Elóise Thomas, star of the compelling ITV thriller The Bay, has opened up about what it’s been like to join the gripping ITV drama, coping with hate on social media, and the intensity of the season 4 sequences.
The fourth installment of the show, written by Daragh Carville, has continued to captivate its audience, this time focusing on the Metcalf family, who endure a horrible tragedy when a fire tears through their home.
Elóise plays Izzy Metcalf, a rebellious adolescent dealing with a strained relationship with her father, Dean Metcalf (Joe Armstrong), as Family Liaison Officer Jenn Townsend (Marsha Thomason) keeps an eye on them all throughout a perplexing investigation.
Elóise recently told Metro.co.uk how ‘vital’ it is for an actress to ‘check in with their body’ during filming serious moments, and how contact with her castmates was essential when becoming involved in the plot.
‘There was a great deal of communication. I’d talk to Tom [Taylor], who portrays my brother. We spoke a lot about how we would feel if we were in this scenario. ‘Since the environment surrounding you is so similar to what was occurring, it was extremely simple to get into it because a lot of the moments are quite visual,’ she added.
Elóise was particularly impacted by the’very emotion-based’ one-on-one situations in which she appeared, such as her exchanges with Joe as her on-screen father Dean.
‘The intimate scenes, the one-on-one scenes, which are very emotion-based – they moved me a lot. It was all very amazing, but I found those ones moved me a lot more than the very dramatic ones,’ she stated.
‘You start to realise, god this is really this is really heartbreaking for these young kids and this father to be going through this. They already have quite a broken dynamic anyway, so it’s just so complicated to work through for all of them.’
The actor described the ‘strange relationship’ that Izzy has with her dad, outlining: ‘So when the scenes were a bit more vulnerable it was quite emotional. They’re just trying to work through something while both grieving this loss.’
One of the most difficult obstacles Elóise encountered when she was cast in this production was perfecting the accent, so she went to everybody on set, including staff members, to ensure she was doing it correctly.
Given that the Metcalf family goes through a harrowing experience in the series, Izzy and the other actors playing her siblings took sure to keep things’silly and lighthearted’ so that it didn’t ‘feel too genuine’.
‘Ultimately, it’s a job, especially when you’re so young and playing a role that’s so serious. I think it’s important to make sure the atmosphere is light afterwards,’ she remarked.
Elóise has liked watching viewers tweeting their ideas and speculations about The Bay using the official hashtag, #TheBay, for the last several weeks that it has been on.
While she agreed that it “looks fairly nice so far,” she also stated that “you get some bad folks” on Twitter.
‘You just have to ignore it because I think overall, you can sense the buzz, which is really nice. People are really enjoying it and that was a big group effort to put on the show. Twitter, I guess, is so unfiltered that you just kind of have to put blinkers on,’ she said.
Opening up about how the other members of The Bay’s cast also deal with trolls, she added: ‘I’ve seen some of the castmates talk about it on social media, just to ignore it. I think a lot of the negative comments aren’t constructive, aren’t very nice – it’s not actually about the show. It’s just very unfriendly. So I think there’s just no point focusing on it.
‘I think one of the most important things about The Bay is that it reflects society, in that it is diverse and it has all these stories and it represents a whole community of people. I think that’s something to be embraced and celebrated. Just ignore those other comments.’
The Bay is available to watch on ITVX, and returns next Wednesday at 9pm on ITV.