Lara Pulver, best known stateside for her role as deduction-dodging dominatrix Irene Adler on BBC’s Sherlock, will be descending into the Underworld next year. Unlike the mythological Persephone, though, who was abducted by the god of the dead and tricked with pomegranate seeds, Pulver is probably just going to end up kicking a bunch of vampires or werewolves in the face.
Pulver has signed on for a role in the fifth installment of Hollywood’s quixotic attempt to get people to refer to werewolves as “lycans,” in which no conflict between mythological creatures is so convoluted or involved that it can’t be solved with a nice, slow-motion kick to the head. Plot details for the new film are, of course, a closely guarded secret, as there’s no telling how much damage could be done to director Björn Stein’s magnum opus if his delicate lattice of storytelling was exposed to the harsh, non-blue light of day. It’s a fairly safe bet, though, that Pulver will play some sort of vampire, or werewolf, or vampire-werewolf hybrid, or maybe a mummy or a witch of some sort of mummy-witch-King-Kong. That’s the joy of the Underworld movies, after all; the endless inventiveness they bring to the table.
As it happens, this won’t actually be Pulver’s first vampire-adjacent role; she previously appeared on HBO’s True Blood, playing “a full-blooded telepathic faerie with the power of Photokinesis.” So, yeah, after surviving that mythological mush-mouth of a character description, Pulver should feel right at home participating in an Underworld film.