Emma D’Arcy Tells Bella Ramsey Why Movie Stars Should Pack Their Own Lunch

In late 2024, when The Other Place opened at London’s National Theatre, British audiences were wowed by playwright and theatre director Alexander Zeldin’s utterly modern and naturalistic take on Antigone. Starring Emma D’Arcy, best known for House of the Dragon, and Tobias Menzies, who played Prince Philip in The Crown, the play harnesses the enduring themes of Sophocles original tragedy and updates them for the contemporary family psychodrama. “When I was younger, I fundamentally didn’t get it,” D’Arcy says of the original Greek text. “But as an adult, I’ve come to understand that the work is in trying to undo the knot.” When it was announced that the play would be transferring to New York for a monthlong run at The Shed, another knot presented itself: the frayed state of American politics. “It’s a really extreme time to be going to America,” D’Arcy told The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey when the two got on Zoom last month. But live theater, the 33-year-old actor found, can be its own conduit for empathy, curiosity, and civic engagement. As the Golden Globe nominee sheds their Targaryen skin for something a little less fantastical, D’Arcy and Ramsey exchanged notes on combatting fascism, interrogating trauma, and the importance of making your own lunch.

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EMMA D’ARCY: Hey, dude. How the hell are you?

BELLA RAMSEY: I’m okay, how are you?

D’ARCY: Yeah, I’m fine. Where are you?

RAMSEY: I’m in London, in my little flat. You’re in New York?

D’ARCY: I’m in London, but we’re going to leave for New York tomorrow. I just started packing so I feel–in a nice way–very alive and quite stressed.

RAMSEY: That’s good. I feel like stress is synonymous with being alive. When you get to New York, will you get rehearsal time there as well?

D’ARCY: We have a couple of tech days and then previews. I guess we’ll keep working the show until the tech lock and then it’ll just be happening…

RAMSEY: Is that scary? Do you feel ready? You’ve done this play for ages in London and suddenly they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to fly you all over to New York and you’re going to put it onto an American audience.” Like, that’s so cool.

D’ARCY: You’ve literally just described exactly what happened over the last few weeks. I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s a really extreme time to be going to America.

RAMSEY: It sure is.

D’ARCY: I’m sure, like you, I’m still kind of reeling from the news of Alex Pretti’s murder at the hands of a master militia.

RAMSEY: Yeah.

D’ARCY: I was actually thinking about it last night because I knew that we’d be talking, and I didn’t sleep very much because I suppose I was just thinking about what we’re all witnessing. I was thinking about the source text for The Other Place, which is Antigone. And in the Sophocles, you get this character who fundamentally refuses to ignore abuse of power where she sees it. And I actually thought, “Oh, we have a lot to learn at this moment.” It’s important that we fume out fascist authoritarianism where we see it. 

RAMSEY: What’s happening in America, it feels so scarily out of control that putting on a play to speak out about it doesn’t even feel like bravery anymore, it just feels essential–

D’ARCY: I agree.

RAMSEY: And obvious. Maybe you’ll figure out how you feel about it, but again, it’s kind of mad. America is scary and it’s definitely not somewhere that I’m super excited to be at the moment. So I’m sorry you didn’t sleep, but I think that shows that you’re a human.

D’ARCY: Yeah.

RAMSEY: Were you involved in the process of making the story of The Other Place? The themes must have been already set up in the source material, but I have never seen Antigone. So was it a collaborative process?

D’ARCY: It was a long process, actually. Tobias [Menzies], Alex [Zeldin], myself and eventually the core cast started workshopping it a year before the National Theatre production. We would do week to two week-long workshops, and those would be long-form improvisation, so 40 minutes plus rolling improv, mostly all seated in the backstory of the production. As I get older, I’m much more interested in Greek text. When I was younger, I fundamentally didn’t get it and I wasn’t interested in the fact that I didn’t get it. But as an adult, I enjoy the feeling of not getting it, and I’ve come to understand that the work is in trying to undo the knot. And I think one of the knots in Antigone is trying to understand how this proper antagonist works and the mechanism of that antagonism. But I think through this quite long process of improvisation, building a shared history for the show, I came to understand that what’s actually happening—at least in this adaptation—is a kind of territory war over the past. Having an understanding of the events of one’s childhood is such a fundamental part of identity. So as soon as I sort of understood that, the conviction became super playable.

RAMSEY: You did an excellent job of making her real and natural. I didn’t question whether you were the character or not—you just were. I wasn’t watching it thinking of you as actors on a stage at all. And I didn’t know Antigone, but I didn’t question the reality of it at all. So, good job. [Laughs]

D’ARCY: Oh, that’s so nice of you to say. Alex Zeldin, the director, is thrilled when the work that he makes doesn’t feel like theater. For him, that’s what he’s sort of striving for.

RAMSEY: Back to what we were saying before about what’s going on in America at the moment, it’s so crazy how stories are just… They’re so cyclical. History keeps repeating itself. Even in the Greek text, there’s abuse of power and the idea that it takes somebody or or a collective to stand up to it. It’s just a story that just keeps repeating itself. Are we ever going to learn?

D’ARCY: Well, it’s cool that you said that because the idea of attending the theater was sort of an act of citizenship by Greek society, and part of staging these ethical questions was about nourishing and feeding one’s citizenship. I’m going to butcher it, but I read something about Sophocles and how he posits that when an argument is split between two polar positions, neither holds nuance. The idea is that, as a citizen, one is encouraged to use the material to move towards a position of complexity and nuance, which I really like.

RAMSEY: Yeah. I just feel like the point of theater and film or any sort of art in any medium is to pose questions and to create a feeling of experiencing something as a collective. And so I think somewhere like America at the moment, where its leader is a fascist and all of that, it’s so important that art continues to thrive and flourish and different perspectives are continually told even if there’s a lack of control. But there are things that you can control, like putting on theater.

D’ARCY: I mean, I agree. Creating apathy is a methodology of control, and it’s just fundamentally important to remember that we actually do have a voice. It only serves authoritarianism to believe that we have no power.

RAMSEY: Very well-put. I felt that. [Laughs]

D’ARCY: [Laughs] It’s the stress again.

RAMSEY: [Laughs] Do you write at all? Would you ever be a producer?

D’ARCY: I’ve written a bit, but I think I’m more of a co-writer. I do a lot of that dramaturgy, but I think I’m fundamentally a secondary artist, you know what I mean? I like to respond to stuff, but the idea of telling my story makes me want to be sick. I mean, I produced a short a couple of years ago and I loved doing it, and I used to do that sort of work in theater at Fringe in London, so it felt like returning to that role but in a new medium. Embarrassingly, I like being in charge. I feel that it threatens my character to admit that, but I do. I can’t help but have strong feelings about text, narrative, about how things are made.

RAMSEY: You’re an artist.

D’ARCY: Secondary artist. [Laughs]

RAMSEY: Sure. Sorry, sorry. Secondary artist.

D’ARCY: And a proud one.

RAMSEY: And you also did House of the Dragon this last year?

D’ARCY: Yeah.

RAMSEY: Between television and film and theater, where do you feel the most at home?

D’ARCY: Oh, good question. I always thought that theater kind of fixes me. I have two states of operation: either I’m sort of so adrenalized that I don’t need to sleep or eat, or I have such a deficit of adrenaline that I could just stay in bed all day. And something about the state of doing live performance brings me to a normal equilibrium.

RAMSEY: Sure.

D’ARCY: And I like that in theater, you remain a normal human being who’s responsible for your own lunch. I think it’s healthy to be responsible for your own lunch. So I really like that stuff. And for some reason, theater has been obvious to me for a long time as a material, but it took me a lot longer to make sense of the screen, I think.

RAMSEY: Why do you think?

D’ARCY: I mean, in a way, theater is so easy because you can literally hear what an audience requires. You’re just doing what you’re told, essentially, whereas it’s much harder to know how to best serve an audience when there’s that great dislocation.

RAMSEY: I guess if acting is responding, then theater is responding on steroids, because you’re not just responding to other actors on stage—you’re also responding to the collective and the energy in the room. 

D’ARCY: We should do it. [Laughs]

RAMSEY: I’d be less nervous doing theater with you because I feel like you would hold my hands through it.

D’ARCY: I would, dude. I’d profoundly love that. But with all that said, just to protect any career prospects I may have, I also love working on film,  and I hope to do more film work going forward…

RAMSEY: [Laughs] Great disclaimer.

D’ARCY: Yeah, just a quick disclaimer.

RAMSEY: Where else was I going with this? Oh, yeah. Theater and film and TV. I think that there’s a weird hierarchy in film and television that I don’t enjoy. Does the same sort of thing exist in theater from your experience?

D’ARCY: I also don’t enjoy that hierarchy. I think that’s one of the reasons that it took me a long time to make a home for myself on set. Because you have to understand, even if you just have to learn enough about that hierarchy to understand how to disregard it and avoid participating, it still takes adjustment. There are, without doubt, hierarchies in theater. But from my experience, I find talking with the cast, for example, to be a far more equal environment. And I think a part of that is being responsible for your own lunch. You remain a sort of functioning member of society who is responsible for getting yourself to work. All of those things are quite leveling, but I may have just been very lucky.

RAMSEY: So making your own lunch is the key, basically. I actually did that in Glasgow. I was bringing my own lunches for a bit and it actually did make me feel more like a human. It’s important to have independence and feel responsible and have autonomy and use it.

D’ARCY: I’m doing some feature films this year, and I actually have a lot less experience of working in that format than super long form television. All the sort of independent film work I’ve done has tended to be super short form, but I’m hoping that this will be a marriage of being a normal, functioning member of society, plus some kind of screen work, and maybe it’ll be the making of me. Who knows?

RAMSEY: I think you will love it. Are you doing that in the UK?

D’ARCY: Yeah, one in the UK and one in the States. I mean, I don’t know how you managed it when you were shooting The Last of Us. The lengths of the shoots—I age faster than time. The stamina required is kind of beyond me, to be honest.

RAMSEY: Yeah, same. And yet we sort of do it regardless. But when I look back on The Last of Us, especially the last season, I’m like, “How the hell did I do that?” 

D’ARCY: Have you shot the third one?

RAMSEY: No, we start shooting in February. But I have a little bit more time, which is good. I feel excited about it again. You’ve inspired me to pack my own lunches. This is really what I’ve taken away from this conversation.

D’ARCY: [Laughs] Thanks so much for doing this. I massively appreciate it. It’s always so nice to chat with you.

RAMSEY: It’s nice to talk to you too. I worry that I have a voice note from you that I’d never replied to.

D’ARCY: That’s all right. You don’t need to.

RAMSEY: Oh, I’m going to right now. Have a safe flight, Emma.

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