As Ella Lily Hyland poses for photos, her black spaniel Nina trots about the studio, stopping occasionally to be stroked. “She always wants to be close,” says the 26-year-old Irish actor as we settle down to chat once she’s out of stilettos and back in her comfy leggings and sweatshirt, long limbs curled beneath her, dog nestled under her seat. “She’s really shy.”
Nina’s a fairly recent addition to Hyland’s life, but has fitted right in with her increasingly busy schedule, keeping her company on photoshoots and even visiting the set while Hyland filmed her latest project, a BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero, co-starring Anjelica Huston and Clarke Peters. Hyland plays Audrey, an upper-class English woman unpicking her relationship with cheating husband Nevile (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and attempting to take back control with, by 1930s standards, a scandalously public divorce. Of course, there’s a murder, and we’re left to untangle the secrets of Audrey, Nevile and the other inhabitants of a remote country house.
