‘It's beyond modern!'

Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson on playing an alien in a futuristic epic

- IAN MACEWAN

Eleanor Tomlinson became a household name overnight when she was cast as the leading lady of BBC1’s revival of Poldark in 2015.

But after five series playing Demelza Poldark, she was keen to reinvent herself when the global hit came to an end nearly two years ago. And you possibly can’t get much further from 18th-century Cornwall and corsets than her latest TV venture, Sky One’s dystopian drama Intergalactic.

Written by Julie Gearey (Cuffs), the high-octane eight-parter follows a group of female convicts, including alien drug mule Candy (Eleanor), who are being taken via spaceship to a prison planet.

Among them is falsely imprisoned cop Ash (The Tunnel’s Savannah Steyn), whose mother Rebecca (ER star Parminder Nagra) is a high-ranking official in the global authority known as the Commonworld and is desperate to clear her daughter’s name.

But before Ash can be released, the other prisoners hijack the ship and blast off in search of freedom.

Just before lockdown last year, TV Times caught up with Eleanor, 28, who was dressed in full alien garb, onset in Manchester to find out more...

Is it a nice change to play an alien after Demelza?

It is! I needed a breath of fresh air, and something different to shake things up. Not that I didn’t love Poldark – I learned so much from it. But it would have been a mistake for me to go into something similar, as I don’t want to be typecast.