Millie Bobby Brown is starring as Sherlock Holmes’ little sister in Netflix‘s Enola Holmes, and she sat down with Entertainment Weekly about the character, and the major step for her personally.
The film, which is based on Nancy Springer‘s YA series, also features her big brothers Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), and her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter).
It’s essentially a coming of age story, Brown told EW. “Who is she, who is Enola Holmes, what does she stand for, what does she believe in? She was so confident, and yet can be so innocent and really not knowing of her future, which is like every teenager at this time in their life.”
Brown, who did “all” her own stunts, said: “I don't want to make anything easy for myself!”
She trained for two months, and learned how to do martial arts in a corset. “I had to prepare my body to breathe and to move in the corset,” she says. “It's hard navigating the choreography that you've learnt so well in your trainers and your leggings and then switching up and putting an underskirt on, a skirt over that, a corset, then you have your petticoat, then you have your long socks, then you have your heels…”
Brown said that the physical challenges are the tip of the iceberg. She said: “On Stranger Things, with like 20 to 30 cast members, everyone gets their limelight. So walking onto the set and feeling genuinely empowered and feeling like I'd been given this platform was such an amazing opportunity, especially as a young girl.”
Brown also sees the film as an exploration of equality: “We bring a certain sense of positivity and humor to it, but at the end of the day, the film is centered around equality. What they call Enola in the film is a 'wild child,' but really, she's just fighting for her rights. The film is based upon these pretty traditional men — and these wild women.”
Enola Holmes drops September 23rd.