Lola Petticrew: 5 Killer Roles (And 2 Upcoming) To Get To Know The Furious Star
If you’ve been bowled over by Lola Petticrew’s performances as Catherine Grace in Furious this year, you owe it to yourself to check out the rising Irish star in these five earlier roles.
In Furious, Petticrew stars as Catherine Grace — a serial killer seductress who uses her specific set of skills to trap and murder the men responsible for her friend's death. Throughout the show, she is pursued by Alice Black (Emily Rossum) of the FBI, an agent dealing with her own fair share of trauma and, as we soon learn, might have more in common with the woman she's chasing than she'd like to admit.
With its incredible writing and phenomenal cast, Furious already looks set to go down as one of the best shows of the year, so if you've seen it and are looking to catch a bit more of Petticrew’s work, JustWatch has you covered.
In the list below, I’ve rounded up five of Petticrew’s essential roles to date as well as two more to look forward to.
After appearing in a few TV shows and movies, Petticrew landed their breakout role in the Irish coming-of-age movie Dating Amber. Released in 2020 but set in the more conservative 1990s, it tells the story of two queer teenagers who agree to date each other to keep their preferences a secret.
Petticrew naturally played the title role alongside Fionn O’Shae (who appeared in Normal People that year and more recently starred in House of Guinness), with the great Sharon Horgan playing his mother.
The film was also written and directed by David Freyne, who went on to make Eternity with A24 — so if you liked that movie's humour and high-concept setup, you'll probably find plenty to enjoy here.
A year after Dating Amber, Petticrew played Jane Seymour in the three-episode miniseries Anne Boleyn, a modern and daringly colourblind-cast retelling of the last few months of the monarch’s life before her execution in 1536.
The series was the brainchild of Eve Hedderwick Turner and Lynsey Miller, who wanted to tell Boleyn’s story through a feminist lens. As such, the antagonist is not Petticrew’s Seymour, as tends to be the case, but the patriarchal monarchy itself.
The show wasn't a huge hit, but Petticrew and Jodie Turner Smith's performances (Smith in the title role) are worth seeing. The revisionist history elements will also appeal to fans of movies like Corsage or The Favourite.
Later in the year, after Anne Boleyn aired, Petticrew's career took another big step when they began their two-season run on Bloodlands — a twisty, turny, Belfast-set crime drama in which James Nesbitt plays a policeman on the hunt for a mysterious assassin responsible for multiple killings during the Troubles.
For this one, Petticrew played Izzy, the daughter of Nesbitt’s DCI Tom Brannick, in a cast that also featured Chris Walley from The Young Offenders and the great Michael Smiley in central roles. The 10-episode show was basically Jed Mercurio's follow-up to Line of Duty, so if you're a fan of those kinds of tightly wound police procedurals, add Bloodlands to your list.
Maria Schrader’s She Said is essentially #MeToo's answer to movies like Spotlight or All the President’s Men — in other words, it’s a movie in which a group of intrepid newspaper reporters doggedly chase down sources and interviews that will allow them to publish an article that will help bring a powerful person to justice.
The reporters in this case are New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan), and the powerful person in question is Harvey Weinstein. In order to expose the once unassailable Hollywood producer, they must convince one of his victims to go on the record. That person is Laura Madden, a real-life figure who’s played in the present by Jennifer Ehle and by Petticrew in flashback.
If you enjoy stories about everyday heroism, it's a gripping and well-told story.
Petticrew had been putting together a solid body of work before Say Nothing came along, but their performance as Dolours Price in this remarkable TV adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s non-fiction best seller took them to a whole other level of recognition and acclaim.
Radden Keefe’s 2018 book centres on the abduction, murder and disappearance of Jean McConville by the IRA, but the Hulu series expanded on it to cover the story of the Price sisters, too, following their early, riveting years in the IRA before jumping forward in time to show the disillusionment that came afterwards, especially following the Good Friday Agreement in the 1990s.
If you're interested in that period of history, it tells the story in a fascinating and remarkably thoughtful manner. The cast (there is also a breakout performance here from Anthony Boyle as The Dark) is tremendous across the board — not least Petticrew, who went on to receive a well-earned nomination for Best Actress at the TV BAFTAs.
This year in Cannes, Petticrew and Boyle were reunited in Clio Bernard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, a social realist film that went on to win the coveted Audience Award in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar.
Set for release in December, it’s an adaptation of Kieran Godard’s 2022 novel about five working-class friends from Birmingham — one of whom, Rian, has moved to London and made some money, while the other four have stayed behind.
While the novel moves the POV between the five characters, Bernard’s film, which was adapted by the playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh (Die My Love), centres on Rian (played by Peaky Blinders breakout Joe Cole), with Petticrew and Boyle playing Shiv and Patrick, a married couple struggling to get by. If you’re a fan of Say Nothing or This is England, keep an eye out for it.
07
Assassin's Creed
Details of the release date are yet to surface, but Petticrew is set to have their biggest role yet in an upcoming TV adaptation of Assassin's Creed, rumoured to be coming to Netflix sometime next year.
Set in ancient Rome during Nero’s famously combustible reign as emperor and focusing on the same society of vertically gifted assassins, the series is not a direct adaptation of one particular instalment of the video game series but a standalone addition to the franchise.
Australian actor Toby Wallace (who played Wayne in the most recent series of Euphoria) will star alongside Petticrew, who will likely be playing another angel of death.
More on this one as we get it.
