Freya Allan: “I was extremely imaginative. I was constantly creating some imaginary creature.”

Now 22, Allan spent many of her formative years in Hungary, slipping into the fantastical skin of Ciri (or Princess Cirilla of Cintra) in the Netflix series The Witcher. It was there that she did much of her maturing and “absorbing” from the actors around her. The role of Ciri was the perfect fit for a young adult with a bursting imagination and vivacity, and it would become the big break that would catapult her into the realms of real stardom.

At the time of writing this, you could walk past the majority of cinemas in the country (and perhaps the world) and see Allan’s face. Landing a role in the latest instalment of the global mega-franchise Planet of the Apes has been her latest flex of not just her talent but her willingness to jump on a plane to secure a role she wants. Which is exactly what she did – for the final casting of the film, she travelled from Berlin to Australia in less than 24 hours.

As more and more of the world starts to know her name, Allan talks to HUNGER about how her childhood helped sculpt her acting, the technical challenges of filming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and how she measures
true success.

Ry Gavin: To kick us off, tell us about your childhood. You moved around a lot growing up, right?

Freya Allan: I was born in London, moved to Oxford, I went to Australia for about a year and then I went to France. I was in the middle of nowhere, near the Pyrenees mountains, in a very kind of old, tumbledown farmhouse, and the school was, you know, tiny and French. No one else was English. They were two very different experiences, Australia and France. I then came home, back to Oxford, and did the rest of my school years there.

RG: Was it at school in Oxford that you started doing drama? Schools there churn out an impressive amount of successful actors.

FA: I was a drama scholar there, so I was doing all the plays. I pretty much would spend any time off doing something to do with performing. I’d force all of my friends into doing these little routines I’d come up with – singing and dancing, all of that stuff. I was obsessed, honestly. I spent every free moment doing that at school, but they also had a really good drama department and they put on plays that felt as professional as it could be for a school. I feel like I probably learnt a lot from there.