Actress Nell Tiger Free feels she steps into 'new version' of 'Servant' character each season
Jan. 11—Finding a role that is not only fun to do, but challenging, is half the battle for actors. For Nell Tiger Free, when she signed on to the series, "Servant," four seasons ago, she would have never guessed where her character, Leanne Grayson, would have ended up.
"It's been quite a ride," Free says of her journey. "From episode one to the final episode, these two women are sort of unrecognizable to one another. I don't know if they'd be friends if they met."
The fourth and final season of "Servant" premieres on Friday, Jan. 13, on Apple TV+.
In the fourth season, Free returns as Leanne, who is the nanny for Sean and Dorothy Turner, played by Toby Kebbell and Lauren Ambrose, and their son Jericho.
Leanne is still paranoid that other cult members are attempting to reenlist her back into the sect.
She is also contemplating her future with the family given her caustic relationship with Dorothy.
Rupert Grint's Julian Pearce, Dorothy's brother, is the acerbic sibling who maintains an intimate and physical, yet misguided, relationship with Leanne while experiencing nightmarish memories of discovering the infant's body in the first season.
Also reprising their roles this season are Tony Revolori as Sean's sous chef, Tobe, for whom Leanne still has affection and empathy; Phillip James Brannon as Roscoe, the private eye hired by Julian to investigate Leanne's background, who has found his own sanctuary in her suspected cult; Todd Waring as Dorothy's wealthy father, Frank Pearce, who empathizes with Julian's torturous nightmares of the night when he found Jericho's body; and Boris McGiver as the suspicious zealot, Uncle George, who returns to the Turner brownstone to finally settle things with Leanne and the family.
"Every season is very different from the previous. I feel like I've played three different characters at this point and season four is no different," Free says. "It's stepping into this new version of Leanne, who has now changed from the girl that we first met when she arrived at the Turner home at the beginning of the very first episode. This new Leanne, now burdened with this paranoia which continues in season four, was a challenge for me, but a rewarding one as well."
Free feels like she grew as well with her time on the show.
"I went from 18 to 23 while I was making the show," she says. "Those are some formative years. There's been a note of change in me and in Leanne. In everything she does. I've just been very lucky to get and take a character from her natural beginning to sort of her natural end. It's been a privilege."
As with any role and production, there were challenges. Aside from the COVID protocols, Free says it was making sure that Leanne wasn't lost entirely.
"(M.) Night (Shyamalan) wanted this mature version of Leanne, but it still had to be a version of Leanne," she says. "She couldn't be completely lost to herself, not quite yet. Because we needed room to grow, we had to find the pace that fit. That was my biggest challenge. Not rushing into anything too soon and letting the bubble grow for the crescendo to be satisfying."
With the final season ready for the masses, Free is ready to let the character go because the story will conclude.
"I hope people are satisfied with the conclusion," she says. "I hope that people can feel like they can be at peace with the ending. I hope we ended it with a way of providing justice for the viewers."
Now streaming
"Servant" begins to stream its fourth and final season on Friday, Jan. 13, on Apple TV+.
