Essie Davis

In Alien: Earth (2025), Essie Davis holds our attention by keeping still. Her Dame Sylvia belongs to a cast that takes Noah Hawley's creatures and hybrids seriously, with Sydney Chandler carrying the series as Wendy. Samuel Blenkin makes Boy Kavalier funny before he becomes frightening; Davis works with less outward display. We were relieved by her restraint, because the surrounding strangeness already gave us plenty to absorb. Alongside Babou Ceesay, she gives the ensemble a quieter way of dealing with material that could easily invite overacting.

The contrast with Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012–2015) matters. Phryne Fisher gave Davis an adventurous lead, and The Babadook (2014) brought international recognition for a grieving mother, Amelia Vanek, whose distress grounds the horror. Her physical and vocal commitment there makes the fantastical material persuasive, but those two roles should discourage anyone from treating maternal suffering as her only useful skill. We would keep Phryne in mind when looking at the work that followed.

The television work also supplies a sensible limit to our praise. Alien: Earth is worth watching for its creatures and committed cast, but it slackens when Hawley gives the discussion of personhood too much time. Davis's economy cannot make those stretches shorter. In Apple Cider Vinegar (2025), she plays Natalie Dal-Bello, though it is Kaitlyn Dever's unsettling plausibility as the central liar that makes the drama worth watching. That series, too, keeps interrupting people we want to understand, this time through its restless structure.

Justin Kurzel's True History of the Kelly Gang (2019) put her authority to use as Ellen Kelly, another substantial maternal role. After The Babadook, the offers threatened to become repetitive. Davis has said she turned down similar distressed-mother roles because she wanted something different. For anyone who knows only the horror work, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is the next sensible choice.