Nicola Coughlan and Aimee Lou Wood are overjoyed at the potential of their new dark (and Dark Ages) comedy Seize Them! Allowing them to discard their good girl persona.
The top Netflix stars, who have both achieved tremendous success as the charming, sweet Penelope Featherington in Bridgerton and Aimee Gibs in Sex Education, are in peak shape for a day of interviews at a Soho hotel.
They may be portraying ‘two total s**theads’, as Coughlan characterises their roles, but they come across as completely lovely and cheery as you’d expect in real life.
Sharing a relaxed and conversational interaction, it’s easy to believe they’ve never worked together before, despite playing sworn enemies, pampered Queen Dagan and rebel ‘Humble’ Joan.
Dagan is one of those ridiculously out of touch and brutal mediaeval monarchs, whereas Joan is a peasant who organises an insurrection to usurp her authority.
Coughlan, 37, of Derry Girls, relished the opportunity to act outside of her typical role.
‘My characters generally, I don’t know about you Aimee, but it’s always like, she loves to read, and no-one really notices her… And this was like, she’s really mean and she has an axe!’ the actress laughs, calling it ‘perfect’.
And there are no rewards for guessing who historical drama-loving favourite bookworm she’s referring about, who will star in Bridgerton‘s forthcoming third season.
Wood, 30, who has previously featured in Living alongside Oscar contender Bill Nighy, recounts her initial response to the writing.
‘I was like, Oh my God. She’s so awful – and that’s so fun! Because I do often get the angels.’
‘You’re like a tough cookie. And I get to be a brat,’ she adds to Coughlan.
Seize Them! is a wild film full of dirt, dung, blood, sword-slaying, inventive use of explosives, and exclamations like ‘t*tting balls’.
The Monty Python and the Holy Grail aura is difficult to miss, as are hints of the Horrible Histories TV version, owing to the film’s comedy and innovative use of violence (Dagan recalls her father killing her mother by shoving her through a cattle grid, for example).
Wood praises screenwriter Andy Riley (Gnomeo & Juliet) for “drawing the characters so vividly,” but she also admits that the two of them enjoy the Python similarities.
‘We’re very used to men in those kinds [of roles] whereas actually, it’s really cool to have that kind of comedy with women at the centre.’
They are well-supported by a talented cast that includes Jessica Hynes as Dagan’s oily advisor Leofwine, Lolly Adefope as her faithful and dry-witted servant Shulmay, and Nick Frost as unsophisticated peasant Bobick.
Both Coughlan and Wood get got in to the action and gore of Seize Them!, with Coughlan maintaining tight-lipped about her favourite sequence to film to avoid providing spoilers – ‘but it was one that featured a lot of blood!’.
They also like handling weapons.
‘It’s not things that we get to often do – I never thought I’d do a movie where I’d get to swordfight, not at all,’ the Bridgerton actress shares.
‘We were the worst two in our respective drama schools at stage combat and you’re like, look at us now!’
‘That was really cool,’ agrees Wood. ‘Because those were also the bits that I was most scared of. When I read the script and I saw that there were sword fights, I was like, “Oh, no…”’
However, they ended up triumphing.
‘It’s always the way that the thing that you ended up being able to do that you didn’t think you could do is always the coolest!’ she adds.
Coughlan’s Humble Joan is a significant change for her, from the severe black haircut to the northern dialect, and the historic nod is clear.
‘I feel like she thinks she’s Joan of Arc, but she really isn’t – she’s the antithesis of that,’ says the star of her character.
She had also planned to portray her ‘completely differently’.
‘We had the table read and I thought she should be very Trustafarian, West London – like her dad’s really rich, and then she goes on this quest to be better than everyone and save the common man,’ she explains.
‘And they were like, “Mmm… no, that doesn’t work.” And I was like, “Oh, God! I can make her Northern?!”
Having already mastered a Derry twang, Coughlan does well with this regional accent too, having already used it in a play, Chapel Street, ‘many years ago’.
‘Who knows where exactly it’s from, who’s to say, but it’s somewhere up north!’ she chuckles, embracing the non-specific Dark Ages setting of the film.
This vagueness also allows the film to have fun with everything from a professional ‘s**t-spader’ discussing the different consistency of poo in detail to a ‘high fünf’ between German-accented foreign monarchs (played by Paul Kaye and John Macmillan) and various grisly methods of torture, including the cleaving off of arms to be ‘shoved up their a**es’.
There’s even a part about the horrible mediaeval diet where Dagan is served an indistinguishable lump of ‘meat or cheese’.
‘That made me feel ill,’ admits Wood, recoiling. ‘It was actually vegan cheese all mushed up and I hate to eat some of it, and it was sweaty.’
On that tasty note, we part, but Seize Them! offers plenty more gross-out moments where that came from.
Seize Them! is out in UK cinemas today.
