Erin Doherty grew up in Crawley, West Sussex, and graduated from Bristol Old Vic theatre school in 2015. Her screen roles include the young Princess Anne in The Crown on Netflix, and Becky in the BBC thriller Chloe. On stage, she has starred in Jack Thorne’s Junkyard and in Alan Ayckbourn’s The Divide. She’s currently appearing as Abigail Williams in the National Theatre’s acclaimed new production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a fictionalised account of the Salem witch trials of 1692, written originally as an allegory for 1950s McCarthyism.
What was your relationship with The Crucible before you were cast? Did you read it at school?
I hadn’t had any contact at all with it, which I found really helpful. I didn’t have any preoccupations about Abigail [a young woman accused of practising witchcraft who later accuses many others of “dancing with the devil”]. Lyndsey [Turner, the play’s director] wanted to go against the way she is usually depicted, and I was on the same page. I don’t think Abigail has any more power than anyone else in the play. She hasn’t planned what she’s doing. She’s just trying to survive.
