Ella Lily Hyland: Game, set and match with the Irish star of Prime Video's Fifteen-Love

With the lead role opposite Aidan Turner in Prime Video’s tennis drama, Fifteen-Love, Irish actor Ella Lily Hyland is now breaking into the big time. She gets straight to the point with Esther McCarthy

Sun, 16 Jul, 2023 - 18:01

Meet the Irish actress leading the cast of a major new drama set in the competitive world of professional tennis.

Ella Lily Hyland stars opposite fellow Irish star and Poldark actor Aidan Turner in Fifteen-Love, the story of an elite player whose life is upended when her former coach comes back into her life.

The role — with her spearheading the global series for streaming giant Prime Video — stars the Carlow actress as a former professional player whose sporting and private life has fallen apart.

Hyland has already been getting praise for her role as Justine Pearce, a prodigious young tennis talent, feisty and unpredictable, who has descended into chaos.

When we meet her in the series’ first scenes five years earlier, she is on the verge of becoming a teen tennis sensation at the French Open, before a serious injury puts paid to her breakthrough.

Aidan Turner and Ella Lily Hyland in Fifteen Love

Justine now works as a physiotherapist in a prestigious tennis club — but when her former coach, Glenn (Turner) takes a role there, her memories of their previous life together set up a dramatic chain of events.

“She’s this person who has tremendous power, but it has been utilised her whole life to succeed in her sport. She has immense talent and then we see her falling from grace,” says Hyland.

“We see her at two different points — one at a height and one at her lowest ebb. I think that’s definitely what really drew me to her — it was the most exhilarating thing to play because she was very multifaceted.

“What I found was her athleticism in her sport kind of owes itself to her personality when we meet her when she’s 22. She’s been trained to trust her instinct, and everything is this primal instinct.”

Fifteen-Love, which has lots to say about abuse and the dynamics of a player-coach relationship, marks a career breakthrough for the young Irish actress.

With a movie and another major TV series on the way this year, she landed the role following a lengthy search for a lead for the series.

“It happened first with a self tape. I had auditioned for Lauren Evans, the casting director before so it was really lucky that I had a longer experience in the casting process with her, I felt like maybe that stood to me a little bit. We did a tape initially and then I got to come in for chemistry reads and I got to read with Harmony Bremner, who’s playing René (a professional player and friend of Justine).”

LEARNING THE GAME

As well as playing the complicated former star, the show required her to learn tennis, a sport she had never practised aside from one sports camp in her schooldays.

“I trained for about three months before, I hadn’t played it before. I loved it — I loved learning a new sport but it also felt like I was [using] a lot of energy.

“When you’re sitting at home working on something on your own before you start a job, you have all this pent up energy, and it felt like the training got it out. It felt like it was like a part of the research because there’s only so much you can do when you’re on your own.

“I find that when you’re actively engaged in something, you’re kind of learning by osmosis. We had amazing tennis coaches, I just chatted to them loads to try to figure out what this world was and what their experience of it was.”

Tennis seems to be having an onscreen moment. Following the success of documentaries such as Gods of Tennis and Netflix’s hugely successful fly-on-the-wall series Break Point, which focuses on new stars in the game, a number of dramas are in the offing.

As well as Fifteen-Love, last year’s King Richard looked at the rise of the Williams sisters, while Zendaya will soon star opposite Josh O’Connor in the romantic thriller, Challengers.

A highly technical sport, tennis can be tricky for an actor to convincingly portray onscreen, and Hyland and her co-stars benefited from the training and insights of an elite coaching team which included former British professional player Naomi Cavaday.

“We had trainers that were training pros and semi-pros. The courts were unbelievable — you can do a lot of imagining when you’re there even though the ball is going all over the place. You can kind of be like: ‘If I was really good then this is where I’d be!” smiles Hyland.

“We filmed the French Open in Edinburgh and we filmed Wimbledon in Eastbourne. There was a court in Ealing where I trained. I was working in Ireland before [the shoot] and I trained in Trinity, one of the trainers brought me to the courts there.”

Did she discover any natural skills?

“I had a really good backhand. I struggled a bit with the forehand. And then the serve was just like ... it would drive you mad: ‘Why can’t I hit it?’”

Growing up in Carlow town, Hyland is the first actor in her family, though her parents always supported her interest in drama.

“My family, my mam’s side especially, are proper storytellers. There are loads of them, so I grew up with everyone telling stories. I think it was just always kind of in me, I was always entertaining everyone.”

Still, she did not imagine her interest was something she could pursue as a career until she starred in the National Youth Theatre’s adaptation of Salt Mountain, a play by West Cork filmmaker and storyteller Carmel Winters.

“That was the first time I was around other teenagers who were also actors. Learning that there was something like drama school was huge because I was like: ‘I can go to college and do this’. That’s another step and then being in college [at The Lir in Dublin] was like finding my tribe.”

Ella Lily Hyland: "I find that when you’re actively engaged in something, you’re kind of learning by osmosis."

LIFE IN LONDON

When she was cast in Fifteen-Love, the actress moved to London and is now based there.

“It was a great introduction to the city because I was so busy and getting to film on location and see different parts of London.”

Hyland has a number of other roles on the way. Later this year she will star in Silent Roar, a drama set among a surfing community on the Scottish island of Lewis.

She is currently working on A Thousand Blows, a new series for Disney+ set in the world of illegal boxing in Victorian London.

“I definitely feel that it’s like a culmination of a lot of work. It’s kind of surreal, to be honest. And it’s great when work comes out to share it with family and how excited they are, my mam and dad.”

At a time when so many Irish actors are achieving success internationally, there are many to inspire her.

“Someone I really look up to a lot is Denise Gough. Anytime I’ve seen her act, I’ve just been completely transported, and Jessie Buckley, Kerry Condon. I just feel like Irish actors are having a moment. I think storytellers in general in Ireland are thriving. It’s such a rich culture of storytelling. It’s in our blood and who we are as people, it’s how we connect with each other.”

Fifteen Love launches on Prime Video on Friday, July 21

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS