Between her debut album Blindspot and her hot new show on Hulu, this might be the biggest month in actress-musician Ella Hunt’s career. It’s also only the beginning.

There’s an old adage that brings small relief in the face of unforeseen circumstances: You make plans and God laughs. It’s a reminder to surrender, and applicable to many different scenarios; family tragedy, scheduling conflicts, two of the biggest projects of your career colliding in one week. Or, if you’re Ella Hunt, it’s all the above. 

This month, Ella Hunt released her debut album, Blindspot. A decade in the making, the record is the culmination of years spent finding herself at the piano in her childhood home in North Devon, as well as a devastating, raw excavation of grief following the recent passing of her half-sister, Emily.

Concurrently, following standout performances in period pieces, Hunt is making her television return with a Mindy Kaling-produced contemporary comedy. Not Suitable for Work is an ensemble following a group of ambitious young professionals in New York City – a role Hunt landed after a Zoom meeting with Mindy, squeezed into a two-hour sleep window during night shoots for another film. Filming wrapped one day  after her bachelorette party (her friends helped her run lines, dildo and drinks on standby), and a mere two weeks before her December wedding. Hunt initially scheduled her album to drop a month after the show’s premiere, presuming any press and palaver would subside before the Blindspot rollout began. Instead, shifting release dates meant both projects arrived the same week. You make plans, and God laughs.

But Ella is not new to this. The 28 year-old has been acting since age 11, performing across TV, film and theatre, while penning her own plays and releasing a series of EPs and singles. She excellently embodied SNL legend Gilda Radner in Saturday Night, which caught the attention of Mindy and NSFW showrunner Charlie Grandy. She was the first cast member to join the show, which is already number one on streaming giant Hulu, portraying a first-year associate at an investment bank who is self-aware enough to know isn’t cool enough to survive in Brooklyn. By contrast, Ella – who splits her time between Brooklyn and London – is very cool, and as of this week, that’s something you can listen, watch, and now read to find out. At least, that’s the plan.

Let’s talk chemistry. I know that with Adults they all went and lived in a house in Toronto for a month — I was curious if there was a process in place for you guys.

They wanted to make sure that we hit it off. One of the real delights of this process for me was that I got to read chemistry with [castmates] Avantika [Vandanapu] and Will [Angus]. I didn’t get to chemistry read with Jack [Martin] because he was one of the missing puzzle pieces that came in very late in the day. Will and Jack knew each other beforehand and they lived together while we were shooting. Me and Avantika – I’d say it was a love-at-first-sight match. She came into the room and it was immediately electric. 

Have you ever experienced the opposite, where you feel friction or you feel like people weren’t looking out for you?

I think it’s very rare that people actually come into this kind of environment knowingly and willingly wishing to pull other people down. I think a little bit of competitiveness is natural, but it’s pretty rare that somebody knowingly acts like a shit on a film set. That being said, I definitely have had experiences where I’ve worked with people where we haven’t had that natural chemistry, or we’ve had to work for the chemistry.

How do you work for it? 

I think it’s building out trust and showing each other over and over… though not in this instance. I think we were very bonded by how anxious we were to do well—all five of us were really nervous before we shot the pilot and we were very transparent about those feelings. 

Did it feel like stepping into the shoes of Friends? Is that where the nerves come from?

I think comparison is always a kind of agitator of nerves. But I think we were all fans of the “Mindy-verse” and all felt that this was something special—a real opportunity, both individually and collectively, to make something memorable. Our writers’ room was also on set with us every day, which was amazing because it meant that we would map out a scene, we’d rehearse, and then they’d bring a bunch of alts to us. So the scene would really evolve from take one to the last take, but it required us to be on our toes. At the beginning, that was pretty nerve-wracking.

So you’re learning lines on the fly, basically.

Yeah. By the end of the shoot, I felt so match-fit. I think all of us did. I had scheduled my bachelorette party for what was supposed to be a week after shooting finished, but shooting extended.

What was your bachelorette plan?

My friends surprised me with a scavenger hunt around all my favourite places in the city, which was amazing. […] I’m quite introverted. I mean, I love a girls’ trip, but I didn’t want to fall prey to the wedding-industrial complex. I hate it when your friends are encouraged to spend so much money; it’s just really off-putting to me. But I got sent – I shit you not – five pages of revisions at 8:00 PM that day. I’m drunk, having “girl dinner.”

I probably would’ve cried.

I’m kind of a junkie for it. I think I thrive in high-pressure environments. I did a lot of sports growing up, and there is an athleticism to some of the things that crop up in this profession, and I enjoy it.

Do you like to be all the way on or all the way off?

I’m much happier in the extremes. That’s also why I’m much happier living in New York City or living on a farm in Devon where I grew up, where there are no people. Suburbia is my speed.

How does music factor into that? It can obviously be very introspective and reflective.

I think music has been at the centre of my life since I was a child. It’s been how I processed everything. I’ve said this before, but it holds true: for me, acting is kind of an inhalation in that it’s a lot of taking in information and listening. And for me, making music is kind of an exhalation. It is a kind of release, relief, and catharsis that I really crave. In the case of this album, it’s predominantly a grief record. Largely, the catalyst for a lot of the songs was my half-sister Emily passing away in June of 2023.

I know, and that was so recent. 

It is. I took some time off after Emily died. In that time, I think if there is a silver lining to that experience, it was that I felt like I’d been given permission to not give so much of a fuck. It was really freeing as a musician. So, I think I was able to make music that sounded like me for the first time. It was a really beautiful, sad period of time writing this record, and it was a slow period in a way that I’m really grateful for.

How did you come back to music in the wake of her passing? Creating can be extraordinarily vulnerable, I imagine there was a part of you that would shy away from that.

It’s a lovely question. I think in very early grief, I felt very reluctant to write about it. I was doing morning pages all the way through Emily’s palliative care. I think I was so struck and moved by the light that palliative care cast on my family. I’m really, really close with my family and I love them all to bits, and I felt like I knew them very well going into that period, but it brought out such different colours and textures in each of them and in each of their love languages. It was really beautiful to witness. So yeah, initially I was really reluctant to write about it. And then, to begin with, I felt very strongly that if I was writing about it, it couldn’t be poetic—it needed to be very matter-of-fact and dry. 

You’ve had a crazy few years. When you fully birth this record, when everything feels done, you’re going to be like, “Whoa, I am going to need to process.”

I’m going to need to sit down and process for sure, yeah. Somebody asked me what kind of summer I was going to be having yesterday and I just said, “I’m going to be having a very emo summer.” Something that I have come to love about myself is I feel like I have this little pot of sadness in my pocket and I love it. I love bringing it out when I’m playing music. I’m okay with its existence. I feel like a relentless optimist, but my sadness is something that I’m friends with and that I feel like I have permission to have as a musician.

This show has been heralded as the Gen Z version of these iconic shows of yesteryear, but you don’t seem very Gen Z, and I think that’s where a lot of critics are going to trip up because they have a very narrow idea of what this generation is. I’m curious what you think people get wrong about this generation?

Well, I love that question. I really love that question, and I also appreciate you seeing that in me. Thank you. I think these delineations of generations have a place. They certainly have a place in marketing and in the corporate world. But I personally really struggle with it as a way of categorising people. I think that we are all so much more expansive than any kind of box could describe. I wondered how I would talk about being in a Gen Z show with that in mind. People will trip up on maybe some of the realities of being a young person in New York right now; our apartments are very aspirational, for example. But I think the thing is that it’s a tremendously relatable experience to be a young person arriving in a city with ambition, naiveté, and drive. 

But that’s the thing: Gen Z is often represented as having no drive, and being subordinate.

Which is just crazy to me.

Well, it’s just kind of an impossible generalisation.

Impossible. Given late-stage capitalism, this rhetoric around Gen Z being a “do-nothing” generation couldn’t be further from the truth. I think it’s just that for a lot of Gen Z, we have discovered that the Internet is a place where we can work.

It democratised the corporate environment.

Yeah. I hope people get in on it and don’t feel itchy about the fact that it’s not just a straight-up Gen Z show.

Are you able to watch shows or films of the moment? From the vantage point of being an actor and possibly seeing a role that passed you by, or seeing how massive a particular project becomes in popular culture – are you able to engage in the same way a fan would?

I think I’ve been doing this for a long time. I started when I was 11, so I’ve had a lot of practice at that. Especially since I’m a musician as well, I really strongly feel like what’s meant for me won’t pass me by. When I see shows and films with young casts doing really well, obviously I feel so excited for them and see it as a wonderful thing, but I also find it quite daunting. That level of scrutiny.

Obsession – seeing a film like that getting made.

I haven’t seen it yet. Me and my brother are going to go this week.

It was made on $750k, bought for $15 million, and now it’s on track to make $100 million. It is like an industry-saving film.

It’s really inspiring.

In the same way, it could also inspire jealousy. When something like that comes out, it’s like, “Oh my God, it’s a runaway hit. How exciting!” And then you go, “Why not me?” Especially breaking through in an industry like film and TV, or music, where it’s one in a million.

Music especially. I think I really understand that feeling, and I’m so familiar with it. I see my friends experiencing this a bunch and I’m not a stranger to that feeling. But what I would say is that my TikTok wormhole is videos of female musicians on tour. I’m obsessed with seeing those “I made it” moments. My heart just swells. It’s a kind of kick that I don’t get from much else. 

Have you ever grappled with an inner monologue of, “Wow, since I’ve succeeded in this one thing, can I ask for success in this other realm as well?”

I’m really flattered that you imagine I might be a person who is able not to think about or factor in public response. I definitely aspire to be that person. I’m very aware, just as a person who consumes culture, of how weird it can be when an actor puts out a music project. It can feel somehow contrived or… I don’t know. I think audiences can sometimes smell a rat. With actors where we assume they’re playing characters in their films, even when they’re playing someone quite similar to themselves. Whereas with musicians, something we all hunger for is to believe that the musician is the character they play in their music.

It’s interesting that it doesn’t really go the other way as much when you look at Charli xcx acting or The Weeknd acting.

It doesn’t. It’s fascinating. We could write a whole piece on it together.

A PhD thesis.

We could. It’s fucking fascinating. And do I sometimes kick myself at night that I didn’t do it the other way around? Abso-fucking-lutely. But I think I just have to make peace with the fact that some people are going to accept this side of my artistry and others might not. I hope this record gives them access to enjoying my music, but I’m okay if that’s not the universal experience of this record. I know that I’ve been making music since I was a kid, and I’ve been dreaming of making an album for a decade.

It’s true to you.

It really is. I think anyone who actually listens to even a track from the album, let alone the whole thing, will hear that this is not something that’s been manufactured by a team around me. It’s very personal.

Words – Beatrice Hazlehurst