Netflix’s New Ice Skating Drama: Spinning Out

Were there times, during the training, when you wondered if this was ever really going to work? Were there really difficult days where you thought, “What did I get myself into?”



SCODELARIO: Yeah, completely. When we got to Canada, we were doing four to six hours a day in the ice rink, training, and I was really struggling. I had no experience, and the rest of the cast all had experience, apart from Willow [Shields]. Even Evan [Roderick] could fucking ice skate. I actually have hyper-mobile joints in and my ankle gave out after our training and I collapsed because my body just wasn’t conditioned to train like that. It didn’t know how to do it. That was really scary. I felt like I’d failed at it, and I probably felt one-one hundredth of the feeling that athletes do when something goes wrong, where I completely gave up on myself and cried. I was like, “I can’t do this. It’s not working.” I had an incredible coach, Sarah Kawahara, who did I, Tonya and Blades of Glory. She sat me down and spoke to me and said, “We’re gonna do some off ice training, and then we’re gonna get back in the rink. We’re gonna get back in the saddle, and you can do this. It’s just practice, practice, practice. You’ll get there.” She really built my confidence up. By the end, I was able to go backwards, go really fast, and spin around. Obviously, it takes so many years of training to get to the level that these characters are. There’s no way you could get a bunch of actors that good in two months, to be able to do that. So, we have amazing doubles, and I’m getting much more confident on the ice now.





Someone else had been cast in this role, and then they left the project and you came in, which can shorten preparation time. Did you still have a good chunk of time to fully train and prepare to do this?

SCODELARIO: Oh, god, no. A good chunk of time would have been years. I got the call, and then two weeks later, I was in Canada. And then, we had three weeks of prep there. So, it was five weeks, in total, which is nothing. Willow, who was cast way before me, had been training for four months. Same with Evan. I definitely had to do everything twice as fast. They were really great and they were able to get me there. And I’ve carried on training by myself, in between, since we’ve stopped filming, so that if we do go again, I’ll feel slightly more comfortable.

Because of who Kat is and what she goes through in this, it really accelerates the relationship that she has with Justin. Not only are they thrown on the ice together, but their personal relationship escalates really fast and you get to explore so much of it, in this season. What was it like to really get to dig so deep into that relationship, in such a short period of time?



SCODELARIO: You really do see an entire arc of a relationship, in one season, between them, but it made sense. We realized, when we started training together, that the whole idea of pairs is a marriage, essentially. You need to really know the other person, inside out. You’re training with them, all day long. You’re going through intense emotions with them, of failure, success, exhaustion, anger, exhilaration, and all of these things, so you’re immediately bonded. Evan and I felt that, as well, straight away. We were like, “Okay, you’re TV husband, and I’m TV wife now.” Our relationship was intense, as well. It felt like I’ve known him, my whole life, that we were in it together, and that we were gonna get through it together. Kat and Justin are much the same. They’re put into this crazy situation. They’ve known each other for a long time because they’ve trained at the same level, but when their worlds collide, and boy do they, it’s like wildfire. It’s just so fast. But that was really fun to get to play. There’s something about when you’re young and in love, probably for the first time, and feel like everything is so much more intense than it really is because you’re at that time in your life when you’re so engaged and so committed to this wonderful feeling, but you don’t realize everything is just dropping around you. It’s a super intense relationship, but I also feel like it’s very real.



By the end of the season, there’s a sense of where these characters could head next and you definitely feel like there are possibilities there. Have you had conversations about where this story could go, if you do a second season?

SCODELARIO: I’d love to see where it goes next. I have absolutely no idea. I went to follow them to the Olympics. I think that would be very cool.

Does it feel like there is still a lot to explore with her, and that there’s a lot that you could still dig into?

SCODELARIO: Yeah, definitely. There’s a lot of family stuff that still can be explored. There’s a lot of my childhood that I’m really interested in, and that part of her backstory. Also her friendships, like with Jen, especially. I really want to know if they’re able to get back to where they were or not. And I’m sure she’s feeling quite protective of her now and wants to help her, even though she can’t. I think there are lots of places we could still go.



Spinning Out is your first TV series since Skins, which is where I first became aware of your work. Had you been actively looking for a character that you could really dig deep into and play for a longer period of time, or did you just want to play this character, and the medium didn’t matter?

SCODELARIO: It was a little bit of both. This is the first TV I’ve done since Skins, so it’s been almost 12 years. I really love movies. I love storytelling, in any shape or form, but there is something so special about spending so much time with your castmates and with your character, and getting to take them to so many different places and be in so many different situations. Without even realizing, I really did miss that. I’m so protective of Effy, the character I played in Skins. I feel like she’s such a creature inside of me that will always be there, and I haven’t really had that with any character since because you’re not with them for very long. If you’re in a big ensemble cast, obviously, the story is about that character, so you don’t get to show as much or do as much. And I really loved the idea of playing a character, being in every episode, spending 18 hours on set a day, living and breathing with them, and developing them over time. That’s what’s wonderful about American TV. You know that it can go on for so long and you can be part of the creative process, which is something that really excites me now. I want to produce and, eventually, I want to direct them. (Show creator) Sam [Stratton] was really great about letting me build Kat with her. There was just something that really excited me about that.

You also have The Pale Horse, which is an Agatha Christie adaptation, coming out next year. What was it about that story and character that appealed to you?

SCODELARIO: I really missed working in the UK and being on small, low-budget British film sets, where everyone puts the hours in, works really hard, and gets dirty. I loved the writer, Sarah Phelps. I’ve been a big fan of her, for a long time. She’d reached out to me a few times, over the years, to some other adaptations, but I’ve always been busy shooting other things. This one just came at the right time. It was a female director, and I really wanted to work with another woman. Leonora [Lonsdale] is incredible. I wanted to do something set in the ‘60s. It’s my favorite decade. And also, my late grandma would’ve loved it. So much of the stuff that I’ve done, she couldn’t watch, and I just had this image of her, at Christmastime, getting to watch me on the BBC in an Agatha Christie. There was something quite lovely and wonderful about that, and just simple and pure. I wanted to be a part of that.

Is there a current TV show that you watch that you’d love to do a guest spot on?

SCODELARIO: That’s a good question. I don’t really watch a lot of TV. I watch a lot of reality TV, which is embarrassing, but it’s the only thing that switches my brain off. I’d quite love to be a guest on RuPaul’s Drag Race.