Saura Lightfoot-Leon

In Hoard (2024), Saura Lightfoot-Leon's Maria holds our attention while the film changes tone around her. She gives Luna Carmoon's abrasive drama the force it needs, but also a reason to care about what happens next. We worried about Maria even when the repeated shocks began to tire us, because Lightfoot-Leon never made her seem disposable. Lily-Beau Leach, playing the younger Maria, deserves some of that credit. The two performances make us follow the same person, rather than pause to assess the change of actor.

Her dance background helps explain the physical confidence, though Hoard depends just as much on her keeping our sympathy. Her television debut came in Life After Life (2022), and Maria was her first feature role. The move into larger television parts brought The Agency (2024), in which she plays CIA officer Daniela ‘Danny’ Ruiz Morata, and American Primeval (2025), as Abish Pratt. The latter required preparation in riding, hunting and fighting. Physical demands have been a recurring part of her work already.

Peter Berg's American Primeval is also a warning about what those demands can conceal. Lightfoot-Leon brings conviction to the material about religious zealotry, as does Dane DeHaan as Jacob Pratt. The writing gives Abish too little to do beyond suffer, and convincing acting cannot put that right. Across six episodes, the relentless violence wears the series down. We would rather spend more time getting to know these people than watch them being put through another test.

It is too early to decide that such roles define what Lightfoot-Leon can do. Carmoon has so far given us the stronger reason to keep watching, even with Hoard's wandering pace and repeated shocks. Its central performance holds together changes of tone that might otherwise lose us. The next useful part would give her something to do besides endure. Start with Hoard, allowing for 126 minutes that sometimes feel longer.