer taking more risks, the longer it went on?

ELLE FANNING: Yeah, I think I felt safer taking risks, the longer it went on. I knew that it was gonna be something different than I’d ever done before, stepping into the pilot. When I read the script, I hadn’t even seen The Favourite. It hadn’t come out yet, so I had nothing really to compare it to, tonally. But I knew we were making something definitely out of the box and different, and I was game for that. I was excited for it. But I think my capacity to go there grew, through playing the character and learning from the rest of the cast, and from (show creator) Tony [McNamara], and getting used to his saying his words. I feel like I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with taking bigger risks.

Nicholas, was it the same for you? Did it feel, from the beginning, like it would all work, or did it take a minute to adjust to all this?

NICHOLAS HOULT: I don’t know if you ever feel like, “Oh, this is definitely gonna work.” I trusted Tony wholeheartedly, and that gave me the confidence to take big swings, fairly early on, with Peter, as a character. But the more time you spend in the world, the more time you spend playing a character, and the more time you spend around all the other actors and everyone on set, then you get more comfortable with pushing things and trying things, and failing and feeling stupid when it doesn’t work, but also being like, “Right, it didn’t work, but we tried it.” This character, this world, and this environment really gives you the opportunity to do that, which is really fun, as an actor, because you’re not restricted by anything.

Each season has been a real journey for these characters. It’s a luxury to get to live with someone for this long. What have you most enjoyed about having three seasons to live in these characters?

FANNING: Yeah, completely. I’m 25 now. It’s been five years of my life, that Catherine has been in, and I’ve learned so much from her. I’ve grown my own confidence through playing this part and being a producer on the show. It is such a luxury. I hadn’t really done a TV show, so to have it stretched out like that, and have breathing room and space to live in those moments, and not have to summarize everything so quickly, it also means you can be a little bit more nuanced with your placement because you have just more time to tell the story and you can also falter. I love when Tony pushes a character back because Catherine’s trajectory is not always up. She’s on a downward slope this season, for sure. We have the luxury and time to crash somewhat, like just totally hit rock bottom, and then you have time to see them build up again. You only get the waves of that in TV, and also, with three seasons, you get to really stretch that out.

Nicholas, you had the experience before with Skins, but that was a while ago. How different does it feel now? How different do you feel, as an actor making The Great, than when you were when you did Skins, and what do you enjoy about that experience of living with a character for that many episodes?

HOULT: I don’t think I fully understood it when we were shooting Skins, to be honest with you. I had a brilliant time doing that show, but this really did feel like an opportunity. You’re never quite sure, if you’re gonna get another season of a show, but I knew from the first read of the first script, that Peter was a character that seemed so unique and singular, and I was like, “This is something that I have to play.” It’s probably the character that I’ve gotten most attached to, ever, through playing him. So, I feel very lucky to have gotten to experience all these moments through him, and been on set and lived all of this.

Catherine and Peter are both having to deal with parenthood this season, but it feels like Peter is taking to it a little bit better than Catherine is. Do you think Catherine is surprised about how uninterested she seems to be in her own child?

FANNING: I think the problem was the pregnancy because she viewed the pregnancy as a safety blanket. It was almost like she knew that, if she was with child, with an heir, she would not be killed. And so, it was this ticking time bomb. And then, in a way, Paul becomes a threat to her because then people could kill her and go with the baby. So, politically speaking, she looks at him like this political ploy, in a way, and not as her son. She does love him, but she’s not the most maternal. I think Peter is a much better parent. He cares more. Also, Nick was much better with the babies on set. I want kids, but the babies on set would cry. But then, Nick would take them and just know everything to do, and they would be perfect and not cry. For me, with the babies, I was like, “I’m trying to say this line.”

HOULT: We went really method, in terms of our approach with the kids.

FANNING: Yeah, we were method.

The hardest thing about watching these two characters is that you can feel their love for each other, but there are also times when you generally can understand that they really want to kill the other one. How do you view their relationship? With all the ways they’ve tried to hurt each other, do you see them as a bit toxic?

FANNING: I don’t.

HOULT: There are some toxic moments and traits that could be considered toxic. But I think that the place their relationship grows to, in this season particularly, is actually a really mature love. They can accept each other and, despite all the flaws, they can see each other as a whole, as opposed to everyone else who sees them in much smaller terms. There’s actually a lot of love there, so I wouldn’t say that’s toxic.

It is a little hard to get past killing someone’s mother.

HOULT: It’s tough because, if you look at the details, yes, it’s toxic. She stabbed him five times. But if you look at the feeling, then it’s love.

FANNING: That’s why it’s so complicated.

When you play characters like this, that are so big and bold, and it can get so over-the-top, were there ever moments when you were told to go bigger? Does it ever feel like you’re not going big enough? Do you try to just do a range of it?

FANNING: You hit the nail on the head here. This is something we say to each other often. Nick goes big. I always go, “Bigger. Go bigger." Always go bigger was our advice to each other. And then it was like, “Whoa, what are you doing? That was terrible. Bring it back.” You have to experiment with all the ranges. That’s something fun on this show. We never do one scene the same way. I try not to, at least. I always want to surprise, or just get something else, because there are a lot of different ways you can read the scenes.

Do you get a pretty easy sense of that, in the moment? If it doesn’t feel big enough, or if it feels like you’re just being too dramatic, do you know?

HOULT: I think we both know when something hasn’t worked in a scene. We can see it on each other’s faces. They’ll call, “Cut!,” and we’ll both know exactly the moment, good or bad. We both able to dissect it, quite specifically, in terms of whether it worked or whether it wasn’t good.

FANNING: Yeah, we could tell.

Elle, you have some scenes where you’re playing badminton with yourself, running back and forth to each side of the net. What was it like to shoot all of that?

FANNING: Well, here we go. This was interesting, I had a fractured wrist because of Nicholas Hoult. I had to play badminton, and he had an '80s roller disco night for the cast, midway through filming, which we were so excited about and I was so excited about. We all got dressed up and did our table read in crazy eighties garb. There are lots of photos of that. And then, we went off to the disco and, five minutes in, I’m the only person who fell, of course, and fractured my wrist, and I blame Nick. It’s a great story. But then, I had to do a badminton scene with that. It worked. The pain worked. The sadness was there. It was funny, we had to fake that a bit. Maybe I shouldn’t say that I’m bad at athletics. That was fun. I forgot about that. It was crazy. You know, the day that we filmed Nick’s dying scene, he was done and it was his last day ever as Peter. We were staying out in the country and he had to leave because he always has to fly somewhere. I was walking through the hotel and there was a badminton court, and I played it with myself, as Elle, being sad and thinking, “We’re never gonna do this together again.” It was weird, I was definitely better there than I was during filming. How crazy is that?

Nicholas, there’s just something so striking about the whole visual of him riding across the ice and just disappearing. What was it like for you to learn how Peter would die?

HOULT: I thought it was a beautiful way for him to go, to be honest. I think everyone probably expected some sort of violent end, but the simplicity of it and the fact that it’s not caused by any outside parties, particularly, and is caused partly by his own folly, the scene in the build up to that was just one of the best written scenes I’ve ever read. To wrap up all of Peter’s relationship in those five or eight minutes, or whatever it is before then, was just a really special thing. It was perfectly pitched, I think.

Elle, have you thought about what it would be like to do another season as Catherine, without having Peter there?

FANNING: That’s so sad. I’ve definitely thought about it. I do feel a pressure because what Nick brings to Peter and how larger than life he is, there is that absence there. I think is important that we feel that absence in the second half of the season because it goes with the grief and it really works. But then, I also had to figure out a way to try to fill that whole, so that it wouldn’t just become only about sadness because our show is as a comedy, as well, for sure. The way that the season ends and her dance and how she cuts her hair, she’s reborn and she’s changed so much. Each season, she always changes, but this time, she’s really prepared to step into herself, on her own. The whole series, she has always had Peter, and now, she has to actually let him go, to be able to be the leader that she needs to be. So, it would be exciting to get to do that.

The Great is available to stream at Hulu.