British actress Emily Beecham is busier than ever with a slew of new projects on the horizon. First up? the new Netflix series 1899, which just dropped on Nov. 17.
From the creators of the global sci-fi German hit series Dark, Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar’s new show 1899 follows the migrant steamship Cerberus that takes a bizarre and unexpected turn when they discover another ship, the Prometheus, that’s been mysteriously missing for the last four months. What they find on board turns their promising adventure into a horrifying nightmare.
“It’s an anomaly,” Beecham tells GRAZIA USA. She describes the series as, “enigmatic, compulsive, and compelling.” The Cruella actress portrays Maura Franklin, a doctor with a dark and secretive past. “It was quite a feat,” says Beecham. When we are first introduced to Maura, she was held captive in an asylum, desperately insisting she’s not crazy. It was revealed that she uncovered some sinister information about her father and begs him to tell her what he’s done to her memory.
To work her way through the intricate storyline, Beecham made a chart. “I mapped it out because Maura is really navigating through something,” she says. “Some revelation will suddenly happen, which totally shifts her entire perception of reality. For Maura, it’s who she is and where she is.”
Referencing brainwashing themes or tales of memory loss from films like Manchurian Candidate, Memento, and Rabbit Hole, Beecham says, “There’s something that’s just under the surface, that she can’t quite access or remember what’s happened, so she’s constantly keeping her cards close to her chest and slowly deciding who she can or can’t trust.”
She adds, “I wanted her to be vulnerable, as well as as really headstrong because she’s a very progressively minded woman.”
Maura studies medicine in the UK, but since she’s not allowed to practice yet, as a woman, she’s traveling on board to New York to become a doctor. “She’s pushing against the adversity of the rules that she feels so hemmed by,” says Beecham.
1899 began filming in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant that Beecham lived in Berlin a few months prior to production to avoid any lockdowns. “I got to watch the set being built,” she says.
1899 utilized a “giant cinematic screen that’s in a cylinder shape” to film on the ship. “It surrounds you. It’s operated by about 20 technicians at the same time whilst you’re shooting,” says Beecham. “It was actually very useful because it felt like you were genuinely moving on the sea and it almost made some people feel a little bit seasick.”
Starring alongside, Andreas Pietschmann, Isabella Wei, Aneurin Barnard, Yann Gael, Gabby Wong, José Pimentão, and more, Beecham says working with such a large, international cast felt, “quite special.”
“Everybody was speaking their own languages and it felt like a very unusual concept for it to be multilingual and have all these different languages and cultures in it,” she shares.
One day after it debuted on Netflix, 1899 has already jumped onto the stream’s “Top 10” list.
Beecham will follow the instant hit with forthcoming films The Interpreter with Jake Gyllenhaal, My Mother’s Wedding with Scarlett Johansson and Sienna Miller, Slingshot with Laurence Fishburne, and others still to come. “It’s definitely been really exciting working with people whose work you’ve watched for ages and they’re just brilliant, top of their game,” says Beecham. “I just really appreciate the opportunity to work on these productions.”
“Working with people who are interesting, good at their job, good with actors, good with story is so ideal,” says Beecham. “It’s all very unexpected. I mean, you just never know what’s going to come around the corner.”
