'They're not just there to be a pretty face': Helen Mirren says the women of MobLand are 'the strength and power' of the show as season 2 arrives
The show is back for a highly anticipated second outing - and the women are front and centre of the action
MobLand is finally back for season 2, and the women of the hit gangland drama are playing just as dirty as the men, with their character's stories just as gritty and important.
While the season 1 finale saw some of the most shocking violence ever to be witnessed on screen, it also saw psychotic heads of the Harrigan crime family Maeve (Helen Mirren) and Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) being carted off by police.
While they should've seen several life sentences thrown at them for the atrocities they'd carried out throughout the season, that, of course wouldn't make MobLand the compelling, escapist viewing it is if they weren't there.
Having beaten the charges against them and regained their freedom, they're back for season 2 while Tom Hardy's fixer Harry Da Souza cleans up every mess they make and keeps what's left of the clan alive.
And Helen Mirren is correct when she says that women are the "strength and power" of the show. Her cunning and despicable Maeve, alongside Bella (Lara Pulver), and the likes of Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) are just as powerful and complex as their male counterparts.
Rather than standing on the edge as eye-candy characters, they drive the plot as Machiavellian masterminds who are just as ruthless as anyone else.
Speaking during the London premiere of season 2, Helen Mirren told the Press Association: "It’s the strength of the women that is so powerful to the story."
She continues, "They all have agency. They’re in the story. They’re not peripheral to the story."
Most importantly, the actress shares, "They’re not there just to be a pretty face or to explicate things, they’re right in the plot, which is great to see."
The star also shares that she "didn’t know what I was letting myself in for quite honestly," when she signed up to do the series.
"Neither of us really knew what we were signing up for at all," she explains of herself and co-star Pierce Brosnan.
"But we knew it was Guy Ritchie, so we knew that would be fun," she says, adding, "We knew we’d be with each other, and we knew that would be fun."
Once they'd read the scripts and settled into their characters, Helen says, "The whole thing just sort of took off like a jet engine."
She has also shut down rumours of a feud between herself and Tom Hardy. They emerged in May when it was initially announced that Tom would not be returning for season three of the show.
The rumour mill suggested this was because of behavioural and creative clashes on set. However, Tom will officially be returning, and Helen responded to claims she'd been "roped" into the reports of negativity between the pair.
She told EW, "I did not get roped into it. No one asked me. I was simply saying the truth of me and my situation and where we stand on this, and incidentally Pierce also did [the same]."
She concluded, "We absolutely love working with this guy [Tom], we love doing the show, and we would love to continue, and that’s all there really is to it. But we weren’t roped into anything."
MobLand season 2 airs on Paramount+ from September 18.
