Twenty-three-year-old British actor Jodie Comer says there was no question she wanted to take on the extreme demands of playing an abductee who escapes after 13 years.
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As Ivy Moxam in BBC drama Thirteen, she conveys a character riddled with torment over her experience, under the spotlight as she adjusts back into the suburban world she was ripped out of as a 13-year-old.
"My only worry was that Ivy was originally 27 and for my auditions I had to have no make-up and look really dishevelled, and sometimes I've got a bit of a babyface if I haven't got make-up [on]. So I thought, 'Oh god, I've got no chance'," she says of going for the part.
Conversely, Comer's "babyface" is a hauntingly perfect vessel for Moxam. She is a child trapped in a woman's body, frozen in time, a portrait of innocence stunted and destroyed.
Thirteen moves the familiar abduction story forward to concentrate entirely on life beyond captivity. The show begins as Moxam makes her escape, barefoot, bedraggled and desperate, and heads down a path that mixes psychological thriller with family drama as she returns home.
Comer's ghostly physical appearance does a lot of the work in portraying Moxam's turmoil. Her "babyface" is painted with horror and exhaustion, her hunched figure swamped in baggy, shabby clothing, her unkempt hair a symbol of neglect.
"Even though she is 26, she hasn't been around people to help her grow, like her mum to help her grow in to a woman," Comer says. "The clothes for Ivy were a complete comfort, they were what she hid herself in and the same with her hair, it's like a shield."
It's a hugely different role for Comer, previously seen as the "other woman" in acclaimed drama Doctor Foster and as the pretty, popular girl in teen comedy-drama My Mad Fat Diary.
"That's exactly why I was so excited to do it," she says of Thirteen. "I think I was just at a stage where I was doing work that I loved, but I was just so hungry for something that would challenge me and take up all my energy and time, especially just to lead a show for the first time was insane and for it to be such a complex character. I was just at a point where I really needed to do that just to explore myself and be able to express so much."
Her performance is exemplary as the troubled, lost Moxam, whose inner torment and isolation is a constant.
"Even though in everybody's eyes she is a victim, she's so strong," says Comer. "She's stronger than me, and she's stronger than most people I know. To go through something like that and come out the other end and actually come home and see your family life and still be the one who's holding things together – on the outside. She's got such a strength about her and I think that was what I really wanted to get across."
The storyline tackles the disruption to the family unit with themes of trust, guilt and distance. Moxam also revisits her circle of friends, last seen as fledging teens. Now, teenage diaries have been replaced by iPhones, her peers have grown from school children into functional adults. In the mix of this, the hunt for her captor continues.
Comer's performance aside, Thirteen is a strange, often uneven mix. It's written by Marnie Dickens, whose previous credits include British soap opera Hollyoaks, and it has a tendency to veer into unnecessary melodrama, not helped by an unwieldy ensemble cast throwing in a few distracting subplots.
It also avoids outlining what actually happened to the captured Moxam. On one hand it allows the audience to draw their own conclusions but at the same time there is a fundamental hole in the viewer's understanding of Moxam and her story.
"It just leaves so much to the audience's imagination," says Comer. "I feel in drama you don't need to be fed everything. Even though sometimes when you watch you want to know what happened and you want to see it, I feel like sometimes it's so much stronger to see the effects that those actions have had.
"When you see Ivy and you see the way she is, you just think 'Oh my god, what's that girl gone through?'"
Moxam also receives harsh treatment from the police, under investigation herself over the truth of her story. Throwing into question the veracity of the account a victim of abuse is arguably hazardous territory.
That aside, it's an ambitious production and the first original drama for channel BBC Three as it shifted earlier this year to an online-only service. Its first episode drew 2.4 million downloads, on a par with the number of BBC iPlayer downloads for the Sherlock Christmas special.
"It was really good for the BBC because I think a lot of people doubted BBC Three going online," she says. "And then Thirteen went out and people were like actually, this is what they should be making. This is a good thing."
WHAT Thirteen
WHEN BBC First, Sunday, August 7, 8.30pm.
