“For such a long time, women were used as bait in horror films,” Nell Tiger Free tells me as she grabs her charger and settles into her seat at her aunt and uncle’s kitchen table in California. It’s morning in Santa Monica, and the sun casts an unfamiliar glow onto her face, which I last saw covered by a nun’s veil and fixed in an expression of terror on Arkasha Stevenson’s supernatural horror film, The First Omen. Now safely away from church conspiracies and talk of the Antichrist, she’s calm and collected – a dying laptop and whistling kettle aside – impressing me with her knowledge of film history and the Golden Age of horror.

“When we came out of the ‘Golden Age’ – the ‘70s and ‘80s, where we got The Omen, The Exorcist, The Shining – we drifted into this place where sex became a much bigger part of horror and the films were tailored for the male gaze.” According to her, what once felt like a boys club is thankfully transitioning into a new age. “We have these female-driven stories like Hereditary and Midsommar, with women at the epicentre. Women are not just there to look good, and they’re not just there to be chopped into pieces. These fantastically made horror films, created with respect, have women at the centre of them. It feels like love for the genre, a marriage that took too long to happen, and it’s so nice that it’s happening now.”

Like many child actors turned feature film stars, Nell wasn’t looking for a career when she first joined a Saturday drama class for kids. The weekly course was her mother’s idea, actually, who saw it as a healthy environment for her rambunctious 11-year old daughter to burn off some energy. Soon after, a director walked through the drama school’s doors and became transfixed by her performance. “Initially it was all just for fun, just for a good time, you know? And then it turned into my career!” she laughs. “And now I have no qualifications.”

Her acting education, however, was vast. After starring in the BBC’s Mr. Stink and gathering credits on the likes of Broken and Endeavour, Nell switched agencies and booked none other than Game of Thrones at the age of 14. Suddenly, she was thrust into a Hannah Montana-esque life. “It’s the hardest age socially,” she remembers, looking back on her early teenage years balancing a budding career and the precipice of independence with the natural complications of growing up. “I’d be on set at Game of Thrones and then I’d be back in detention at school. It felt like I was living a double life.” Now, at age 24, she can’t imagine doing anything else. And if The First Omen is any testament, she certainly won’t have to.

The prequel to The Omen, The First Omen follows Nell’s Margaret to Rome, where she is sent to work as a nun. While navigating her new life, trying to help a troubled orphan who reminds her of her younger self, and piecing together her identity, she slowly begins to uncover the church’s sinister ploy to birth the Antichrist. Horrifying and supernatural, yet rooted in modern themes of personal agency, it is chilling in more ways than one. “Margaret was definitely the most taxing role I’ve ever had to do,” she tells me, leaning back in her seat. Between the physically draining action scenes and the emotional heavy- lifting of covering such a sensitive subject matter, The First Omen demanded a lot from her. “It’s exhausting, you know, being scared all the time. You’re in a constant state of peril and screaming and panicking and it’s tiring.”

To read the full interview, pre-order the Summer 2024 issue here.