Maisie Richardson-Sellers was quite literally raised in the theatre – and not just any theatre. She spent her formative years at Shakespeare’s Globe. “My parents are both stage actors. I never had a babysitter so they’d always bring me backstage. I’d go straight from school to performances at places like the Globe and sit and watch the audience behind the stage,” Sellers tells Luxury London over Zoom.

It was almost pre-determined, then, that Richardson-Sellers would go on to become an actress. Over the last decade, the London-born performer has broken into the United States with turns in the CW fantasy supernatural drama The Originals, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and the Netflix teen rom-coms The Kissing Booth 2 and 3, while also finding time to return home to star in British shows The Undeclared War and Wolf Hall – The Mirror and the Light.

Later this year, she’ll make her debut in The Talamasca: The Secret Order — the latest TV instalment in the Anne Rice Immortal Universe for AMC, while she can currently be seen starring opposite Nicole Kidman in the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers.

But, while Richardson-Sellers says her unique upbringing made her see how an audience is “transformed by the art that they are watching,” her parents didn’t allow her to act at a young age. “I would beg them to introduce me to their agents. But they always told me to get a degree, have something else as an option, then you can do whatever you want.”

Richardson-Sellers did just that. She was accepted into Hertford College at the University of Oxford, where she studied Archaeology and Anthropology, but even then her focus was being drawn to more creative endeavours. “I went to Oxford because I knew a lot of actors came out of there and it was a rich breeding ground for creativity, as well as academia.”

She soon started acting in plays and, during her second year, both starred in and directed For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange’s renowned theatre piece telling the stories of seven women suffering persecution due to racism and sexism. “I knew no one was going to put that play on apart from me. We were the first play in living memory to be performed inside the actual Oxford Union, because that’s a place of discussion, and I wanted this play to be a springboard for discussion.”

Richardson-Sellers’ work, both on and behind the stage, soon garnered her the attention of agents. With her degree under her belt, her parents didn’t stop her from pursuing an acting career. Which isn’t to say it was easy. “I was working as a nanny and in pubs so I could be as flexible as possible and just run off to an audition. The first year was tough, because I wasn’t getting any auditions and all my friends from Oxford were progressing in their careers.”

One role Sellers did come close to landing, though, was Rey in JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “That was an eight-month process of auditioning. Obviously, I didn’t get it, but JJ told me that he still wanted me in the film. He gave me a small, small role.” Richardson-Sellers’ performance as Korr Sella in The Force Awakens was enough to get her some buzz in the US, where she soon LA was calling.

Richardson-Sellers at the premiere of Nine Perfect Strangers season two. Image: Hulu

Richardson-Sellers admits that the limited acting opportunities in Britain at that time made this a relatively easy decision. “A lot of the roles I was reading for were typecasting. In America, people of all different backgrounds were able to audition for a doctor, lawyer, mother, or anything. In the UK, it felt like there needed to be a reason for a character’s ethnicity. A lot of the roles were fresh off the boat, Caribbean characters, stories about immigration or slavery. There just wasn't the range.”

Richardson-Sellers believes that British programming has changed drastically over the last decade. After working on The Undeclared War and Wolf Hall, she feels like the scripts she’s reading are a lot less commercial than their American counterparts, and are instead “more focused on being creative.”

It was this blend of artistic and commercial merits that impressed Richardson-Sellers in the first season of Nine Perfect Strangers. The drama follows a group of health seekers visiting the enigmatic Masha Dmitrichenko (Kidman), the founder of the Tranquillum House wellness resort, all hoping to transform their lives. Over the course of eight episodes, the show’s all-star cast, which included Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon, Luke Evans, and Regina Hall, all discovered startling secrets about themselves and each other as they received treatment from Dmitrichenko.

Kidman aside, the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers has an all-new cast, featuring Murray Bartlett, Henry Golding, Christine Baranski, Annie Murphy, and Mark Strong. “I love when shows are character dominant and dive into the grey areas. I want to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of these characters.”

Richardson-Sellers plays Wolfie, the overbearing girlfriend of concert pianist Tina (King Princess). “It was a very vulnerable experience for me,” Richardson-Sellers says about portraying the character. “I’m used to playing quite strong, badass characters. Wolfie is struggling. She’s lost, insecure, and very co-dependent. I had to let the character take over me and let that unease and anxiety sit in my body. It took a lot to recalibrate afterwards.”

Unsurprisingly, Richardson-Sellers revelled in collaborating with Kidman. “As someone who grew up adoring her work, it was fascinating. Every take she does something completely different. She’s just playing and finding new things at that moment. Her eyes are so intense. You always have to adapt and shift to interact with her.”

Another bonus of working on Nine Perfect Strangers, says Richardson-Sellers, was being given the chance to shadow director Jonathan Levine. After directing several plays in college, it remains one of her career dreams, and once she looks set to achieve, having made her short film debut with Sunday’s Child and directing two episodes of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Now that she’s back in the UK full time, Richardson-Sellers has started her own production company, Barefaced Productions, with the aim of “shining the spotlight on the incredible diversity of marginalised experiences from the global majority.” She’s currently shooting a short film about asylum seekers migrating across the Mediterranean, while also working on comedies, action, and other documentaries, which are all “linked by the core theme of having a greater message underneath them.”

Richardson-Sellers is still intent on seeking out acting roles, though. The more different they are from her past parts, the better. That’s why, after her performance as Wolfie, she went straight into a role as a femme fatale spy in The Talamasca: The Secret Order. “I just love being able to play a whole range of different characters. I know what feeds my creative spirit and what doesn’t. I love scripts that terrify me. The magic really happens when you're pushed out of your comfort zone. I want to be scared.”

Nine Perfect Strangers is available to stream on Prime Video now.

Read more: Mark Gatiss on spies and superheroes