[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero.]

Summary

Human dynamics and complex relationships drive suspense in the story of ‘Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero,’ streaming on BritBox.

Anjelica Huston’s presence on set, as Lady Tressilian, was surreal yet normal, creating a unique experience.

The love triangle between Neville, Audrey, and Kay explores themes of lust, power, and toxicity.

Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero follows Neville Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) a tennis star in 1936 England who decides to spend the summer with his new wife Kay (Mimi Keene) at the estate of his aunt, Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston). Add his ex-wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland) into the mix, along with unfinished feelings and an undeniable tension, and jealousy is bound to make an appearance. With a detective (Matthew Rhys) present as murder starts happening, he needs to work quickly to determine who’s responsible before another falls victim.
During this interview with Collider, co-stars Jackson-Cohen and Hyland talked about why Agatha Christie’s stories are still so appealing, the complex human dynamics at play, the biggest challenge in telling this story, the incredible experience of having Huston on set, why it would be exhausting to be friends with Neville and Audrey, shooting the final confrontation with Inspector Leach, and how they viewed this complicated love triangle.
‘Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero’ Is a Deliciously Decadent Family Mystery

“There was such an incredible complexity of human dynamics at play.”

Image via BritBox

Collider: What most excited each of you about getting to be part of an Agatha Christie story? Is it just getting to live in a world like this for a little bit, no matter what bad things your characters might get up to?
ELLA LILY HYLAND: Yeah, that’s exactly it, to embody that world and just be transported in time. Agatha Christie is incredible because it’s so much about the relationships that everyone has with each other, and power and desire. All those things are really fascinating. It also feels almost like a kitchen sink in a strange way, because it’s so domestic. It’s in a house and it’s about a family. That was really interesting.
OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN: I feel the same way. There’s something quite decadent about it. For viewers as well as for us, there’s something really delicious about being able to be thrown into that world. With Agatha Christie’s work, there’s a reason why they’ve stood the test of time. Specifically with Towards Zero, there was such an incredible complexity of human dynamics at play that felt so compelling and intricate and nuanced and interesting. An amalgamation of all those things make it such a compelling thing to be a part of.
What felt like the biggest challenge, for each of you, in taking this on?
JACKSON-COHEN: Especially with a character like Audrey, there’s a masking and holding everything back. Every character partakes in that. You don’t really know who to trust. Everyone is a suspect, so who’s lying and who’s not lying? What are we withholding and what are we divulging? At what precise moment are we showing something?
HYLAND: Exactly that. It’s about not knowing who’s telling the truth and trying to patch the stories together. What drew me the most was this relationship that Neville and Audrey have and the depth of it. Initially, when I first spoke to (director) Sam [Yates] about that, he had such an incredible view on it, which I felt instinctually from the piece. Our director was so emotionally intelligent and ambitious with how deep he wanted us to go explore that. All of us together were trying to explore that, and that was the most enticing thing. It has this iconic feel, like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Someone told me to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It’s that strange tie that people can have, when there’s a lot of pain or grief under the surface of a relationship, and that was really interesting to explore.

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How was it to have Anjelica Houston around and have her presence on set?
JACKSON-COHEN: She’s phenomenal.
HYLAND: It’s surreal, but then normal.
JACKSON-COHEN: You’re sometimes quite dubious of, “Oh, how is this going to go?” When someone is that iconic, rightly so, you wonder, “What are they going to be like?” But the grace and the generosity that she brings, she was incredible. She’s clearly aware that she comes with this thing and has this incredible ability to just make you feel at ease immediately. The first day we had, I had to lay down on the bed. We were doing this scene, and I laid down to talk to her, and when we cut, she just started talking to me about growing up in Ireland. She brought up playing Morticia in The Addams Family and The Witches. It was like getting a front-row seat to someone’s incredible story. She’s phenomenal.
HYLAND: She is absolutely incredible and magnetic and really gracious. There’s something really childlike about how curious she is, which is almost a part of her wisdom. She’s amazing.
If you guys were friends with Neville and Audrey, watching this relationship play out, what advice would you have given them? Would you have suggested they get as far away from each other as possible, would you have suggested therapy, or would you have just found a bowl of popcorn and watched it all play out?
JACKSON-COHEN: First of all, I don’t think we’d be friends.
HYLAND: We wouldn’t be friends.
JACKSON-COHEN: They are monsters.
HYLAND: They’re so far in it that you’d be like, “That’s mad.” What can you even say? That’s exhausting.
JACKSON-COHEN: It must be exhausting being around those two. Agatha Christie wrote this ages ago, but she wrote about this dynamic that, with all the language that we have nowadays, is seen as toxic codependency. This was so ahead of its time that we still witness these things play out and we see these relationships play out all the time. Not quite to this extent, but they do exist and there is something inherently fascinating about the two of them. There’s this underlying grief to their relationship that is an incredibly painful place for them both constantly be, but it’s all they know. That, in itself, is quite devastating. So, in answer to your question, I don’t know what we would tell them. Maybe just, “Guys, chill out. Just calm down.”
Getting to the Final Reveal of ‘Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero’ Was an Evolving Process

“It really only got finalized a week before, and then changed quite a lot in the edit.”

What was it like to shoot the final confrontation with Matthew Rhys? It’s not a big, showy moment, but it’s a breakdown of everything and so much is done through dialogue. What was it like to have that moment, where everything comes out?
JACKSON-COHEN: That final showdown was quite an interesting thing, especially while filming. It went through so many iterations that it was constantly being rewritten as we were filming. It really only got finalized a week before, and then changed quite a lot in the edit. For all of us, including Matthew and Sam, it felt like whatever this is, it needs to really feel organic and not all of a sudden be like, “Fine, it was me.” It was a really interesting process, getting to that point. We also shot that on the hottest day. There was a heatwave. I don’t know how Matthew did it, played tennis, and memorized pages and pages. It was a master class, just watching him work and do it so effortlessly. It was amazing.
HYLAND: It was challenging, but it also felt like a relief. A lot of the scenes towards the end, the characters start to tell the truth. Everyone tells the truth. Everyone has something they’re hiding, in a sense, and there’s a relief to it, but there’s also a distrust of it when it happens. You’ve been playing this character with such a strong mask, and then, suddenly, there are cracks in that. It almost feels like you’re playing a different character. You have to trust that they’re multifaceted and that can exist too. It’s almost uncomfortable. You get comfortable playing your character in a certain way.
JACKSON-COHEN: Anyone who’s playing a murderer would also feel like there are two realities. There’s the truth, and then there’s what is being portrayed, in the moment, for the sake of others, and you have to believe that reality. There are so many things going on that when you finally crack that and break through that, it’s a relief, I would imagine.

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Did you see this trio of Neville, Audrey and Kay as a love triangle? Did you see it as more of a game of manipulation? Did you see it just as toxic?
JACKSON-COHEN: All of the above. That’s what’s so interesting about it. It’s not just ever one thing. We just all tried to work together with Sam about how it would play out in an honest way, regardless of people’s intentions. Because these three people find themselves in this house, in the middle of nowhere, under these circumstances, that in itself is a pressure cooker waiting to explode. It was quite interesting, playing all that stuff and getting to explore what would happen.
Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Ella Lily Hyland Explore a Love Triangle of Lust and Power in ‘Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero’

“Their dynamic is just so toxic.”

Image via BritBox

I was just waiting for these two women to leave Neville behind and run off together.
HYLAND: Yeah!
JACKSON-COHEN: Why didn’t they? They would have been better off.
HYLAND: We always had that. I was like, “I fancy you.” And Mimi [Keene] was like, “I fancy you.” They have this weird attraction to each other, which has to do with lust and jealousy. You can have all these thoughts about your character, but how it’s depicted has got to do with the director and everyone’s input, and those were all conversations we were having at the time. What is jealousy? Where does it come from? What is lust? What is desire? What is power? Who has the upper hand in each moment? They just find themselves in this situation, and you never know how you’re going to act until that moment. They’re fascinating. Their dynamic is just so toxic.
JACKSON-COHEN: But it’s great, as well, because it’s not whittled down to a love triangle with woman pitted against woman. It feels so much more intricate and nuanced and human. There is this attraction and curiosity to Kay, and the control and power. It’s a very interesting dynamic that plays out.
HYLAND: It’s also post-war, and there was an anxiety at that time. With the storytelling of that time, the archetypes were the femme fatale and the sired, which Agatha Christie really cleverly plays with, with Kay and Audrey. They don’t have a patriarchal outcome. It’s mad that she wrote that at that time, with all the storytelling that was going on at that time by men. The femme fatale was very much there to seduce the man to get what she wanted, he would fall for her trap, and then she would be killed. What Agatha Christie was doing was so intelligent and really ahead of her time. Looking at the femme fatale, if you break it down, it’s actually the woman in pursuit of freedom. When you’re up against all these obstacles, you start to act in these ways as a rebellion to your circumstance. Both of those characters, you realize how human they are instead of just being an archetype. It’s mad that she wrote that, at that time. She’s amazing.

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Towards Zero

Release Date

2025 – 2025-00-00

Network

BBC One

Directors

Sam Yates

Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero is available to stream on BritBox. Check out the trailer: