When Esme Creed-Miles landed the lead role on Amazon’s new seriesHanna, she knew her life was about to change.
“I was with my mum and we were walking down the stairs of our apartment building when I got a call from my agent,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue of learning she got the part. “I nearly fell down the stairs.”
Naturally, she immediately went out to celebrate.
“My friend and I went to dinner and I ordered the lobster pasta, which was the most expensive thing on the menu,” she says. “Then realized that my card was probably going to be declined because I only had my student allowance.”
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Creed-Miles, the daughter of actors Samantha Morton (The Walking Dead) and Charlie Creed-Miles, trained for months to get in shape for the role.
Hanna.Jonathan Prime/Amazon
“I was shocked at how hard some of that stuff was and I really needed to focus. I really needed to not be as lazy as I tend to be most of the time,” she says. “I really needed to train hard, for a good few months, before the show started. I had to learn martial arts.”
And while she was resistant to the constant exercise at first, the actress says it eventually became an escape from the stress of filming.
Perry Hagopian
“It became something that kept me sane,” she says. “Sometimes punching a bag for half an hour was pretty cathartic and pretty necessary.”
Also starringJoel Kinnaman,Hannalaunches March 29 on Amazon.
source: people.com
