One of the many delights of The Assassin, the Prime TV hit, is the work of Shalom Brune-Franklin, who plays Kayla, the fiancée of Freddie Highmore’s Edward, who is on the run with his mum Julie (Keeley Hawes), who happens to be a former assassin. Franklin is genius as the rich girl having her world shaken up, and her personality taken down by Julie.
So what were the biggest challenges of the work, Shalom? “Well, I mean, I was playing someone who’s part of the one per cent, and filming on boats and helicopters and beautiful places in and around Athens. I’m not going to lie and say it was difficult in any way, or it was really challenging.”
She pauses. “I mean some days it was too hot to work, you have to stand down when it hits 39. Probably the hardest thing was not pissing myself laughing the whole time with Keeley and Freddie, trying to be serious. That’s probably all a bit too truthful isn’t it?”
30 year-old Brune-Franklin was born in greater London, lived in a council house, but moved to Australia when she was young and retains the down-to-earth wit of her adopted land. She didn’t want to be an actor – “fuck no. I was just a normal kid into my sport” – but at school thought drama would be easy – “who can’t get an A in drama?” – and then later, after being “kicked out of uni from some enrolment issues,” ended up applying for drama school so she could stay in the country, and wound up enjoying it and found work easily, buoyed by her family.
“Coming from that background, I’d have thought the insecurity of acting would be hard for them to get their head around. I think their insane belief in me gave me so much confidence that I should not have had. The audacity that I had to be that delusional, to think I can do this for a living, is how I’ve ended up accidentally doing it for a living.”
She first came to attention here in The Tourist, opposite Jamie Dornan, which was a big lockdown hit, before making appearances in Line of Duty and another lockdown hit, Baby Reindeer. Then earlier this year she was one of the standout stars of Dune: Prophecy, the impressive TV off-shoot of Denis Villeneuve’s lauded arty blockbuster films.
She’s off to Budapest to film season two shortly – “I always put packing off till the last minute, and I’m there until April next year” – and while the anxiety is real, she relishes that world: “I’ve been reading the second book and it’s amazing. I can’t quite wrap my head around how one dude came up with that entire world. What was Frank Herbert doing in his down time? I want to look at what he was taking.”
She doesn’t mind the fan scrutiny and online chatter around the series, saying, “Silence would be worse. If people were like, ‘oh, I didn’t realise it was out.’”
One unexpected aspect of her glamorous life on film sets around the world is that she has basically turned into a travel agent for her friends. “When we shot The Assassin last year, everyone on my WhatsApp was in Greece at some point. I felt like I was running an Airbnb. I’m not even kidding. My Nan was out there and I asked if she wanted to come to the set, but she said, ‘No, I’m fine, I’m going to see the Acropolis.’”
Budapest is proving less desirable to people but there’s always the London flat she’s leaving behind: “The amount of Aussies that come over… I’m just going from running one Airbnb to another.”
The Assassin is on Prime Video now
