Austen-tatious talent
From her breakout role in Clique to her latest part in Miss Austen, Synnøve Karlsen discusses her genre-hopping career so far, partnering with Keeley Hawes and why she’s happy not knowing what kind of actor she is.
Like so many British actors before her, Synnøve Karlsen imagined her career path would lead her from stage to screen. Yet it’s only now, with a string of credits in hit TV series to her name, that she is taking her first steps in theatre.
Karlsen made her breakout appearance in 2017 BBC series Clique, playing Holly, a student who is drawn into the seductive world of an elite group of girls at her university. Roles in Rai and Netflix period drama Medici, Sky’s The Midwich Cuckoos – an adaptation of John Wyndham’s classic sci-fi novel – and Netflix’s time-travelling crime thriller Bodies soon followed.
In her latest on-screen role, she appears alongside Keeley Hawes, Rose Leslie, Jessica Hynes and Patsy Ferran in period drama Miss Austen, which is currently screening on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
Based on a real literary mystery – Cassandra Austen notoriously burning her famous sister Jane’s letters – the story begins in 1830, many years after Jane’s death. Cassandra (Hawes) rushes to visit Isabella (Leslie), the niece of her long-dead fiancé, who is about to lose her home following her father’s death.
While seemingly visiting to support Isabella, Cassandra is really looking for a hidden bundle of private letters which, in the wrong hands, she fears could destroy Jane’s reputation. Upon finding them, Cassandra is transported back to her youth, where her younger self, Cassy (Karlsen), and Jane (Ferran) navigate the romances, family feuds and dashed hopes that shaped their lives – and laid the foundations for Jane’s stories.
Away from film and television, meanwhile, Karlsen is now preparing to star in the UK tour of theatre production The House Party, which begins in Leeds later this month. “I’ve been wanting to do a play for a while,” she tells DQ. “It’s quite hard to break into theatre, so this just felt like a really good opportunity at the right time.
“I always thought I’d be like a theatre actor and then just didn’t end up going that way. So it’s nice. But while lots of people start out in theatre, my first thing was TV shows. Then you get known in that world and casting directors know you. But it’s just come at the right time because I’ve been ready for it for a while.”
The last time Karlsen appeared in a play was when she was still at school, acting in an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë novel Jane Eyre. And it was another school play, The Seagull by Anton Chekov, that gave her the “acting bug” in the first place.
She left drama school early to take on her first screen role in Clique, “and I’ve always felt really torn about that decision,” she admits. “But the first job I had, luckily for me, was three-and-a-half months long. I was in every single scene. I was going to set every day, so it felt like that was my drama school really, but for screen. I learnt so much in doing that.
“Actors often want to have variety, and they want to do theatre as well. With theatre, you’re developing this whole character, this whole arc and this whole story all at one time – and screen acting obviously is very different. You go in, you have a few pages to do a day and you prepare those pages.”
Screen acting also means filming out of sequence, a process Karlsen experienced to extremes on Apple TV+ sci-fi series Foundation, whose cast she joined for the upcoming third season. “It’s 10 episodes shooting with three different directors and three different soundstages, and we’re going from one to the other,” she says. “One day we’re shooting episode 10, the next hour we’re shooting episode two. You’re constantly having to juggle, ‘OK, where am I at in this moment? Where am I in this moment in the story?’ I’m excited to not do that for a while [with The House Party] and to just be telling one story and one moment in time. It’ll be a nice contrast.”
With S3 debuting later this year, Karlsen plays Bayta Mallow, “who is this amazing character,” she says. “She’s what I describe as almost like an intergalactic influencer. She really ignites the show with a lot of spark and fun. She and her partner Toran [Cody Fern] are these celebrities, and they take the show in a new direction. It’s a lot of fun.”
Still early in her career, Karlsen has already taken on a broad range of roles, from leading to supporting, period to futuristic and everything in between. It’s that variation that particularly appeals to the star, who says: “I never really know what kind of actor I am or the kinds of parts I do, and I’m quite happy with that. It would be very dull to always be the same thing, and I’m really excited that I’ve had the opportunities to just have quite a variety of different types of characters.”
One thing that influences the jobs Karlsen chooses is who she will be joining on the project, both in front and behind the camera. Hawes is one example, with Karlsen playing Hawes’s screen daughter in The Midwich Cuckoos before portraying the younger version of her character in Miss Austen.
Her Bodies co-star Stephen Graham is another. “Funnily enough, I didn’t know he was playing my husband until I’d already accepted,” she says. “There was something about the show in itself that I was drawn to. It wasn’t until I went for my costume fitting and the costume designer said, ‘Do you want to meet your husband?’ Then she took me next door and Stephen Graham was there in an Edwardian suit, and we got to meet each other. He’s a perfect example of someone I just think is a phenomenal actor, so getting the opportunity to go to work every day with someone you’ve been able to watch, to collaborate with them and learn from them, that is the dream.
“Then the other dream is creating beautiful relationships with people you might not have seen before. That’s the beauty of the job. You never know who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to work with. I love that about it.”
Karlsen and Hawes don’t cross paths on screen in Miss Austen, but they would have little “debriefs” when their filming days on set overlapped, and also enjoyed dinners together. “But in terms of The Midwich Cuckoos, when I knew she was on board as Dr Zellaby, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I have to be in the show.’ I love her. She’s an amazing actress.”
That the same casting director, Jill Trevellick, worked on both The Midwich Cuckoos and Miss Austen suggests she sees some similarity between the two actors that makes them suited to different familial dynamics, and Karlsen agrees. “Sometimes we’re with each other and I’m like, ‘Wow, it’s like looking in the mirror.’ We do have this funny relationship where we do match so well and we can even see it,” she laughs.
Karlsen knew little about the story that plays out in Miss Austen but was “blown away” by Andrea Gibb’s adaptation of Gill Hornby’s novel about sisterhood and sibling relationships, most notably between Cassandra and Jane.
“Reading it, there was just something magical about that relationship and that support and that conflict within them both, but just total love for each other and support for each other that I love,” she says. “I knew nothing about Cassandra and the role she played in Jane’s work and Jane’s legacy. I just thought it was such a lovely telling of this relationship and of this woman who sacrificed so much in a time when women’s lives were really just whatever the man chose to do. This is such a wonderful example of someone breaking beyond that because of the help and support of her sister. I loved it on so many levels.”
It’s not the first time Karlsen has been drawn to a period drama, having previously played Clarice Orcini in two seasons of Medici, a series that charts the rise of the ruling family in Florence during the Renaissance.
Stepping into the world of costume drama, “I used to find it really daunting just because it felt so otherworldly,” Karlsen says. But she has now grown to love the research involved in making those series, as well as the chance to discover details of lives lived centuries ago.
“Medici was really full-on hair and makeup and costumes, and filming in Rome in 40-degree heat with no air conditioning,” she remembers. “It was emotionally and physically draining. So I think I found it easier this time – it felt like less of a jump than it was in Medici. But I loved history at school, so I think there is something about diving back into a specific time in history that I find really enjoyable, so I’d love to do more stuff like this.”
With period drama continuing to draw in viewers, Karlsen believes what makes Miss Austen stand out is that “it’s a simple retelling of a period of time, and of someone who was so influential.”
“It’s feels really honest and really truthful, and I think people sometimes want that,” she adds. “It’s just a simple story, but it’s a beautiful one, and it’s a moving one. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of doing, actually, so I hope people love it as well.”
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