the innocents
Worst Face scenariow w w.sci fi n ow.co.u k
Young love and shapeshifting tell a storY for
the ages in netflix’s new supernatural thriller the
innocents. we talk to creators simon duric and
hania elkington about what to expect...
worst face
scenario
WoRDs poppY-jaY palmer| 057following the success of the likes
of the oa, black mirror and sense8, netflix is
keen to continue combining thrillers and sci-fi,
thus leaving its users both bamboozled and
exhilarated. its next pursuit into the genre hybrid
is the innocents, created by hania elkington and
simon duric.
the show revolves around a young couple
in love, harry (percelle ascott) and june
(sorcha groundsell). harry is a kind boy with
a challenging home life and a lot of love for his
family and friends. june is the same, but she
also happens to be a shapeshifter. however,
the supernatural element quickly inspires the
thrills as they are forced to flee for safety
while finding answers and escaping the
clutches of a sinister icelandic fellow who
seems to be hunting them down. if that
isn’t exciting enough, add the fact that
june keeps involuntarily shapeshifting
into people she’s only just met to the pile.
such a unique concept should have
been a hard sell, especially presented by
a pair of writers who had not only never
worked together on a show before, but
never written a show, full-stop (duric had
been working as a storyboard artist since
2006, while their new show would be
elkington’s first screen venture). however,
they seemed to ace the task.
“i think we tried to ease our way in by saying
that something that we’d really like to do is
explore how the domestic and extraordinary
or otherworldly interact,” explains elkington. “i
think that’s an unexplored concept apart from
in a few really brilliant shows and films which
have done it to great effect. they responded
to the script and the world, and were always
really open to all of its weirdness and
complexity and bonkers-ness.
“[they also responded to] our commitment
to making sure that the series would work on
a character and story level, even if we took
the supernatural element out. that was very
important to us because we’re not writing about
superheroes. we’re looking at something much
more realistic and much darker and more
challenging about real young people, and
what’s different about you and how much of that
you can control. i think when we talked about
what the series meant to us, as well as how it
would be presented on screen, that’s when they
got their teeth into it and understood why we
were doing it, who it was for, and i think that’s
probably how they engaged with it first.”
“we always talked about if we took the
shapeshifting out of it,” says duric. “if the story
still worked, are we still telling the same story?the shapeshifting was a great platform to
explore some really interesting thematic stuff.”
when elkington and duric first met, the
former was an agent and the latter a client. they
spent a lot of time on the phone just throwing
ideas around and chatting about things they
liked. when elkington left her agency to pursue
a career as a full-time writer, they missed each
other. “we started meeting up and doing
exactly the same thing, but with lots of beer,”
she laughs.
they realised that although they had very
different instincts and tastes, there was still a
large area where their interests interlocked.“all the projects that we’ve both really liked
we’ve tended to be fanatical about,” continues
elkington, “and that’s when we realised that
if we could develop something within that
intersect, it could be a very interesting and
unusual tonal piece.”
with duric drawn to more muscular,
intelligent genre pieces, and elkington to dark
domestic and family stories, they decided
to bring their eclectic interests together and
see where it took them. with the innocents,
elkington initially wanted to tell a story about
young love with a challenging female lead, and
duric was the one that brought the shapeshifting
element into it.
“the two things wove together,” says
elkington. “we spent about a year
building up the world and the characters,
and by the time we wrote episode one
and took it out to any third parties, we
were deeply invested in it and we really
felt quite connected to our characters
and our work, which was a very nice
place to be.”
as far as the specifics of the genre
are concerned, both agree that the
innocents is a romance story, rather
than a romantic sci-fi. “it’s a deeply
human story, and we always remind
ourselves that shapeshifters are human,”
elkington explains. “they’re not something else.
shapeshifting to us is like an extreme version
of being double-jointed or being able to roll
your tongue. it’s a physical evolutionary quirk.
it’s not a different race or a different species
infiltrating our human class. they’re all human.
whether they’re a shapeshifter or not they’re all
struggling with emotions, family, secrets, guilt, all
of these things. i think the family story and the
love story for us always came first. we wove
the shifting through. it’s about growing up,
finding who you are and who you want to
be, who you want to be with, where you
belong, all of those questions that youngit’s about
finding who
you are and
where you
belong
hania elkington