Life After Life star Thomasin McKenzie has spoken about her "intense" experience filming the BBC Two adaptation in which she plays a girl who can die and be reborn an infinite amount of times.

Ad

The four-part series, which is based on Kate Atkinson's novel of the same name, stars the Jojo Rabbit actress as Ursula Todd, a girl born born in England in 1910, who finds herself in a time loop, reliving her life as a 20th century woman every time she dies.

Thomas McKenzie and Sean Delaney in Life After Life
Thomas McKenzie and Sean Delaney in Life After Life BBC

Speaking about filming the historical sci-fi drama, McKenzie said that it was "quite hard" portraying a full range of emotions in a day of filming when shooting scenes from Ursula's multiple lives.

"It’s a really tough thing as some days I would turn up on set and not realise how intense some of the scenes would be," she said. "I didn’t take into account how much that would affect the other scenes we were doing that day that might be lighter or from one of Ursula’s different lives."

She added: "It was quite hard, both mentally and physically, to go through so much and so many emotions in one day. You just don’t have as much time to recover from it with such a crazy schedule."

The upcoming series also stars Fleabag's Sian Clifford as Ursula's mother Sylvie, Mare of Easttown's James McArdle as Ursula's father Hugh and Killing Eve's Sean Delaney as her brother Teddy.

Life After Life airs on Tuesday 19th April at 9pm on BBC Two. You can order Kate Atkinson's novel Amazon. If you’re looking for something else to watch, check out our TV Guide.

Ad

The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now – subscribe now to get each issue delivered to your door. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.

Authors

Lauren Morris
Lauren MorrisEntertainment and Factual Writer
Ad
Ad
Ad