Maggie Lovitt is the Deputy News Editor at Collider. In addition to reporting on the latest entertainment news, she is also an actor and member of the Screen Actors Guild based out of the Mid-Atlantic Region. Lovitt is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Critics Choice Association and National Press Club.
While she spends her time writing and editing articles about the entertainment industry, Maggie’s background is actually in history and anthropology. She loves it whenever she can bring those two facets of her life together, such as with reviews for series like We Were the Lucky Ones and The New Look, and engaging interviews with talent like Ben Mendelsohn, Liev Schreiber, or Jonas Nay.
After a two-year wait, The Artful Dodger returned for Season 2 with an impressive 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and immediate top placement on global streaming charts, rivaling the likes of Bridgerton. While most fans are fixated on the tumultuous class-defying romance between the titular Dodger, Jack Dawkins (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and Lady Belle Fox (Maia Mitchell), another dynamic emerged in the sophomore season that took audiences by surprise.
In Season 1, Lady Fanny Fox (Lucy-Rose Leonard) was the well-mannered, socially acceptable foil to Lady Belle’s burgeoning desire to skirt responsibilities and become Port Victory’s first female doctor. While Fanny possessed great potential, she was relatively limited in personality and purpose, beyond showcasing how at odds Belle was with society’s expectations for a young, unmarried woman. In the new season, however, Fanny gets a serious storyline upgrade that sees her working opposite Fagin (David Thewlis) as she steps into a new role as a criminal. But how did this surprising character turn come about? Well, in the lead-up to the series’ return, we chatted with Thewlis and the series’ creator, James McNamara, about the unexpected duo.
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Thewlis noted that Fanny and Fagin never really crossed paths in the first season, but that he and Lucy-Rose Leonard would often “joke about, ‘What if they were somehow involved together in some way?’ And it actually came out of a breakfast when we were doing the press junket for the first season that James and myself and Lucy-Rose, just before we went to the airport, were saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if these two characters had some more interaction? What if she gets dragged into his world?’ And I think James took that and obviously ran with it.” He went on to add:
“It’s very nice because there’s the governor and there’s Lady Fanny and there’s Fagin who are really the fools or the buffoons in the story, and we get to play a little more, maybe, alongside some very serious facets of the story, particularly with Lady Belle and her mother. Those scenes are kind of socially realistic and absolutely tragic. I think some of those scenes are beautiful. So, to counter that with the absolute silliness of Lady Fanny becoming involved not just in the world of Fagin, but in the absolutely bonkers world of Fagin, and getting involved in the saltpetre scheme, and stealing the meter of platinum, and me saving her because she’s accidentally killed her boyfriend during a pottery accident. This is how silly the show can get, and he’s blackmailing her for that. So, it’s just very, very, very, very enjoyable, and Lucy-Rose is great. She’s a good laugh. It was a real nice breath of fresh air for me to explore something so beautifully. It’s silly.”
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McNamara gave deeper insight into how the idea came together, revealing, “I like to ask my leads, ‘Do you have anything you’d really like to do this season?’ and the one thing that David said was, ‘I’d like to have a love story.’ And I’ve explored Fagin’s love stories; it didn’t quite work for me, but I thought, what about a platonic kind of mentor-mentee love story where it’s actually really pure, and it isn’t the toxicity of the Dodger-Fagin relationship?”
With so much of Season 2 focused on Dodger trying to distance himself from the father-son dynamic he has with Fagin, which is ultimately ruining his chances with Belle, the Fagin-Fanny dynamic gives way to a plotline that sees Fagin acquiring a true acolyte who takes delight in the schemes they’re pulling off together. As McNamara explained:
“I feel like Fanny got a rough go in the press in the first round. To me, Fanny has always been a lot smarter than she’s given credit for, and she’s an unusual character. She’s quite eccentric. She doesn’t see the world like a lot of other people do, and for her, crime is wonderfully, hilariously good fun. So, I was having breakfast, actually, with David and Lucy-Rose, who plays Fanny, [Leonard], and my wife, Rebecca, on the last press tour, and they said, ‘What are you thinking if we get to Season 2?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’d like Fanny to break bad. What do you think about that?’ And we all thought it was a fun idea. That was kind of the first creative decision I made on the series.”
While McNamara didn’t want to delve too deeply into what pushes Fanny into Port Victory’s criminal underbelly, he did lavish praise on Leonard’s handling of Fanny’s turn. “When I explained it to Lucy-Rose — I mean, Lucy-Rose is a classically trained RADA-trained actress — and she’s like, ‘You’re gonna have to step me through how we’re organically getting from point to point.’ But it works, right? She has that big event in her life that kind of shuts one door and opens another one, and she embraces it with both hands. And gosh, Lucy is such a tremendous performer, and it was wonderful to see her come into her own in that new role in this series.”
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In the end, Fanny’s transformation is more than just a humorous detour for the series; it’s one of Season 2’s smartest creative choices. By pairing her with Fagin, The Artful Dodger not only injects a fresh jolt of energy into Port Victory’s increasingly high-stakes world, but it also reclaims a character that was once dismissed, and lets her revel in the delicious chaos around her. The unexpected joy of watching Fanny “break bad” and form a new connection with Fagin also proves how important it is for creatives to discuss storylines with their actors, who may have unexpected insights into their characters.
The first two seasons of The Artful Dodger are streaming now on Hulu and Disney+. Stay tuned to our full conversation with McNamara on Collider Behind the Scenes and check out our recent in-depth look at the series’ costumes with Season 2 costume designer Marion Boyce below.
Like Follow Followed The Artful Dodger TV-14 Drama Crime Action Adventure Release Date November 29, 2023 Network Disney+ Cast See All David Thewlis Norbert Fagin Thomas Brodie-Sangster Dr Jack Dawkins Where to watch Close WHERE TO WATCH Streaming
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